When your 15-year-old is on spring break with another family for a week, the last click-bait you want to see on your phone is “Tornado Watch from Florida to South Carolina.” What are the odds, I fretted, as my thumbs speed-texted “U ok? Just heard about tornado watch for sarasota?” My daughter replied like King Kong casually batting away a helicopter parent: “yeah we r good.” Despite her nonchalance, shortly after her return home she admitted that my message had, in fact, alerted them to a coming storm, much to her amazement. Begrudgingly, she gave me credit for helping them take … [Read more...]
Which Parenting Style? Why Not a Little of This, a Little of That
It’s about time to declare my parenting style because, apparently, that’s everyone’s business. I learned this through the “Parenting and Faith” Sunday school class at our church. Not that I'm that active in that class as I should be. Truthfully, I’m not active at all. I mean I don’t ever go. My wife goes now and again, but, right or wrong, I haven’t filed the class into the “must do” part of my brain. Besides, Micah 6:8 says, “What does the Lord require of you? To do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” It doesn’t say anything about getting kids ready an hour before … [Read more...]
Grandparents: The Acoustic Version of Parents
Grandparents Day, always the first Sunday following Labor Day, was especially poignant for our family this year. My mother is in the late stages of Alzheimer’s, and our visits to the nursing home are increasingly difficult as she struggles to remember her children and grandchildren. Her anguish recently came to mind while my daughters and I were, of all things, ziplining through a forest. On many landings a simple warning sign reads: “Always stay attached.” The sign features a figure falling through the air, his harness belt waving aimlessly like a severed umbilical … [Read more...]
Raising Your Children Without Hovering Over Them
"Helicopter parent" is the modern putdown for the overprotective mom and dad none of wanted as a kid but so many of us have become as adults. Is it too late for us to change over hovering ways? It's not, according to author and former Stanford University dean Julie Lythcott-Haims, who joins us on the latest Modern Dads Podcast to talk about her new book, How to Raise an Adult: How to Raise an Adult, the new book by Julie Lythcott-Haims Lythcott-Haims' book, which City Dads Group gave a glowing review to back in June, recounts stories of young adults who have been left devoid of the basic … [Read more...]
Let Children Fail Now So They’ll Succeed Later
Years before websites, blogs and vanity URLs would become actual things, the furnished basement of my parents suburban home was my domain. A Nintendo gaming system with a protruding NHL ’96 cartridge, a big-screen TV console fixated on the then-brand-new ESPN 2 ("The Deuce"), and a well-worn favorite chair in desperate need of reupholstering were my most cherished playthings. I shouldn’t therefore, in good conscience, be all high and mighty-like when it comes to the changing landscape of children’s play. But because of repeated failures throughout my 38-plus years, I have ideas on exactly how … [Read more...]