You may not always know how to help your child with anxiety. I sure didn't, especially when my 15-year-old daughter had her first panic attacks during the chaos of 2020. I attempted to talk her panic and anxiety away using my go-to: logic. You may...
We are encouraged to explore wounds from Dad, but what about lessons from Dad? We all want our kids to remember what we did right. So I've loved that my older kids have started sharing fun memories of me as a dad. But my son...
I typically do all our lawn care by myself. On a very hot day, my sweet wife felt sorry for me and tried to help. As I was mowing, I glanced over to see her using the weed whacker in an area I could mow...
There was a fascinating brain scan study focused on married couples who reported being madly in love after an average of 21 years. One of the commonalities of these happy couples’ brains was an area of the brain responsible for positive illusion. Positive illusion is...
Labeling a child is an easy thing to do. I recently asked on social media, “What label was put on you as a child that you still remember today?” My feed was quickly filled with labels like motor mouth, sissy, pesty, shy, drama queen, bossy,...
As a young dad, I dove into parenting books. But despite my good intentions, I somehow made a major false assumption: All parts of a child can be molded or changed with the right parenting approach. Looking back, it is so clear that this is...
My daughter left to work at a summer camp just four days after her high school graduation. A couple of weeks later, my wife says to me, “I really miss her.” My knee-jerk relational reaction was to fix things for her by giving her thoughts...
It's hard to learn how to stop getting angry at my child when my child triggers me. As dads, we’ve all been there. Your child triggers you and you react in regrettable ways. Your toddler throws a tantrum. Your reaction is too loud, which only...
I recently came across a photo of my sons and me, who were 3 and 6 at the time. Not pictured is our 1-year-old daughter. They are all now young adults. The photo is of me sitting on the sofa with my boys on each...
When we think about having empathy in marriage, many of us assume having empathy only involves emotions like anger, sadness, grief...