What Makes a Father a Daddy?

May 31, 2012 By Leave a Comment

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Daddy Life Podcast Episode 28Dads, Marriage Counts and you need to take the lead in your home.

Get to know your wife and children better


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

  1. No name calling
  2. Leave the past in the past
  3. LISTEN
  4. Keep your hands to yourself
  5. 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

Facebook Page – http://www.facebook.com/DaddyLife

Levi’s Birthday Our youngest turned two on Memorial Day

Levi turns 2

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 (aff) teaches moms how to use their God given wisdom as parents to breast feed their child in a way that is more healthy for the child and mom. Parents also learn to train their baby to adapt their sleeping habits to become a welcome member of the family. Most infants of PDF families are sleeping seven hours per night at approximately three months old. There is plenty of room for dads in the equation too. Using the Babywise model dads are an equal member of the partnership that God has put at the center of each family…a marriage made up of a husband and wife relationship. PDF parents are taught to use their knowledge and experience to make healthy decisions for their child.

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Happy Mother’s Day 2012!

May 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment

 

Mommy and her boys

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!!!

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Father’s Impact on His Daughters

May 10, 2012 By 1 Comment

Father and Daughter

by Valerie Plowman

My first-born child is a boy. Following him was a son that we lost at 20 weeks gestation. After that, I was sure I was “destined” to be a mother of all boys. I had always gotten along well with boys and figured this was my perfect role in life.

Fast forward to today when I have since had two girls and am expecting my third. As usual, the Lord had different plans for me than I had for myself.

With all of these daughters, I have been pondering how to raise wonderful women. As I have done so, I remember my mother often telling me that I was lucky because a father has a huge impact on the self-esteem of his daughters. I was lucky. I consider my dad to be one of the best men to ever walk this planet. I am fortunate to have married a man that I think is equally as wonderful as my own father.

As I was thinking of what to write for this guest post, I decided on a post encouraging and informing fathers of their great impact on their daughters. Research supports what my mother always told me–fathers have a huge influence on the self-esteem of their daughters. Of course fathers impact sons, also, but given my perspective as a female, I thought I would focus on daughters today. I also want to encourage any parent who is parenting without a father present for any reason. There are many people who grew up without fathers who are confident, capable people. Most often, this is attributed to the extreme dedication and effort by the mother. Knowing what a father does for a daughter can help you think of ways to fill in these gaps.

Dr. Margaret J. Meeker, a pediatrition with more than 20 years of experience in counseling girls, wrote a book called Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know. In it, she lists some findings from her research on the important influence of fathers. Here are some:

  • Toddlers securely attached to fathers are better at solving problems.
  • Six-month-olds scored higher on tests of mental development when their dads were involved in their lives.
  • With dads in the home, children managed school stress better.
  • Daughters whose fathers provide warmth and control achieve higher academic success. Girls involved with dad are twice as likely to stay in school.
  • Daughters who are close to their fathers exhibit less anxiety and withdrawn behaviors.
  • The likelihood that daughters engage in premarital sex, drug use, and alcohol plummets when their dads are involved in their lives.
  • Daughters who feel that their fathers care about them and feel connected with their dads have significantly fewer suicide attempts and fewer instances of body dissatisfaction, depression, low self-esteem, substance abuse, and unhealthy weight.
  • A daughter’s self-esteem is best predicted by her father’s loving affection.

Meeker says, “From the first years of a girl’s life her father is larger than life. She looks up to him, and for the rest of her life she craves his admiration, his respect and his affection.”

Her research is not alone in these findings. This paper supports these findings. A tid-bit from this paper is: 

“According to research conducted by Nielsen, “fathers generally have as much or more influence than mothers on many aspects of their daughters’ lives. For example, the father has the greater impact on the daughter’s ability to trust, enjoy and relate well to the males in her life …well-fathered daughters are usually more self-confident, more self-reliant, and more successful in school and in their careers than poorly-fathered daughters …Daughters with good relationships with their father are also less likely to develop eating disorders” (2007, ¶ 12).”

So you now believe that the father is a huge impact, but what can a father do to have a positive influence on his daughters? I won’t pretend to have all of the answers. I would encourage continual prayerfulness and observance of your daughter to analyze what you can do for your daughter. Here are some ideas for you.

  • Be present in her life. Spend time with her, talk with her, be involved in daily things like bedtime, and invite her to help you with your own projects. My five year old daughter doesn’t have a special interest in tools, but she loves to be in the garage and help her dad simply because she wants to spend time with him.
  • Be supportive of her. Attend her special events. My dad made it to everything he possibly could to support me in my various activities and events. My husband recently left work for an hour so he could go to my daughter’s preschool class simply to read her favorite book to the class. He apparently reads it the very best. She was concerned at my ability to read it correctly. He surprised her by coming and reading it. She was thrilled. Our daughters have supportive grandfathers. Our daughter recently had a dance recital. Neither grandmother was able to come that night, but both grandfathers were there anyway.
  • Go on dates. One-on-one time is great. Take your daughter out on special dates. My husband and I shoot for one special date per child per month. We alternate who we have on our special date. The children love this. From my own childhood, I remember one particular time when my father took my sister and I to the Phantom of the Opera. In January, we saw an advertisement that it would be in our area the next July. Just one time, we told our dad how we would love to see it. We never mentioned it again. He surprised us with the best seats in the house. My dad is not a “Phantom of the Opera” type of a guy. He is more of a Pittsburgh Steelers or New York Yankees type of a guy. This special date meant a lot to us.
  • Compliment her. Offer sincere compliments and encouragement. Your words will mean a lot.
  • Offer physical affection. This isn’t usually a difficulty in the father/daughter relationship, but be sure you give your daughter the cuddles, hugs, and kisses she needs from you.

Do not make the false assumption that your presence in your daughter’s life is of minimal impact. Your daughter will look for a spouse that reminds her of you–for better or worse. You being male does not mean you will not have a huge impact on how your daughter views herself as a female–studies suggest you have even more of an impact than the mother. You are an important aspect to your daughter’s life.

Valerie is the mother of three and one on the way. She blogs at Chronicles of a Babywise Mom.


 

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Growing Boys into Men

May 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment

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Daddy Life Podcast Episode 27 LogoHazardous Journeys Society

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

Busytown Airport
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!

Caden

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Dad’s role in FTO training

April 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

By Maureen Monfore, www.childwisechat.com

Dad and First Time Obedience TrainingIn On Becoming Childwise and Growing Kids God’s Way, the Ezzos make it clear that training a child in first-time obedience (FTO) is one of the most important parenting tasks. When we train a child in first-time obedience, our primary goal is that they will obey us the first time we give an instruction, no questions asked.

In my blog, www.childwisechat.com, and on message boards, I hear moms struggle with the fact that their children seem to respond to the FTO training they have done. But the minute their husbands get home, the children don’t listen to him.

So let me be clear that although much of the training can be done by mom since she’s home most of the day, dads must also work with their children on first-time obedience.

It would make sense that all you have to do is teach a child a skill like first-time obedience one time and it will carry over to all other relationships. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.

Our children figure us out very quickly. They know that moms and dads have different standards, however minor they may be, and they will only rise to the standard you each hold.

So unfortunately, dads, this means that you cannot rest on your laurels after a long day’s work and let your wife do all of the obedience training. All of the aspects of first-time obedience training apply to you just as much as they do to your wife.

If you’re new to the idea of first-time obedience training, you can learn more on my blog or in my eBook, Live in Harmony with First-Time Obedience. There are several principles to consider when laying a solid foundation for FTO training. They include:

Understand that first-time obedience is a skill your child needs to learn. It’s also a new habit you will need to set for yourself. It will be difficult at first, especially if your child is used to ignoring you, but the payoff is so rewarding.

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A Special Kid with a Golden Egg

April 11, 2012 By 1 Comment
Caden with Golden Easter Egg

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.

VEPTR Rods - scoliosis

Your prayers for a rapid recovery would be appreciated.

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Podcast Review of Monumental and the Easter Bunny

March 31, 2012 By 2 Comments

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Daddy Life Podcast Episode 26I 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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Monumental Review of Kirk Cameron’s new Movie

March 29, 2012 By 18 Comments

Kirk CameronI attended Tuesday night’s LIVE preview of Monumental: In Search of America’s National Treasure. The bottom line up front is that I came out of the movie educated, encouraged, and a little fired up. I did expect a little more evangelical gospel theme than was outwardly presented, but the movie was not lacking as a result of this missing. I did not take written notes during the movie, so I am paraphrasing, but Kirk basically said that he believes that our country is in trouble. He said that the left blames the right, hollywood blames the church, and the church blames the media. And there is no one clear voice that stands out with a plan to stop or reverse this decline.

The evangelical Christians bloggers are either red hot or ice cold on this one. I am glad I read a few other reviews before beginning my own review. Most Christian naysayers of the movie have their panties in a wade over one of two things or both.

  1.  Kirk Cameron does not bust out with his in your face with the sin mirror presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ the way many of us have seen him do with Ray Comfort.
  2. During the LIVE event portion of the presentation last night Kirk introduced Glenn Beck. I read where one guy actually got up at walked out when Cameron introduced Beck.

I’ll expand on each fo these two primary critiques of the movie. Yes it is true. Kirk Cameron does not break down the gospel message via the Roman Road Gospel presentation. However the message did come through very clear to me that the problems in the country will not be solved unless we get back to foundation built on faith and trust in God followed by actions as taught so clearly in my favorite book of the Bible James.

But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do. James 1:25

James goes on to say that faith without deeds is not faith at all. I believe that Kirk is trying to remind Christians that we have to live out our faith. Like the Puritans who sacrificed all to come a settle here, we have to be willing to make sacrifices as well if we are going to see this country change directions. The Go Stand Speak Ministries blog said it best in response to the naysayers on this issue:

But many missed that because they couldn’t look beyond their “get saved from hell” glasses and see the message of the risen Christ as King, a message Jesus, the prophets and the apostles all preached!

I think most people get too caught up in what God is going to do for them through salvation and forget that God is not just a vending machine full of get out of hell free cards. Faith without works is dead. Yes, you need the faith first, but that should produce works for the glory of God or the faith may not be there in the first place.

The second major critique was of the fact that Kirk introduced Glenn Beck during the pre-movie portion of the LIVE event last night. He introduced Beck as a champion of truth about the history of this country. No one in my opinion could argue Glenn Beck’s passion and accuracy concerning the history of this country as presented in his TV and radio shows. Beck was not introduced as a spiritual or theological advisor for the movie. I have no problem with that at all.  Glenn Beck is not teaching against Jesus Christ in his radio and TV shows and therefore he is not the enemy in the search for America’s national treasure.

Some may be a little uneasy with the fact that Kirk Cameron somewhat pitched homeschooling as a best method of educating our children. I talked about this a little in Daddy Life podcast episode 25. At one point during the movie Cameron interviews David Barton of Wall Builders. David is the expert on the religious roots of the United States of America. In the interview David shares some background on a book titled The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness by Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore. Barton highlights the fact that these two Cornell professors abandon footnotes and bibliography in their book to give themselves plenty of room to indoctrinate the unknowing students with this revisionist history of our great country using this textbook in many university lecture halls. Barton goes on to say that this is intentional misrepresentation of the history of the USA that leads to teachers in our kids’ classrooms ignorantly repeating what they have been taught because they had no reason to challenge it. I say that since it took a few decades to get our kids’ teachers to this level of ignorance on history so the best way to combat it is through home education.

That said, Kirk wraps up his LIVE event with a post movie spill about what to do next. The movie is not officially released until March 30th and it will only appear in a handful of cities. Kirk gives a call to action as he talks about a family devotional as well as a homeschool curriculum that is being released in conjunction with the movie. I told my wife about the homeschool curriculum and she was puzzle as to why Cameron did not partner with someone like Doug Phillips from Vision Forum. The folks at Vision Forum already have pretty much everything covered already and it is historically accurate.  We will likely get a copy of the curriculum for review on the Home School Support Network, but I am not sure how much of it we will be implementing in our own family.

I will conclude with a link to one other review. Jon Speed over at The Informed Evangelist did a pretty unbiased and very detailed review. He and I also had a very similar experience at the conclusion of the event last night. The “live” feed was interrupted in mid sentence of Cameron’s call to action as shown in the video below. So after a few minutes of awkwardness in our local theatre a couple of tea party 912 project activist stood and introduced themselves. They had nothing really useful to say other than to invite people to their meetings. That prompted a mass exodus from the theatre and it pretty much let the air out of the balloon for me in the moment. Like Speed, I hope the results of this is movie is more than an extension to the tea party movement. The tea party came out of the gate well, but the that movement just does not have the God centered roots that this movie has. True lasting change in this country will not take place unless it is clearly aligned to honor and glorify God.

I highly recommend Monumental. It is safe viewing for the entire family. Unless you are in one of the six markets listed in the video above you will not get this movie in your local theatre unless you DEMAND THE MOVIE!

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