Lessons I Learn From My Granddaughter

She’s three years old. I’m over fifty. The gaps in our knowledge and understanding are enormous. She is insatiably curious, like the elephant’s child. I love to teach. We are a great pair.

And so naturally, I learn something from her every day.

1. Slow down: Three-year-olds can move like lightning when they want to…but usually they’d prefer to take their time.  I match my steps to hers, so that she can keep up. I stop whatever I’m doing to see what she’s made. I put my agenda aside when she is hurt. It is an exercise in condescension…I stoop to her level, to meet her needs. And I think about God stooping to earth, meeting us where we are, taking time to listen and to care.

Washington DC’s “Food Police”: an unappetizing stew of Ego and Power

As tempted as I am to believe that our elected leaders and media elite are intentionally and overtly evil…I don’t. Rather, I hold that tremendous power coupled with outsized ego has infused them with the belief that “they know better” how we should live our own lives, and that’s that. 

They’ve no humility and even less doubt. Considering they could be wrong, or that their ideals ought not be made compulsory, simply never enters into the equation.

And for the most recent evidence of that theory, we can look no further than the White House’s ill-conceived Public School Lunch program, also known as Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA) of 2010.

For a glimpse of what I mean, check out this video from ABC News from back in 2012:

#Parenting Tips: If your 2-year-old dials 911 FIFTEEN TIMES, …you’re doing it wrong.

Call me judgmental, but I think there’s a larger problem here:

(via Yahoo! News) – “…Authorities have charged a northern New York woman and her boyfriend because the woman’s 2-year-old daughter used their cellphones to dial 911 a total of 15 times last month.

Village of Lowville Police Officer Matthew Martin says the 23-year-old mother and her 33-year-old boyfriend told him they tried to keep their phones away from the persistent toddler, but the girl kept getting them and dialing 911.

(Officer Martin) charged the couple the next day with obstructing governmental administration…”

As the father of two (now teenage) boys, I gotta ask: fifteen times? Fifteen? Am I the only one who’s trying to figure out how this is even possible??

If you’re a #parent, then you’ll understand: The “Parent Rap” (VIDEO)

My beautiful wife was homeschooling our two sons when I left for work this morning and she was doing a wonderful job, as always. For whatever reason, this video then jumped into my mind, …and made me chuckle.

Our boys are older than the ones in the clip, but I can still relate to every word. We posted this a couple years back and, after watching it again, it seems to hold up nicely.

I’ll reiterate here what I said back then: “…if ALL hip-hop was this entertaining, I’d listen to it waaaay more often…”

Are we Protecting our kids, …or Failing to Prepare them?

If today’s children truly are the leaders of tomorrow, we are going to have the most passive, ossified leaders in the history of the planet.

It’s no secret that the tree-climbing, BB-gun-shooting, rub-some-dirt-on-it ways of past generations bear no resemblance to today’s bubble-wrapped youth. Trying to eliminate pain of every kind, both physical and psychological, has resulted in a society where no one is supposed to keep score (even though kids still do), and games like Dodge Ball are widely banned.

But is this really healthy? Didn’t we all learn how to get back up after we fell? Didn’t we learn how to take a punch, or play through pain? Didn’t we figure out that scraped-up knees and elbows were a reasonable trade-off for seeing how fast you can run, or how high you can jump?

Not according to the risk averse, anti-fun squad otherwise known as today’s parents and educators: 

Ragamuffins!

QUOTE from the article: “…children are not a disease, and poverty isn’t a symptom…”

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A short-but-powerful post in defense of having/raising children, which ends up as a tribute to marriage itself.  ¡Bravo!

Teaching our kids the value of Good Character

I’ve been telling my two sons the same message for their entire lives: my goal for them is that they grow up to be strong, kind, solid men of good character. And anything I do or don’t do is in furtherance of that goal.

As a result, both of them (ages 12 & 13) are presently strong, kind, good boys… so far. I’m hardly naïve, and well aware that with the gift of free will, they could one day make destructive decisions which upend all my and my wife’s hard work.

But I wouldn’t bet on that happening.

Virtue or Vice: Setting an Example for our Children to follow….

What is wrong with our culture?

From the Associated Press, via WEAU.com:

RACINE, Wis. (AP) –Two employees of a Racine child care center are facing felony child abuse charges.

Police say a video surfaced on social media showing three young children restraining and beating a 2-year-old boy at the Bundle of Blessings Kid Kare center last month.

Sgt. Jessie Metoyer says one of the employees, a 22-year-old Caledonia woman, is the mother of two of the children who physically assaulted the toddler. Metoyer says the three children held down the 2-year-old and punched and kicked him. Police say the video was taken by one of the two women.

The Caledonia woman and a 23-year-old Racine woman are each charged with child abuse by failing to prevent bodily harm. Both women appeared in court Friday and remain in jail.

Metoyer says the 2-year-old is doing OK.

When I first heard this, I didn’t know what to think. Punching and kicking a 2-year-old? And the daycare worker films it, and then posts it to Facebook??

Sadly, yes…