I can still remember where I was standing and the way my daughter Aubri looked at me that fateful December day.  She came to me and said, “Dad, Dan really wants to talk to you to ask if he can be allowed to date me.”  I knew this day would come. I answered honestly, “Do you know how difficult this is for your father?” To which Aubri...

New life is always a celebration! When a new baby arrives in your circle of influence welcome that little one with open arms. Don’t respond with disapproval if the circumstances around the birth have not been what you consider ideal. You have an opportunity to begin speaking into the heritage that little child will have. Your influence now can...

I have my meals planned this week. But rather than posting my plan (it's just pasta Monday, fish Tuesday, meatless on Wednesday, frozen leftovers on Thursday), I thought I'd post my rationale for eating together.  When I was out walking recently, my daughter Katie said to me, "You know what I like about our family, Mommy? We eat together. It's...

One of the most difficult parts of marriage is agreeing how to discipline. When one parent is more lenient, and one is more harsh, often parents fail to back each other up, and instead form emotional bonds with the kids. Here's a situation that happened in our family recently: One of our daughters, who had been very compliant, hit puberty, and...

Every now and then, an idea explodes through our collective consciences, challenging our notions about how life works. It happened in the fifteenth century when Galileo argued that the earth was round. It happened in the eighteenth century when upstarts in North America decided they wanted to govern themselves. And I hope, for some of you parents,...

There was a video on CNN yesterday that stopped me in my tracks. It wasn’t footage from Thailand, or election coverage.  It is a video of a little 5 year old girl  sitting in front of an image of 5 cartoon children. The children are all wearing the same dress and the same expression, only the color of their skin is different.  An interviewer...

My daughter cut herself for the first time when she was 12 years old. Today, 11 years later, she is still struggling to overcome this problem. At the time I knew absolutely nothing about "self-harm" and it scared me to death. I was shocked and bewildered that she would do such a thing. It’s important to understand cutting - what it is, who does...