Parenting Articles

The average American family will spend $765 on immediate family this year for Christmas. If you are like most parents with teenagers, you might as well tack on a couple hundred dollars extra. As they get older, the gifts get more expensive because they are inevitably tech related. Whether your kids are 6 or 16, here are a few t...

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We all have secrets. Whether is was the time you went somewhere you weren’t supposed to, had a crush on a classmate, or did something you regret––we all have secrets from our past. Most of them are things we did eons ago that we sit around with our friends laughing about now. But for our children the tech world is bringing...

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The issue of teen drinking continues to be a source of pain and broken trust for many parents. I’ve seen a growing number of parents  respond to the issue by making the home a “safe haven” for drinking alcohol. The rationale is, “teens are going to drink alcohol. I don’t won’t them to get hurt of hurt someone else ...

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The hope we all have for our children is that they will use technology in a way that is honoring of themselves, those around them, and their faith. Many times we feel like trying to keep up with all the screens in our teens lives is like trying to beat back the ocean waves with a broom. You take all of the appropriate steps t...

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I recently watched the Hatfield and McCoys miniseries from the History Channel. The acting was superb and the storyline was compelling, but it left me with a feeling of unease. The conflict between the two families started over a supposed stolen pig, but after generations of fighting the two families couldn’t even remember the...

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Here is an interview with Brian talking about his Engaging Your Teen’s World book. It’s not just important to understand the mistakes you’ve made in parenting. You have to develop a plan to set your teenager free to be the person God created them to be.

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Growing up a kid in a Christian home in the 1970s, the one day each year I was trained to fear was Halloween. It was the Devil’s day after all–the one day out of the year that evil was at its peak, mayhem was rampant, and somehow Satan’s “power” was able to supersede over that which was good. As a m...

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Learning to love one’s neighbor requires a willingness to live as part of the community. If you read part one of this Halloween post, then you know this was never easy for me when it came to Halloween. For me to embrace the idea of celebrating Halloween with my neighborhood meant that there would have to be an act of love ...

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What really motivates teenagers? If you’re like me, when you watch teen-oriented media like Pretty Little Liars, Secret Life of the American Teenager, or Glee, it’s easy to conclude that teens desire sex, alcohol, and money. Certainly each of these vices are unhealthy traps that teens fall into, but a new study shows th...

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Our kids are growing up in an age of entertainment where they think a movie can’t be good without lots of explosions, earth-shaking surround sound, and an excessive amount of computer generated images. I’m all for a fair amount of escapism that can be found in cars that turn into robots and Jedi Masters righting the wron...

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