This morning I will be taking my oldest son to the doctor.  Some of you know that he has struggled with allergies and we?re still trying to narrow down one of his symptoms.  Today?s test will be three hours of ?drink this and wait.?

Parents today can look at their children as a burden?just one more person that they?re responsible for.  Parents are trained to look to others to raise their children?be they grandparents, day care or school.  The thing is, you, as their parent, have the best ability to influence them for good or ill.

If you spend the time that you have together under the same roof apart from each other, getting what you think is important, you may find that you miss the opportunity to connect with your children, to pass on what truly matters and to be a good example to them.

So my encouragement to you, parent, is to be there.  Don?t just live there, don?t let your body occupy space there, but mentally and physically be there.  Plan time with your kids, and plan time to just be there with them.  Open up to them more than take them out to do things.  Grow your bond with them.

Talking with them about who they are when they are small and helping them with trivial things will pay off dividends when they?re older.

Speaking of which, I have a couple of sons that want to learn how to make paper airplanes?so I must be off?

?From the bank.?

That was the answer that my oldest gave to the question in the title.  He knew that we drove up to the bank and that?s where I got the money to pay for things.

Kids notice things that are right in front of them.  They see that I go to work everyday?though they (obviously) have not made the connection that I do that so that we can have money to buy things that we need and want.

?God gives it to us,?  was the response of the second child

But Doesn?t Everything We Have Come From God?

What an interesting and insightful question.  God is the provider of all good things.  It is He that provides the job, that arranges the salary, and gave the gifts in the first place to be used for the provision.

He is before all things, and by Him all things consist.

So, yes.  When we thank the Lord for our food, for our house and for our groceries, we are thanking Him for something He did provide?regardless of whether the money came from savings, salary or blogging. :)

And this must be always first in our minds.  If we are to be a thankful person, if we are to look at others as people who we can reach, if we are to live lives that are self-less instead of selfish, and be more kind, we?re going to have to not look at ourselves as the reasons for the things we have.

That is part of the problem that happens when things get tight or do not go our way.  If it truly was the fact that we are in total control of our destiny and that we are the only ones for credit for our job, then we have much to fear when we blow it or the economy gets rough.  If, instead, it is a gift from God, then we can rest in Him knowing that He will provide our needs.

Does That Mean I Can Just Blow it On Wii Games?

?Don?t you have $50?? was the question my oldest asked when I told him the price of the game that he wanted in the Game Store.  Of course I have the money, but I turned around and asked him the same question?does he have the money?  Will he work and save for the game?

A lot of us want things handed to us.  The government is currently preying on this very thought, handing out other people?s money to just about everyone that sneezes?literally.  And yet one could say that since God is in charge of supplying my needs, when I get more than my needs met I can just blow it on anything I want, because God always will meet my needs, right?

Which is where Joseph comes into play.  Remember that God told Pharaoh that there would be seven good years and then seven bad years in the land.  Joseph?s plan?  Save during the seven good years and sell during the seven bad.

God may bless with abundance, but that doesn?t give us the right to go into heavy debt or blow all of our money on things we want.  We should be those that plan wisely to use what He has given in an efficient manner.

Again, remember the parables in the New Testament where the master gives to his servants 10, 5, and 1 talents.  When he returns, he asks what they?ve done with them, and the one that buried it because he thought that he would make sure to give the master the one back was chastised for not even making interest on it!

What?s The Lesson?

Let?s sum it up in a few bullet points:

• Be thankful and grateful: Maintain a correct perspective on the money you have and where it comes from.
• Be frugal:  It?s not wrong to get wants, but you must know what?s important and plan for the rough time.
• Invest:  Whether it?s money, time, or in people, our time is short here and it?s important to make an impact

Keep these in mind the next time you find yourself in a conversation about money!

Lenore Skenazy did the same in New York City.

In letting her son find his way home (a 45 minute adventure) with $20, a map, and the general direction, this author gave her son self confidence– the ability to feel grown-up.  She also gave herself (unknowingly, we’re lead to believe) a lot of press coverage.

Who would let their kid go on the subway alone?  Who would let the child out of their site?  Isn’t this neglect?

I’ve been thinking through this phenomenon a lot lately as I ponder my children growing up.  I sit down and talk with the older generation and I hear stories of people in my hometown  leaving their children in their baby carriages while going in to the supermarket to shop.

My dad would leave home in the morning, go off to find friends, and perhaps not return until the streetlights came on.  The baseball field was at the other end of town.  Even in my own childhood, my neighbor would leave home (perhaps telling his parents where he was going), but come over to my house to spend the day, and we’d be out bike riding until his father whistled him home at night.

Today, there’s not much time that my kids aren’t in my or my wife’s sight.

The upshot: Drive through most suburban streets and it’s as if the kids have been vacuumed up with the lawn trimmings. How did this happen? How did it become too scary to let kids be kids?

“TV,” says Trevor Butterworth, an editor at the media watchdog group stats.org. “Cable TV exists to scare the pants off you.” That’s how it gets you to stay tuned. And what is scarier than a kidnapped kid-no matter how far away?

Thanks to a steady stream of those stories, it starts to feel as if kidnappings are happening all the time, on a Schwinn near you. But they’re not, says David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. “Crimes against kids are down to levels we haven’t seen since the early ’70s.”

“‘Stranger danger’ cases are the ones that make the big headlines,” says Corwin Ritchie, executive director of the Iowa County Attorneys Association. “But that’s not the typical child-abuse case. The typical case involves an acquaintance of the child.”

The fact is, children are 40 times more likely to die in a car accident, and that doesn’t stop us from driving them to karate. Car accidents, after all, are still considered exactly that-accidents. But we blame parents, the way we used to blame rape victims, for “letting” anything happen to their children. If tragedy ever befell our child, we wouldn’t just be heartbroken. We all know we’d be there on CNN with a pseudo- sympathetic host asking, “Why? Why did you let her scooter to her piano lesson?” And then they’d cut to a commercial to build the tension.

The only flaw I can see in this reporting is causality.  Are crimes down to levels since the early ’70s because we’re keeping our kids closer?  And if so, doesn’t this make the opposite point of the article?

In any case, the problem is that though our children may be “40 times more likely to die in a car accident”, it’s hard to justify letting them be the one statistic– the one that’s kidnapped– when you have the ability to stop it.

Somewhere in there’s a healthy balance.  We just need to find it.

And I?m probably one of the worst culprits.

You see, I am one of those guys that likes to keep old school materials because I believe that someday my kids will get some use out of the math problems I did in school.

Stop that laughing?I?m serious! (or at least partly so.)

This generation of adults have more access to other people?s money than at any time in our nation?s history, and they believe that they need a house full of stuff just like their parent?s house, and they need it now.

They only find out how much stuff they have when they have to move.  Whether it?s moving out of a dorm room or moving out of a house, it?s those points in time that you really realize that you have too much stuff and something needs to go.

When it came time for our first move as a couple, my wife and I were blessed when two or three ladies from our church came over and helped us pack, and we had many Movers from the church come over to take our stuff from a truck into our house.  (The fun part was brining our couch in through the front window, but that?s another story.)

Some people I know have used one of the many Moving Companies that are available, and have done so with good success. 

We?ve actually hired a Moving Company to move our refinished piano into our house, and then move it back onto our recently refinished dining room floor.  You can?t beat the fact that they do it for a living and they have the right tools.

So, my advice for anyone considering a move?don?t wait until the last month to discard things that aren?t really valuable (sniff), and don?t frown on a moving company if you have large furniture.  It?s better that you spend some money and your stuff doesn?t get damaged than to try to go it alone and find you have to replace it.

Hopefully it wasn?t last father?s day.  And yet telling your dad that you love him, for a son, is one of the most awkward things you can do if the father didn?t set out building that degree of transparency all the way up.

I can?t remember the first time I ever told my grandfather I loved him?but it was later on in life.  As his life started nearing its end, I made sure that a conversation did not go by where I let him know that I loved him.

But why does it have to be like that?  Part of it?s culture?people of that generation didn?t express emotion like that.  But that is only an excuse.

So, this father?s day, don?t just give him a card or make sure he knows today?make sure that you begin to make it a habit to tell him how you feel.  It may be a little awkward at first, but it will be more precious than any tie or other thing that money could buy.

My wife really likes hard wood.  I believe I prefer carpet, especially when children are learning to walk.  However, hard wood is easier to clean, and it does have a bright appeal.  When we re-carpeted one of the rooms we noticed that there was hard wood underneath, and for some time we wondered if the same was true throughout the house.  So, Saturday, we decided to find out.

Sure enough, we tore up a corner and there was beautiful hard wood.  Tearing up more revealed not as good of a condition and a weird wooden grate that must have been part of the original heating system of the house– at least, that’s the only sense we can make out of it.  We got the carpet and pad out, cut it (since it goes into the living room and we weren’t ready to take it all out yet), and put it outside.

The the kids woke up.

Now, we’ve worked hard to get them ready for the idea of a new house, and they started to really like the idea of a new floor– until Sunday night when my oldest told me that he didn’t want me to take up the Living Room floor because he liked the carpet and it would make him cry.  Tonight, he started balling when I told him I was going to take the trash out because he didn’t want the old carpet to go.  He said he would miss it.

This is totally foreign to my wife, who embraces and desires change.  I can sympathize because I’m at best ambivalent, and I need to think of how it will be better because I also trend toward memories and nostalgia.

But as I got to thinking, it’s really a reflection of how people are.  People generally don’t react well to change.  They like to know where things are, what things are, and what they can count on.  Whether it’s computer programs or coworkers, there are times when things change and we can have a hard time adapting, a hard time knowing what is going on, and we can begin to doubt what’s going on around us.

It’s at this time that we need to rely on God, we need to look to His immutability (that He doesn’t change) and rest in His love and care.

So, two things to take away from this:

1. Don’t make drastic changes to the house without letting the kids know what you’re doing.
2. To stop them from crying and “missing” the carpet, offer to let them help pick out the new throw rug.

Just don’t tell my wife that he’s hoping for a red rug with Spiderman on it.

And all these things can be a part of the person that they become.

Especially when it comes to dads and daughters.  I’m learning through Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters and through experience with my own daughter that I’m a special person in her life.  And I see how she, even at this age, reacts to other men.

This brings home what D is for Dad states clearly:

How you treat the women in your life will have a huge influence on how your little girl will expect to be treated by the men in her life.

How do we treat one another?  Husbands?  Wives?  The Bible says that were to love one another– in honor preferring one another.  Is that what they see?

That doesn’t just mean at church and on each other’s birthdays.  That means everyday, day in and day out.  How are you modeling what you want your children to become?

One of the most difficult things, I think, to remember to do is to always remember why you are disciplining your child– the end goal– and try your hardest not to get caught up “in the moment.” 

To that end, I suggested that you plan what the punishment for a particular “crime” will be before you get in the situation, and that you also enforce your requests.  The last thing that a child needs it to wonder if mom or dad “really mean it this time…”

As I was reading around the net, I found The Queen posted how I felt with Biblical responses.  Especially the first couple:

I say: “Lord, all they do is fight and grumble.”
He says: “A hot-tempered man stirs up dissension, but a patient man calms a quarrel.” Prov 15:18

I say “But Lord, there are SO many quarrels.”
He says “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” Prov 15:1

I say: “Okay Lord but I get so angry and I lose it and I can’t help it…”
He says: “The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down.” Prov 14:1

So take heart, mom and dad.  God never asks us to do something that He will not also provide the strength with which to do it.  Rest in Him.  Pray to Him.  Rely on Him.

In the case of torraanne, she had an accident with a clothes driver, but you shouldn’t go read it unless you promise not to tell her daughter!

Seriously, we all make mistakes, the question is how do we handle them when we do?  Are we parents that can admit that we have faults and make sure that we apologize and seek forgiveness when it happens, or are we parents that always have to be right?

Being able to be human with your kids will go a long way to helping them to know how they should behave now and as adults, and will make the Christian life a whole lot more real to them.

Almost every parent celebrates these milestones, and they earn their marks in baby books and in family Christmas cards as we relate the significant events of the year. We celebrate because our baby is growing, showing more of a personality each day. She is more of an individual and her desire for our mere presence and approval are still noticeable. We look at these milestones and know they are growing faster than we really want, but we are not really confronted by just how fast. Maybe that is why we focus so much on these milestones.

Recently, my oldest daughter was allowed to stay home alone for the first time. She had wanted to for some time, but I had never felt comfortable. When we go into town, we are typically gone for hours and town is just too far to rush back in the event of an emergency. When my husband and I had to pick up the car from the shop, however, we realized that we had an opportunity. We would only be gone for 45 minutes. It wasn’t that far. And our neighbors were home if anything should happen.

My daughter was ecstatic. My husband and I were nervous. We piled rules on her and started going through scenarios to let her know what to do in every possible one. We were anxious parents leaving their baby alone. She was excited to finally gain a privilege unique to her because of her age and level of maturity. We left and tried not to call home too many times.

When we got home, we discovered she had done her chores and spent some time coloring while listening to Swiss Family Robinson. My little girl had taken the responsibility that had been given her and lived up to the expectations placed upon her. It didn’t really surprise me, but this milestone was met with more sadness than I would have guessed.

After all, it wasn’t all that long ago that she smiled for the first time. And now already she is showing evidence of the young woman she is becoming. The one that is going to one day move out of the house to begin her own family.