Your preteen is embarking on the era of adolescence, when many of life’s choices will be made, and they need you now more than ever. Preteens are unique because, unlike most teenagers, they still invite participation and close friendships with parents—an attitude that...
Our mobile society has made gathering as a family even more important than in the past. It used to be that families lived and died in the same town and saw each other often. But now, with the increase in distance, the prevalence of stepfamilies, and other medical or...
“Oh, who are the people in your neighborhood . . . the people that you meet each day.” Those familiar lyrics from the song by Sesame Street’s Ernie played along in my head every morning as my son and I took our thirty-minute walk up and down the streets of our...
When my sister-in-law Jerra was a young mother, she wanted to teach her daughter, Natalie, to say, “yes, Ma’am” and “no Ma’am” when speaking to adults. But for some reason Jerra couldn’t get her to stop saying “yep” and “nope.” When it came down to disciplinary...
I remember being in my last months of that first pregnancy, watching the weeks tick by. Sometimes those last few weeks appeared to be long and burdensome like walking in deep mud; other times they seemed blurry, like objects you see while rolling down a hill. It...
