Today’s topic is five ways to CORRECT your toddler. If you have not yet seen part one of this series, I’d recommend checking it out before moving on. It addresses how to build CONNECTION with our little ones, which gives us a lot more cred with them in the more difficult moments. You can find part one here. When thinking about correcting certain toddler behaviors, it is important to remember two guiding principles: 1. Love is a stronger motivator than fear, so “connect before you correct.” 2. Our modeling of appropriate behaviors is much more effective than any other...
Five Ways To Connect With Your Toddler
If you’re in the midst of parenting a toddler, I salute you. It’s not an easy job, and there’s definitely no guide book or summer break. If you’re parenting more than one toddler, I empathize with your plight and I pray for your sanity and your sleep! We all come to the role of parent from a variety of places. Sometimes it is joyful. Sometimes it is excruciating. Sometimes it is the most wonderful thing we can imagine, and sometimes we just need a break. And we almost always have questions about how in the world we’re supposed to do...
An Open Letter to Teenage Guys About Sexting
Dear guys, Just so you know, this might get a bit uncomfortable. I know I only have a few minutes of your time, so I’m going to cut to the chase. Quit asking for nude pics. I’m sure it seems harmless to you. After all, if the girl sends them to you it’s consensual, right? And, I get it, all things sexual make you feel stronger, more like a man with stories to tell, bragging rights, and a reputation. I’m sure when you ask for those pictures you mean no harm or ill intent. But… Just because you can’t see...
Helping Your Child Cope with Fears
Halloween is upon us. Which means it is the time of year for scary masks in the aisles of the grocery store, age-inappropriate shows or commercials at all hours of the day on every screen, and countless other opportunities for your child to see or hear something that scares them. Unfortunately, we parents cannot completely protect our kids from these scary experiences. In this article, I hope to lay out a few ideas on how to guard your child from unnecessary fear, as well as what to do if/when they get scared. Guard Their Experiences Do your best to act...
Life After Ashley Madison – 7 Tips to Help Move Towards Relationship Restoration After You Have Been Caught
If you find yourself in the terrifying position of being caught (be it after an affair, online chat/hook-up, pornography, etc.), I want to tell you that it is possible to make it through. It won’t be easy. It will require diligence and intentionality, but there is hope - not only for yourself, but for your spouse, family and marriage as well.
Fears, My Back Porch, and the Lesson In the Stars
“I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.” –Og Mandino I’m a night person because that’s when the stars come out. I sometimes sit on my back porch in a wooden chair and stare out into the blackness, hiding from the streetlights and watching the faint twinkling of diamonds in the sky. I like to imagine what all the other worlds must be like as they orbit these massive smatterings of light against the darkness. It calms me; it centers me; it encourages me to...
What Feeds Your Soul?
I was talking with a group of graduate school students the other day about how important it is to take a break and intentionally care for ourselves. Why is it so difficult to do this? For example, I used to play guitar. Now it has been months–if not years–since I have picked one up and just enjoyed playing it. How did I get away from it? It’s something I used to love, and now it just sits there in my closet, begging to be played. It used to feed my soul, and now it’s just taking up space. You know...
Lessons from Mr. Spock
The recent passing of Leonard Nimoy brings a profound sense of loss not only for the man himself, but also for the beloved half-human, half-vulcan he portrayed for so many years in television and film. Mr. Spock is truly an American icon, curiously evoking so much love and emotion for a character who was supposedly the pinnacle of detached rationality. His role as the cool and collected Chief Science Officer of the Starship Enterprise provides the perfect foil for an often emotional Captain Kirk, and in many ways Mr. Spock is able to teach us more about what it means to be human than any of...
In need or being needy
It’s 6:45 a.m. and I am sitting in the terminal. Problem is, my flight departed at 5:30. My destination is the snow-capped mountains of Fraser, Colorado where I will be spending the next 4 days at a Ransomed Heart boot camp. My prayer to this point has been that I would be open to what God has for me, and up to now I have been pretty unsure as to what I am in need of. Which brings me back to the hard plastic chair I am uncomfortably sitting in at Jackson’s tiny terminal. I am starting to wonder if...
Grief and Groundhog Day
I remember hating the movie Groundhog Day when I was younger, mainly because it felt like the movie would never end – which was the point as far as I can tell. It dawned on me recently that this is very much like grief. The process often feels so slow it’s like you’re waking up in the same day over and over again. Nothing seems to change and all you want is to get out of it. Just like Bill Murray’s character, Phil Connors, we often feel like going to any extreme just to change the persistent pain and monotonous...