Category: Parenting
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Do Fathers with Daughters Live Longer?
Recently, a surprising study from a Polish university revealed that fathers with daughters live longer. Even more interesting is that the extended lifespan is also impacted by the number of daughters a father has. What about sons? Nope, sons have little effect on a father’s life span. Having raised two sons, I doubt that conclusion. …
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The Theme Park of Misery — The Teenage Years
Any parent who survives the teenage years of their offspring has an abundance of stories to tell. I am no exception. However, to avoid being disowned by my five adult children, I will refrain from sharing my encyclopedia of memories I possess of their embarrassing, crazy, scary, hilarious teen years. I’ll save those stories for…
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Badges of Honor
Men, listen up. Marriage and fatherhood are life-changing experiences — for yourself, but more importantly, for your wife and children. I’ve written before about the qualities, virtues, and attributes of a REAL man: responsibility, sacrificial love, respectfulness, kindness, self-control, humility, and tenderness, to name a few. Authentic manhood, in other words, is defined by one’s…
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Ground Rules for Dating My Daughter
My grandchildren are still a few years away from “dating.” And my two granddaughters are spitfires; neither I nor their parents will have any reason to doubt their ability to handle themselves in the future. Nevertheless, when I came across this decades-old list of “Ground Rules for Dating My Daughter” I thought it a good…
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Bless Me Mommy One More Time
When my children were young, my wife and I started a tradition of blessing them each night when they went to bed. After prayers, we would make the sign of the cross on their foreheads, praying all the while that the Holy Spirit would protect them and that the seeds of God’s love and truth…
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Finding Dad
To My Blog Post Readers, Seven years ago on this day — December 5th — my wife, Patrice, lost her father. But the real story is how she found him just a year before. She has given me permission to share that story. Finding Dad Some stories warm the soul. This is one of them.…
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What Every Son Longs to Hear
Watching 7-year-old boys play soccer is like watching a herd of cats chasing a ball of yarn. They are but a crowd of mini-humanity moving randomly across a grass field. It’s funny and frustrating all at the same time. Then around ten years of age, these young athletes-in-the-making begin to understand the game. They learn to…
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I Love Pink Balls and I Cannot Lie
Allow me to be more specific. I love pink GOLF balls. Especially the pink florescent golf balls given to me by my granddaughter. For you non-golfers out there, golf balls come in a variety of colors with white being the dominant color by far. Unless you are playing in the snow, then you have bigger…
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Raising Parents
Recently, a colleague sought prayer for discerning the role he and his wife should play regarding their aging parents. The request sparked a number of memories and suggestions as to what they could be doing now. Though my parents have been gone for over a decade, the memories of their last years still linger. Fond…
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Conversations With A Four-Year-Old
Life is full of tears, fears, and cheers. Hopefully, it is also punctuated with moments of sheer laughter. This post has but one purpose — to put a smile on your face and inspire you to take notes when in conversation with any four-year-olds who inhabit your universe. One of life’s fundamental realities is that…
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