In my last blog entry, I dropped some science in your lap about John Gottman’s 5:1 ratio of positive interactions to negative interactions. What you did with that info is your business, but I hope you went home and made some love bank deposits. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, check out part one HERE. Today I’m going to share some more insight from Dr. Gottman’s research in the Love Lab. As you might remember, the Love Lab was a place where all kinds of couples, happy and not-so-happy, were screened, interviewed, and observed to help determine...
How Can I Make My Marriage Last? Part One
Valentine’s Day was a couple of weeks ago, and if you’re still dating your significant other you might have spent the evening staring into each other’s eyes, trading loving caresses and coming up with pet names for one another. If you’ve already been married for a while, however, you might have gotten a heart-shaped box of chocolates and an “I love you honey” before bathing the two year-old, wrangling a dirty diaper away from the dog, and passing out on the couch. Now that you’ve come down off the sugar rush from your chocolates, let me share something with you...
Timing
I am reading Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. I am going beyond the text by watching old videos online, including a joint discussion with Jobs and Bill Gates of Microsoft that took place in 2007 where they talk about the history of the personal computer and what Jobs called Post-PC devices. I love reading about business and I’m a little bit of a tech geek, so the 600-page behemoth is a worthy mountain to climb. I am not even halfway finished, but I have come to this conclusion: Steve Jobs success, at least initially, was basically attributable to one thing...
Protecting Your Child Online: Prefer Awareness Over Control
If you search ‘how to protect your child online’, you’ll most likely become overwhelmed with a flood of information. In one corner is the fear monger, spewing forth all the rancid possibilities and imminent demise of your child once they connect to the internet. In the other corner are the shouts for ‘privacy!’ and how you have no right to access your child’s on-line life. In between are a thousand different and valid arguments purporting just as many strategies and viewpoints. Control Can’t Control If your goal is to control your child’s on-line behavior or access, then I’m afraid to...
The Gift of Being Present
Spending time with family over the holidays requires a lot of intentional effort. For myself, it begins with taking off from work early in order to get home and pack up for myself and kids. Then on to loading the van with the precision of the 20th level of Tetris- luggage, gifts, snacks and children fitting with only inches to spare. After the traditional tug-of-war, we finally get the kids loaded up and ready to go (except of course for the last minute potty breaks), and we hit the road, at least before the second potty break in 30 minutes. This is all prerequisite to driving through the wintry...
Learning to Love
I often contemplate love. I know how important it is because it’s all over Scripture. It’s in every movie, and on the pages of every book. Somehow in a world that is unsure about this whole “God thing,” love prevails as an essential theme of the human race. Even when we are our culture forbids us to pray, talk about Jesus, or share the Gospel, it allows us to love. So I recently read 1 Corinthians 13, which I have read a hundred times, heard at dozens of weddings, and practically have memorized. Paul talks about love being patient and...
A Lesson from Ivan- life on life interaction
Emma was asked to read an award-winning book for school and make a diorama, so we headed to the bookstore to find one. She’s in second grade. She had a few choices —-a Newbery Medal and Honor Book or a Caldecott Medal Book. The Newbery award is given to “the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.” The Caldecott Medal annually recognizes the preceding year’s “most distinguished American picture book for children.” In short, one has a bunch of words and the other has pretty much nothing but pictures. Our choice was obvious, so we headed to the local...
Little Things Make Small Kids Big
My 5 year old daughter has a runny nose and congestion. It’s just that time of year. Lucky for me she remembered to remind me that she needed her medicine tonight as I was tucking her into bed. She’s moved up in the world from the chalky chewable’s (Have you ever tried one? They taste nothing like grapes or cherries), and on to the more sophisticated swallow-whole pills. Needless to say, this is a very big deal for a five year old. As she gulped down the medicine and handed back her glass of water to me she made the...
Grateful Remembering
I write this during the week of Thanksgiving, a holiday which seems set apart for counting my blessings. This year however is vastly different for me than the ones that have come before, primarily because in the month’s leading up to this Thanksgiving I’ve spent time nightly remembering the day and writing down what it is I’m grateful for. The importance of gratitude has been slowly creeping in on me for years now. In my younger days I thought being grateful was nothing more than a decent virtue, another tool in my belt so to speak. Sadly, through the years...
A Country Boy Can Survive….But Can He Grow?
I grew up country, in the hills of Arkansas to be exact. This is a fact most people might not notice about me at first. At some point I laid down my thick southern drawl; but I still wear the boots, get my hands greasy under the hood of a car, use duct tape to fix nearly everything, smoke meat, and stay outside as much as possible. There is so much about growing up country which I’m grateful for. As a kid I could walk behind our house to fish, shoot snakes, work on broken down cars, and have bonfires...