Thoughts on Parenting

Protect Your Kids -- Part III

So, how do you work toward the things we've talked about previously?

The most important step is to get a “coach.”  All of the other stuff we've talked about is just a head start on the real planning.  You need to use an attorney who will work with you to create a plan that fits your family, not someone who just fills in the blanks on a glorified form. 

Ask questions and find an attorney who:

1. charges flat fees (not by the hour).
2. will help you coordinate what will happen to your money and who will have access to it.
3. will help you document emergency procedures to provide for your kids in the hours and days following an accident.
4. offers an ongoing membership program to keep your plan up to date.

Estate planning is important for anyone who has children and is a lifetime endeavor. It is never done until you’re gone or disabled.  It’s not a one-time event. There’s no partial credit. If your plan is out of date when you die, it will fail. And you will fail your family. Failure should not be an option.

For more information about family estate planning, visit David Edwards' site or check out Alexis Martin Neely's book, Wear Clean Underwear: A Fast, Fun, Friendly - and essential - Guide to Legal Planning for Busy Parents.

Best Restaurants for Kids

Eating Out. In this day and age it is a necessary evil and inevitable convenience. Despite how healthy we try to be at home, sometimes I feel like we completely undo a week's worth of good choices in just one trip to a restaurant. In an article recently featured on Yahoo!, I found this link to Men's Health and looked up a few of our favorites to see what grades they made:

• Chik-fil-A earned an A+
• McDonald's earned a B
• Outback Steakhouse earned an F
• Pizza Hut earned a D
• Wendy's earned an A-

Check here to see how your favorite restaurant fared. Or check out the more comprehensive book, Eat This Not That! for Kids!: Be the Leanest, Fittest Family on the Block!

Best Book for Expecting Parents

It seems that everyone is having a baby these days, and I'm not just referring to the latest rash of Hollywood arrivals. With so many of our friends embarking on the journey of parenthood, it seemed to me that is was a good time to dispense with some very, very valuable advice for first time parents.

What is the most important book you need to own as a first time parent?

Some would surely say What to Expect When You're Expecting (dubbed by Duane as What to Freak Out About When You're Expecting). Others would say you can't live without Dr. Spock, Dr. Brazelton or Dr. Sears. The list could go on.

With a few years of perspective now behind us, Duane and I have come to agree that Baby Bargains by Denise and Alan Fields was the best book we bought for our expensive entry into the parenting world! With the billion dollar parental industrial complex getting more and more ridiculous by the day, this book is so helpful in knowing what you need and what you don't need as a first time parent. For the things you actually do need, this book has great advice on getting these things for the best price. It not only saved us tons of money, it saved our sanity by outlining simple things like how many onesies one child can actually wear and how many crib sheets you'll really use.

So if you're expecting (or even if you have one already), our best advice is that you shouldn't set one foot inside your local baby superstore without a copy of this book in your hands!

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An interesting side note: Baby products change quickly as new technologies are developed and safer and better products are introduced. Denise and Alan Fields offer downloads of the most current reviews for items such as car seats, strollers, high chairs, etc. You can find them here.

"After that, boys and girls, God drowned all the people."

I always wondered why the most difficult and disturbing Bible stories are the ones we tell our children first:

In the story of Noah, God wiped out the population of the planet because they were so wicked. Jonah refused to obey God, so he was thrown overboard and swallowed by a fish. Daniel was thrown to the lions because he obeyed God. Adam and Eve disobeyed God and were expelled from paradise on Earth and we're still feeling the effects.

Then I figured out why -- it must be the ANIMALS! Kids love animals!

Noah's ark...every animal in the world -- TWICE! Jonah...there's a great big awesome whale (actually, it's a fish, but don't tell the kids)! Daniel...LIONS! Adam & Eve...Eek! Snakes are scary!

Seriously, though, this is a concern for parents who are earnestly trying to help their children develop spiritually. The Bible is a complex and difficult narrative that is not easily explained by a "moral at the end of the story." As a friend of ours put it recently, the Bible is not a children's book!

When it came time for Elisa and I to choose a Bible for our children, we looked at a lot of different ones. I compared version after version of Bibles intended for children and ultimately settled on the Usborne Children's Bible. We didn't want the Bible to be scary for our kids, but we didn't want to sugar-coat the stories, either. The Usborne Children's Bible finds a balance between those two. Here's how the story of Noah starts...

"After many years, God looked at the world he had made and was sad. The people were bad, they hurt each other and did not listen to him anymore. God decided to flood the whole world so that everybody in it would drown."

We've found through reading this Bible with our kids that the stories make sense, and the difficulties are not left out, which makes for great discussions. It's rare to find a children's Bible that tells the whole story of Jonah, including how it ends:

"Jonah sat outside the city and waited for it to be destroyed. He was very hot and very cross. He wanted God to destroy Ninevah, but God saw that the people had turned to him and he saved the city. 'Jonah, I love all the people in Ninevah,' said God, 'and I am everywhere. You can't run away from me.' And Jonah knew that this was true."

Technically, this isn't really a Bible but rather a Bible storybook. It contains 44 stories from the Old and New Testaments (no Psalms or Proverbs, though). It is not a recognized Bible translation like NIV or NRSV, but it is a reasonable paraphrase in the language of young children. It keeps them interested and explains things in ways they can understand, but without glossing over the messy parts.

For those of you interested in helping your kids get a theological head start, the Usborne Children's Bible is a really good way to do it.

Unconditional Parenting

I stood up and cheered when President Reagan was shot.

I was seven years old and one of my friends had just told me that Reagan wanted to eliminate Gifted and Talented programs (we LOVED getting out of class to do logic puzzles). Talk about bad timing...within hours of hearing this silly rumor, Ms. Slaton burst in the room to announce the President had been shot. We jumped out of our seats and shouted “YAY!” A gasp. Silence. Then we were yanked into the hall with no chance to explain. I remember a verbal tongue-lashing that included phrases like "shocked," "appalled," and "never in all my life."

The thing is, I knew it was horrible as soon as I did it. And what I remember most vividly about the whole situation was the humiliation of being misunderstood. My teacher never asked me to explain, nor did she talk to my parents in the hope that they could probe a bit deeper. I was verbally scolded and it was dropped.

Elisa and I have always tried to follow the principle that all children—no matter what age—have thoughts and opinions that matter; every action of a child is rooted in genuine emotion that must be validated. This can be a monumental task, especially as parents in the midst of a 24/7 onslaught of “I-want-the-small-spoon-not-the-green-one!”

A few years back, we discovered a book called Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn, which seemed to tap into our underlying respect for children and translate it into parenting theory, which we sometimes found difficult to do on our own. Not only did it resonate with us, it also shook the foundations of our parenting philosophy and led to many nights of tear-filled wrestling with our own parenting methods. Here are a few of the ideas that hit home with us:

• Is the primary goal of our parenting well-behaved children, or is it confident, capable, and well-adjusted adults?

• A punitive approach to parenting (rewards & punishments) is not usually effective in nurturing the kind of human beings we deeply desire to help our children become.

• Punitive parenting often makes a parent’s love appear conditional in the eyes of a child.

• "Working with" is always better than "doing to."

• A healthy parenting style should build within the child the capacity to choose right behaviors based on an intrinsic impetus, not extrinsic motivation.

You may agree with 80% of what is in this book, or you may agree with 20%, but the bottom line is that there are not many other parenting books out there that will elicit such a strong response in either direction. This book may simply galvanize the approach you already take in parenting, or it may challenge you to abandon some of your current ideas and try out some new ones. In any case, I believe you will become a more thoughtful, intentional parent if you read this book, and that will always be a step in the right direction.

There is also a DVD by the same title which presents most of the essential contents of the book.

Cheap and Easy Preschool Bookshelves

Our previous post on this topic has been one of our most popular. I too, am still quite impressed with my wife's moment of brilliant inspiration. These inexpensive bookshelves are perfect for toddlers and preschoolers who can't quite handle the dexterity it takes to use a traditional bookshelf. So many people have wanted to know exactly how to do this project, I thought I would explain just how easy it is.

Your local hardware superstore sells PVC rain gutters, probably in 10' sections. We bought one 10' section, six end-caps, and six mounting brackets.

We used a simple hacksaw to cut the gutter into three 3' sections. We then attached the mounting brackets and the end caps (you could secure the end caps with glue if you wanted to), and then mounted the gutters to the wall with wall anchors.

It's really that simple. And it only cost about $30.