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Parenting

How to Raise Your Child to Be a Leader {Podcast}

Mark and I both had leadership positions in college. He was president of an on-campus leadership group and I was president of my sorority. But we’ve tried to teach our children a broader sense of leadership–the power of influence in daily life. There’s a question we asked our kids a lot over the years, especially during middle school and high school: Are your friends having more of an influence on you, or are you having more of an influence on them? We wanted them to understand that being a leader was about how they chose to use their influence. And the reason we want our children to be influencers is that we want them to be a leader of good choices. Here’s how to teach your child to be a leader. Be willing to stand apart. Start teaching this as early as you can. When our children were young we were careful about what movies they watched. Well one time Megan was at a sleepover and the girls started a movie Megan knew wasn’t appropriate, so she asked the babysitter if she could go upstairs and play. She was okay with being different. When you encourage this kind of response …

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Parenting

Share the Love, Share the Book!

Mark and I need your help. Our new books, From Me to You: A Conversation Journal (both son and daughter versions), releases April 2nd! We would love your help sharing the news. To make sharing convenient, use any of these posts or tweets below to get the word out on your social media. Thank you for helping. It is our hope that these books will be the beginning of a hundred meaningful conversations between parent and child about trials, temptations, and fears. About dreams, family, and faith. And so much more. We couldn’t do it without you!

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Parenting

Teaching Your Kids Good Cell Phone Manners

When the first hand-held cell phone call was placed in 1973, I’ll bet the inventor didn’t realize what a cultural and social phenomenon had begun! With the advent of Smartphones and the rapidly improving technology that makes more knowledge and convenience available at our fingertips, cell phones are no longer simply for making calls. A study in 2013 found that Americans spend about an hour per day on their cell phones, and only about a quarter of that time was spent actually talking. To complicate things even more, parents today are letting their kids use cell phones at younger and younger ages. Mine had to wait until they were 16! Statistics reveal that close to 25% of 6 to 9 year olds own a cell phone. That number jumps to 60% of 10 to 14 year olds who own a cell phone. And a whopping 84% of 15 to 18 year olds own a cell phone. Cell phone etiquette has grown increasingly complicated, so it’s important we teach our kids the dos and don’ts of cell phone use, especially as they’re exposed to cell phones earlier in childhood. Share these Do’s and Don’ts of Cell Phone Manners with your kids. You can print this …

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Parenting

What to Teach Your Son (and Daughter) about Locker Room Talk

“Locker Room Talk” has become a trending topic in the news recently. Some people brush off these types of remarks with “boys will be boys,” or by saying it’s “just talk.” However, the reality of the situation is that there is no such thing as “just talk.” According to Andrew Newberg, M.D. and Mark Robert Waldman, leaders in brain-and-communication research, hostile words can negatively change brain chemistry while positive words stimulate motivating frontal lobe activity. The more you engage with a word the more areas of the brain are stimulated. Pause there and consider that last statement for a minute. Focus on the word more. The problem, today, is that there are more words, more often, in more places. Locker room talk doesn’t just stay in the locker room anymore. It gets broadcasted and engaged with over and over. And that can have deep, painful consequences for someone. Words have power, the lens through which we view our world is greatly influenced by the words we speak and hear. As parents, we are often left out of the peer-to-peer communication that transpires at school, on the playground, in the locker room or on mobile phones. You cannot monitor everything your …

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Parenting

How to Help Your Child Succeed in School

Help! Moooooooom, I need help. I helped my kids in school and my kids really did need help. School today is hard! I think it is so much harder than when I went to school. I got into the University of Florida without a single AP class. I took the SAT one time. I didn’t need or receive any help from my parents. The school workload today is different and you may want to consider how you can help your child succeed in school without, of course, doing their work for them. Most of what I helped my kids with (other than math–math is so hard) was understanding the disciplines of success for any endeavor–school, college, work, sports, etc. Three musts for success in life and all of the above are as follows: 1. Must Manage Time Well The most recent numbers from the National Center for Educational Statistics reveal that kids spend, on average, just over 33 hours a week at school. And that doesn’t even include the time they spend doing homework—an estimated 2-4 hours per week in elementary and middle school and as much as 17.5 hours per week in high school. That means your child will be …

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Parenting

How to Break Your Child’s Sense of Entitlement

A familiar trope in movies and TV shows for kids, tweens, and teens is kids complaining that they didn’t get something they think they deserve. They complain about a teacher giving them a poor grade. They whine to their friends about their parents giving them an early curfew or not letting them go to a party. They call coaches dumb when they don’t make the team. They expect other people to bend over backwards doing things for them, with younger siblings and “dorky” friends frequently falling victim to their demands. The scary thing is that this theme, used for comedic value in the entertainment targeted at our children, is far too often found in the real world. Have you ever been shocked to find that your child believes they deserve something, that they are entitled to something they clearly haven’t earned? An entitlement is something that is granted to someone without them having to earn it. It is given without any effort. And unfortunately, our culture is encouraging our children’s sense of entitlement. My husband, Mark, asked me to join him on this podcast to tackle the worrisome trend of entitlement that is growing in recent generations and has become all too …

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Parenting

Love Your Child Enough to Let Them Hurt

When you love your kids, nothing hurts more than seeing them in pain. As a mom, I can hardly bear to see my kids in any kind of distress, whether it be physical, emotional, or spiritual. From skinned knees to serious medical issues, squabbles with friends to messy breakups, parents have to help their kids through plenty of painful times on the journey to adulthood…and beyond. Naturally, parents want to help remove pain from their child’s life. But is that always the best thing? Perhaps not. I would like to offer you a piece of advice that sounds crazy but is rooted in decades of experience: sometimes, it’s okay to let your child hurt. Pain is a normal part of life. In order to grow and mature, people will encounter pain and must learn how to deal with it. That’s not to say we shouldn’t care if our children are suffering, and it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be there to support them. But as a culture, we have created an environment that practically worships ease, comfort, and minimizing pain. There is a temptation to make a pain-free, stress-free, boredom-free, struggle-free existence the absolute goal of our lives. We constantly seek …

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Parenting

Fight the Good Fight

Fighting for your child is something that you inherently do as a mom. Right? We fight for them to have equal opportunity, education, health, a chance to make something of themselves and we even fight for their self-esteem because we believe in who they are and what they are capable of. My sister realized that something was up with her son in second grade, he was so smart but it was not reflected in his grades. He was falling behind. So she approached his teacher to see if she noticed the same thing. And much to her surprise, his teacher fought back implying that she should accept my nephews performance. But my sister just knew that there was something wrong. She knew her son inside and out, and she knew something was not right, but the school would not agree to test him. She and her husband decided to fight for their son. They paid for testing–extensive testing. Then they approached the teacher, then the principal, then more testing. They chose to fight hard for him. And finally, they won. After many tests, my nephew did in fact, have a very rare learning disability that was completely curable. What they won for my …

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Parenting

Are Parents the Root of Bullies?

Is your child thought of as a bully or a ‘mean girl’ at school? Back in January, I had the pleasure of debating whether or not parents might actually be the cause of their children’s bully-like attitude on Fox & Friends. A new study suggests that the origin of bullies behavior may be the parents exertion of control. Our kids are a reflection of us, so their attitude and actions start with us. The important thing is, however, that we as parents take responsibility of their children and train the behavior out of them. If you treat your kids with aggression or criticism, they will mirror that. Better yet, if you treat them with love and kindness, they will reflect that. Watch the video below to hear more on this topic. Watch the latest video at <a href=”http://video.foxnews.com”>video.foxnews.com</a>

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Parenting

How to Invest in Your Adult Child’s Friendships

It’s easy to invest in our relationships with our children when they’re young. They rely on us for everything! In a way, I miss that season of life. I’m proud of my kids as they grow into incredible, responsible adults, but investing in my relationship with them as they get older has become more complicated. It’s not as simple or accessible anymore. SO I’m having to figure out what it means to parent an adult child. Mark and I have realized something unique about this phase of life: our children, as they leave home to pursue their dreams, find themselves very wrapped up in the world of friends. Especially during college, friends are extremely important. As parents, if we want to be close to our kids, we must learn to strategically invest in their friends, as well. In this podcast, Mark and I discuss why and how you should invest in your older children by investing in their friendships. Here are 3 great ways to invest in your child’s friends: Be available Be open to what they want to do Let go of control A friend had a great idea for investing in her oldest son and his friends when he moved …

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