Growing Up Well

  • Reducing Anxiety

    Anxiety is a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome. Every human experiences anxiety. It is 100% normal, natural, and essential to life. Anxiety is a natural force that protects human life. We are hard-wired to sense threats to our wellbeing and to protect ourselves when threatened. Anxiety rises highest…

  • Raising Countercultural Kids in the United States of Addiction (Part 1)

    In the late 1990s, author J.K. Rowling invented the term “muggle” as a derogative term for the normal people of modern Britain. Muggles are all the ordinary human beings in Rowling’s wildly popular Harry Potter book series. Muggles do not have any magical powers or awareness of anything magical. They live for comfort, they conform…

  • 3 Skills + 1 Passion

    For young people to achieve success in their career, it is no longer enough to have a college degree. New college graduates feel like a successful, satisfying, and sustainable career is out of their reach. But there is good news for them that is not dependent on the whims of the labor market or the…

  • Living on 1 Dollar Per Day

    Young people in America need to know more about real poverty, and this video is possibly the best I have ever seen at getting kids to relate to abject poverty. It’s entertaining and educational. They pack a lot of information and experiences into just 28 minutes. Plus, it’s appropriate for kids age 11 and up,…

  • Parenting is Regulating

    Every parent should regulate their children’s behavior until they are ready to regulate their own. It will likely be a 20-year process, which starts with full regulatory control of the infant and ends with total release of all control at adulthood. What does it mean “to regulate?” In grammatical terms, it is a transitive verb,…

  • The Power of Kindness

    Josh was a normal teenager whose father died. His mother moved them from their home in the country to the city, with the hope that a fresh start would improve their lives. But Josh was ridiculed in his new school for no good reason. In fact, he was ridiculed for a horrible reason. Instead of…

  • Teach Your Kids Sportsmanship

    If more parents focused on character over performance, then we would not need signs like this.

  • The Distance Run

    I coach middle school cross country, which is not a glamorous job, but it is uniquely rewarding. For young distance runners, the hardest part is embracing the pain that creates stronger legs and faster times. I try to make practices and meets fun, but there is no way of getting around the fact that running…

  • Why Young Kids Should Learn to Use Dangerous Things

    A friend recently posted on Facebook a picture of her three young children helping their dad build a deck. The seven year-old boy was using a power drill to sink a deck screw. Another woman posts a picture of her two kids 6 feet high up in the branches of an old oak tree. One…

  • Raising Resilient Children

    Resilience is the capacity to recover from adversity and return to well-being. Paul Tough, in his book How Children Succeed, explains that even kids who grow up in the most difficult situations of poverty, abuse, neglect, and stress can rise up from the ashes. It may not be the norm for kids of adversity, but…

  • Families Should Be Tough

    My wife is kind and compassionate, but she is one of the toughest people I have ever known. She does not have a mean bone in her body, but she is strong. She will tell you like it is and somehow make you feel like she is on your side. And when it comes to…

  • Fear Less, Parents

    With the tragic news of the abduction and murder of ten-year-old Hailey Owens this week, many parents are afraid that the same thing may happen to their children. And many are wondering if they should be doing more to protect their children. Those are legitimate concerns and questions, and there is not a simple sound-bite…

  • Connect With Your Young Teen

    First Connect, Then Guide The best parents are the ones who are deeply connected with their children and offer support and guidance all along the path of life. They’re the ones who care enough to say, “No, you can’t do that, because I love you too much to let you settle for that.” And their…

  • Helping Your Teen Deal with a Sports Injury

    So, your teenager is injured and is out for the rest of the season. Of course, his or her initial reaction will be anger, sadness, self-pity, confusion. That is normal, since this is a form of grief – the loss of something beloved. But after a few days of sulking and trying to come to…

  • Living in Crisis

      Our family is in crisis. It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last. Three weeks ago, our severely disabled 13-year-old daughter, Kathryn, had a full spinal fusion surgery. According to the “pain team” of anesthesiologists and neurologists, it is the second most painful surgery to recover from. (It’s second only to…

  • Ten Ways to Help Someone in Personal Crisis

    Our family has been going through rough waters related to some serious medical issues, and we have only been making it with the help from family and friends. People keep asking what they can do to help us. They want to help, but they don’t know exactly how. We have been very specific with them,…

  • Storm Preparation

    A Creeping Crisis Some crises develop gradually. Some are excruciatingly slow. Perhaps it is the approaching death of a parent with terminal cancer. Or it is the military dad/son/husband who will be deployed to an overseas conflict. Or it may be a huge financial crisis, which will likely take away the family’s savings and home.…

  • Preparing for the Storm

    If you have ever sat with a weather radio in a dark basement or closet during a tornado warning, or if you have ever hastily prepared for an oncoming hurricane, you know the anxiety that an approaching storm can bring. As a native Midwesterner with friends and relatives scattered about “tornado alley” and with a…

  • A Tribute to Fathers

    Made by Family Share.

  • The Nature Deficit

    “I go into nature to be soothed and healed and to have my senses put in tune once more.”   –    John Burroughs I’m on vacation in Destin, Florida, and my extended family – all 14 of us – are spending each day building sandcastles, playing in the waves, cooking seafood, and sharing life’s problems. And…

  • What Does it Mean to Grow Up?

    This is the time of year when I start to see some signs of maturity in my 7th grade students. Many of them are growing up, and I’m actually starting to see it, much like the first shoots of daffodils this time of year. In my English class we read a few coming-of-age novels. Recently,…

  • You win some; you lose some

    Life is unfair – extraordinarily unfair. Sometimes the good guys lose, while the bad guys revel in their victory.  Sometimes, evil dictators prevail for decades, while innocent children starve and suffering saints are martyred.  Is this too much for kids to handle?  Dare we tell them the truth? I think the truth sets kids free. …

  • Loving Grandpa

    One of my favorite 7th grade essays ever is this memoir about a grandfather. Ashley Aucker, is now a 25 year old, wife, mother, singer, and songwriter. She was a sweet, quiet little 12 year old in my 7th grade English class many years ago when she wrote this essay. It blew me away then,…

  • Raising Boys to be Real Men

    Boys are misunderstood.  Too often, they are disciplined and shamed by their teachers, parents, or grandparents because it is falsely assumed that good boys should act just like good girls. Raising boys is a topic of numerous books, but one that stands out is Raising Cain, by Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson.  I had the…

  • Hard Times

    Life has a way of kicking you down, then kicking you when you are down.  It’s happened to me more than a few times, and I’ve learned that if I can just keep my faith in a loving God who has reasons for the madness in my life, then I can get through to the…

  • Same Lake, Different Boat

    When you are a parent of a child with severe disabilities, you have to accept the fact that your life journey is going to be much different than most people’s and that you are not in control of circumstances.  Those two truths are much easier said than lived-out, but they are crucial to living well.…

  • Growing Up Too Fast

    Our culture tends to throw kids in the deep-end of the pool without teaching them how to swim. Kids are given adult freedoms and privileges, without the responsibilities and training to help them handle it.  Now more than ever, it’s essential to give kids age-appropriate responsibilities, privileges, and freedoms. Knowing exactly what is and is…

  • Parenting With and Without Fear

    Fear is universal.  Columnist Dave Barry writes, “All of us are born with a set of instinctive fears — of falling, of the dark, of lobsters, of falling on lobsters in the dark, or speaking before a Rotary Club, and of the words “Some Assembly Required.” We are all deeply motivated by our fears, and…

  • I Wish You Failure

    Once again, I offer an article from NPR’s This I Believe.  Jon Carroll started at the San Francisco Chronicle editing the crossword puzzle and writing TV listings. He has been a columnist for the paper since 1982. Last week, my granddaughter started kindergarten, and, as is conventional, I wished her success. I was lying. What…

  • The Blessing

    Most parents deeply love their children but do not express their love in the most effective ways.  For many children, they feel that their parents love them when… or if… or as long as… It’s a shame that the love that lays in the hearts of moms and dads so seldom is expressed freely, clearly,…

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