Go to any drugstore or card shop to grab a Father’s Day card, and you’ll get a taste for how our culture views fathers. Evidently, all dads are supposed to like fishing, golfing, and ships. They want to kick back in their recliners with a favorite brew and enjoy a day off from lawn-mowing. Also, the gift every dad wants most, of course, is a new tie. Then there’s the plethora of Christian living books for men, exhorting them to be strong yet tender, protective yet supportive, and suggesting they take up skeet shooting or weightlifting to further develop their masculine Continue Reading

Once upon a time, the happy mother of three active, young boys planned out her personal dream. I’ll send them off to school and write best-selling books while they're out of my hair, she thought.  Then when they come home, I’ll serve them milk and cookies and ask how their day went.  I’ll be their hero, plus I’ll accomplish my goals! The young mom’s lovely notion turned out to be a fantasy. What really happened was fourteen years of home schooling. Fourteen years of studying curriculum instead of attending writers’ conferences. Fourteen years of teaching and grading and Continue Reading

Grandma was on babysitting duty. She noticed that her grandson dawdled and played with the meal she'd fixed him, so she reached over and began to spoon-feed him. That might have been okay—except that he was five years old and perfectly capable of feeding himself. When our kids grow to adulthood, it can be hard for us to let them make their own decisions. After all, we’ve spent a couple of decades training them. We have more life experience. We would love for them to learn from our mistakes. As a result, we can be tempted to spoon-feed our adult children—not with veggies, but Continue Reading