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How to Unplug Your Kids And Encourage Family Communication

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Want to have a better relationship with your kids and teens? Do you find it hard to get their attention when they are staring at a screen? Here are some tips for parents who want to unplug their kids and encourage communication. Limit Screen Time The goal is to place limits on when and where your child or teen can use their computer, tablet, or smartphone. The goal is not to remove those devices from your kids forever. A reasonable amount of screen time can be stimulating and sometimes even educational. Parents need to pick their battles with this one. … Continue reading →

Connecting to Your Preteen

The preteen years can be filled with surprises…some good and some not so good. The way a parent chooses to navigate these years could significantly impact the next stage, as they move into the teen years. One of the most important things you can do during this stage is stay connected with your preteen. This won’t always be easy; depending on how much havoc hormones is having on him or her. And your preteen’s personality will also play a role. All I can tell you is that the struggle with be worth it if you can still maintain a connection. … Continue reading →

Will Your Marriage Be Stronger or Broken Apart?

Will this make my marriage stronger or will it break us apart? Have you ever asked yourself this, when faced with a life-altering event? Maybe you have never been in this place where it’s a consideration. But it was definitely something my marriage recently faced. The situation involved one of our teenaged children and it threatened from the very beginning to crumble things. We were both reeling from the circumstances and almost immediately, finger pointing was ready to begin. Who was at fault for this catastrophe, we seemed to be asking. I guess it’s natural to look for someone to … Continue reading →

Pick Your Battles

I’m a firm believer and I have blogged about picking your battles when it comes to raising teenagers. But I think the same can be said about a marriage. In fact, it seems that we tend to be a bit more nit-picky in our marriages than in any other relationship. Slight irritations can be made into huge deals. Those things we knew about our spouse when we married them suddenly becomes impossible to live with another day. But many of those irritations and frustrations we may experience in a marriage are just not worth the battle. You know the old … Continue reading →

10 Ways to Push Your Teen Away: Criticize Their Style (Part 7)

Today in part 7 of my series, “How to Push Your Teen Away,” we are going to be talking about criticizing their style. This can be a huge problem. It is not enough that society sometimes judges teens by how they look but they don’t need their parents adding to it. I remember the day my daughter was first allowed to wear eyeliner. She started off with applying just a bit. Then as time progressed, she began to look more and more like a raccoon. It drove me nuts. I was constantly telling her to take some off. Then one … Continue reading →

Help For Picky Eaters

One thing I have strived to do as a Mom is instill good eating habits in Hailey. When I was married, this was difficult, my ex husband was a picky eater and Hailey picked up his habits, to this day she will not eat marinara sauce! Being single has given me the opportunity, and many times the need, to figure out how to serve healthy foods that my daughter will eat without having to worry about someone else’s influence on her choices. Like most children Hailey will choose what’s fast food or junk food over what I wish she would … Continue reading →

Your Kids: Your Best Pieces of Evidence

We’ve all been there—someone finds out you homeschool, and they question your decision. Sometimes they are genuinely curious, sometimes they are looking for reasons to debate. Regardless of their intent, we know we need to answer them calmly and reasonably—no reason to add fuel to a fire they may have because of past negative interactions with another homeschooler. We’ve memorized some statistics and we feel ready to answer any questions that might come our way. We’ve prepared answers from an educational standpoint, from a spiritual standpoint, and we might even have scribbled key words on the cuffs of our sleeves … Continue reading →

My Best Advice: Choose Your Battles

If I were allowed to give one only bit of advice to parents who have young children or children on the verge of becoming teenagers, I would tell them this…choose your battles. There is honestly no better advice than this. When our children are younger, we tend to have two schools of thought when it comes to how the teen years will play out. Either we dread it and assume it will be nothing but trouble or we believe that we will never have trouble because we are going to be the kind of parents who lay down the law. … Continue reading →

Grandma Dorothy’s Top Doctors Foster and Smith Cat Catalog Picks

When I recruited Murphy, Tabby, and Mr. Meow to help in the personal pet therapy project, they had no idea their Grandma Dorothy might want to show her appreciation for their help by shopping for them. But that’s what she’s been dong the past few days –via one of the Doctors Foster and Smith catalogs. Specifically the one just for cats. The Doctors Foster and Smith catalogs are among my favorite pet catalogs to browse through. (And, yes, even buy from. The Drinkwell Pet Fountain and the infamous cat cottage are two prime examples.) But I have to admit I … Continue reading →

Do Peers Pick on Kids with Single Parents?

One of the arguments I have heard over the years for why two-parent “traditional” families with one mom and one dad are so important and “optimal” is because children will be cruel and pick on children who do not have two opposite-gender parents living in the home. I have to say that while this may have been the case forty years ago—maybe—my own children have NEVER had anyone give them grief for being from a divorced family. In fact, they have more friends who are in similar situations that those that live in the “optimal” situation. As you may guess, … Continue reading →