To all the dads I wish you a happy Father’s Day. I hope you got a new tie for Father’s Day. In the eyes of your child, you are the greatest!!!
Late Spring Rain
June 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment
I love the sounds of Spring in South Carolina. The sounds of tree frogs and crickets mixed with the steady drops of rain are music to my ears. This is a short recording from my backyard this evening. Enjoy!
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Keep It Simple This Summer
June 4, 2012 By 2 Comments
We attended a birthday party this weekend. My wife’s best friend from high school and maid of honor in our wedding was celebrating the 1st birthday of her daughter. It was a fun time catching up with old friends and watching the kids play. We were the only the only other family there with kids and they told us to bring bathing suites for our boys. We knew the pool would be just like to one our two youngest boys are shown playing in above. And our boys loved it. As I watched all four of my boys play in this little pink swimming pool it reminded me how the simple things really can provide a ton of fun. Our boys laughed and played for at least an hour and the water was no deeper than about four or five inches even when all of them were int he pool together.
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The pink pool scene reminded me of some pictures my wife shared with me from earlier in the week. Our boys had been in the back yard playing in the dirt and getting filthy. She decided to hose them off before bringing them back into the hose. Then she accidentally discovered how much fun a two year old could have with nothing more than a plastic container, a spoon, and a toy truck. Our little Levi sat for over 30 minutes scooping water from this bowl and dumping it on himself and into the bucket of his little toy dump truck. It was truly amazing how content this little boy was with such simple things. It was sort of like the cardboard box thing. You know when you buy you kids an expensive big toy only to find that you could have gotten way with just brining home an empty cardboard box.
Sometimes the simplest things are the best. What simply things will be entertaining your kids this summer?
What Makes a Father a Daddy?
May 31, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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Dads, Marriage Counts and you need to take the lead in your home.
Get to know your wife and children better
- Love Languages Episode 13 Demonstrate Love to your wife
- Temperaments Episode 21
Lead devotions: We just started doing things different.
- Pray a simple prayer asking God to speak to you.
- Reading a chapter from a children’s bible.
- Pray and thank God and ask Him to fill your needs.
Be present
- Attend appointments (school, medical, etc) (Mom’s let dads help)
- Take your kids camping…even if in the back yard
- Go for a bike ride
Being a great husband even when you disagree
- No name calling
- Leave the past in the past
- LISTEN
- Keep your hands to yourself
- Allow a disagreement resolution to play out in from of the kids
Boys want to be like Daddy
Girls want to gain Dad’s approval
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Levi’s Birthday Our youngest turned two on Memorial Day
Happy Birthday to my Baby Boy
Babywise Friendly Blog Segment
God’s Faithfulness Through Infertility
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Breastfeed your preschooler
May 15, 2012 By 6 Comments
Children of parents who follow this advice will never be a school bully and will always look their parents in the eye. That’s what Dr. William Sears says in an ABC News article drawing attention to a very controversial Time Magazine cover. Attachment Parenting (AP) made popular by Dr. Sears promotes breastfeeding as the silver bullet solution to parenting challenges. The new Time magazine cover shows a young mother allowing her three-year-old son to serve himself breast milk while he stands in a chair to be able to reach her breast. While the Time cover will appear in the grocery store checkout line it is a little too graphic for this web site.
Breastfeeding is one component of the radical Attachment Parenting philosophy that is very child-centered promoting everything short of using your God given wisdom in your parenting decisions. The three pillars of AP encourage extreme breast-feeding, baby wearing, and co-sleep with their children against American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommendations. Parents are taught to allow their child to decide when he is ready to wean from nursing. This issue of Time goes into the fact that Attachment Parenting provides no room for dads in the parenting partnership. The Attachment Parenting model puts dad’s on the sidelines. Time points this out by stating in a supporting article to the controversial cover:
“Advocates of attachment parenting might claim that their approach places demands on both genders, but we fathers know the truth. Regardless of our best intentions as equal partners, attachment parenting is really attachment mothering.” Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2114453,00.html#ixzz1utwNHgUM
The ABC article goes on to quote Mayim Bialik a mom and Phd of neuroscience who says she uses breastfeeding as a response to her toddler’s tantrums. Ironically this same mom does not believe the Time Magazine story will help the Attachment Parenting movement. The Time Magazine cover alone paints Attachment Parenting as extreme. Extreme is the word used on the Time cover to explain Dr. Sears’ Attachment Parenting philosophy as it relates to the graphic breastfeeding scene.
There is a practical alternative to the extreme Attachment Parenting style. That alternative promotes dads being fully engaged in the parenting process and teaches a philosophy called Parent Directed Feeding (PDF). On Becoming Baby Wise
Happy Mother’s Day 2012!
May 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Photo by Virginia Gregg
Parenthood would not be possible without mothers. God created women to give birth to our children. Mothers provide comfort and love like no one else. They nourish, teach, and train our children with selfless dedication and determination.
Today we honor and celebrate our mothers.
Sherry (pictured above) is mother to our four boys. She is a domestic engineer (stay-home-mom). She is the primary home school teacher, diaper changer, and meal preparer. Sherry handles the majority of the coordination of care for their son Caden who was diagnosed at birth in 2004 with 22q11.2 (Di George Syndrome). Caden (far right in photo) is exclusively tube fed and sees three therapists on a weekly basis plus frequent visits to clinics at the Medical University of South Carolina Children’s Hospital. Sherry is co-founder and primary contributor to the Home School Support Network.
We love the Mommy of our house!!! Happy Mother’s Day!!!
Growing Boys into Men
May 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment
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Vision Forum – Discipleship and Education for Christian Families
Jonathan Park Radio Adventure Series – Great adventures to educate children on the facts about creation and evolution.
In this episode I quote from: http://atheists.org/content/christmas
“No Adam and Eve means no need for a savior. It also means that the Bible cannot be trusted as a source of unambiguous, literal truth. It is completely unreliable, because it all begins with a myth, and builds on that as a basis. No Fall of Man means no need for atonement and no need for a redeemer. You know it.”
Christians are the only real free thinkers in the evolution/creation debate. Evolutionist have not interest in teaching their kids opposing theories. We as Christian parents are not afraid to teach our kids the unproven evolutionary theories. We know what is at stake. Christians have a eternity with their children to loose if they miss teaching their kids to defend their faith. Building a strong defense requires some degree of understanding about the enemy.
Things for Dad’s to do with boys:
Biking – All my boys like biking even if it is riding in the little pull-along trailer/cart that attaches to my bicycle.
Gardening – This is an awesome place to learn about growing food and how God works in our lives. What is planted in our hearts is what grows up and comes out though our words, actions, and attitudes.
Building – Build a raise flow bed for your home garden. Build a toy or a pice of furniture. It does not matter, just spend time teaching your boys how to use tools safely.
Fixing – Fix those broken toys before you simply trash them t buy new ones. You may think you have more time than money, but no amount of money can replace the time spent with your kids.
Hunting – Many dads and moms start to take their kids hunting at a young age.
Fishing – Every young boy can catch a fish before they are even five years old.
Cooking/Grilling – Teaching your kids how to cook that fish.
Playing Games – I recommend things like chess, Risk, or Monopoly. These games provide a much better environment.
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Classic Conversation
April 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment
A conversation sparked between Sherry (Mommy) and Caden while they were looking at Richard Scarry’s A Day at the Airport
Mommy: When you are bigger Daddy will teach you how to fly airplanes.
[Caden goes off to play for a few minutes and then returns to Mommy.]
Caden: I’m bigger now!!!
I LOVE THIS KID!
A Special Kid with a Golden Egg
April 11, 2012 By 1 Comment
Photo by: Virginia Gregg
Caden is a very special kid with a very popular egg. This egg contains a coveted wooden chip to get a free cup cake at a local gourmet bake shop. The irony in Caden finding this egg two years in a row is that he is the only kid participating who has never swallowed…not even his own saliva. In addition to numerous heart surgeries, back surgeries, and much more, seven year old Caden has taken all of his nutrition and hydration via feeding tube since birth. Just like last year, Caden gave the wooden chip to his older brother Riley.
Our family went to this annual Easter Egg hunt with some like-minded friends who all alumni of the GFI Parenting Ministry. This is the second time the local group of parents got together to have some fun over the Easter holiday.
Caden will have back surgery later this week to adjust the VEPTR rods (pictured below) placed in September 2010 to treat scoliosis.
Your prayers for a rapid recovery would be appreciated.
Podcast Review of Monumental and the Easter Bunny
March 31, 2012 By 2 Comments
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I am here to help you Dads to be the parents that God intended for your to be.
Yes folks, Things are changing. Regular listeners may have heard from intro that I am changing things up a little. I am refining the focus of the Daddy Life podcast. Feedback continues to prove that dads are hungry for more encouragement on the parenting front. I almost exclusively get feedback from the non-technical content so that is where I am going to focus attention. There are plenty of dads out there covering the things that entertain. I am here to equip and challenge you to rise above the level of mediocrity in your marriage and in your parenting.
I will add tech tips in as subjects questions are raised. As in recent episode, I will only include a tech time in occasionally moving forward.
So what am I talking about this week:
This week I am going to provide you with an audio version of my review of Kirk Cameron’s new documentary titled Monumental: In Search of America’s National Treasure. Only you will get more in the audio because I can bring Kirk into from the trailers and let him tell you about the movie in his own words.
Before we get into that I want to talk about Easter. If you are new to the show you will know that I am very big on relationships. In particular I am big on telling the truth to your kids concerning things like Santa Claus and the tooth fairy. And you guessed it, I am in favor of keeping it real and true concerning the Easter Bunny. We do Easter baskets and egg hunts, but we tell our kids the truth about where the candy eggs and chocolate bunny’s come from. There is no magical bunny. Really! Seriously!
Also mentioned in this episode are some points from David Platt’s book titled Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream.
Monumental is Highly recommended! DEMAND THE MOVIE
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