Tag Archives: Parenting

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Hugging Your Kids In Public

Godly Men: Being Deliberate With Our Wives and Kids

We had the opportunity to go see a Christmas program by Word Of Life Ministries when we lived in Florida, called Sights & Sounds of Christmas. As a minister of a church in their local area, we actually got to attend the dinner and show for free, and greatly enjoyed the opportunity. 

Sights & Sounds of Christmas

I have a large family, so events like this can quickly become expensive. We are grateful for their generosity while we lived there. It was a wonderful production, and our whole family loved it and had a great time.

We arrived early, since seating was on a first-come basis. As we were waiting, another family walked it and hovered in the lobby, also waiting for the doors to open. They were a nice looking family. But they didn’t really attract my attention at first. Just a father and mother, with four typical kids. The girls were chatting together, and the oldest son, who seemed to be sixteen or seventeen, had ear buds in.

But a few minutes later, I glanced up to see the father and son talking in a corner. This wasn’t any kind of “he’s in trouble” talking, and it don’t look serious. It looked to me like the dad just pulled his son away from the crowd to have a moment together.

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Devotions For Sacred Parenting by Gary Thomas

A Book Review for The Randleman Review

Devotions For Sacred Parenting by Gary ThomasAs a parent of a large family, I see the need for spiritual guidance in the life off my family as a key element. Because of this, I am always looking for resources that can help my wife and I lead and train our children to be the best that they can be, and all that God desires them to be.

Over the years, we have gathered quite a collection of great parenting resources, from inspirational books, to DVD based curriculum. But we haven’t really found a devotional that focuses on parenting that really impacted us where we felt like we needed it.

That changed when we found Devotions For Sacred Parenting by Gary Thomas. This book is a phenomenal resource that we have found to be very useful. I have been through the book more than once over the past couple of months, and my wife is excited by what I have shared with her. She is looking forward to utilizing it in the coming days and weeks.

Most devotional books seem to be brief and shallow. But Gary Thomas has created a book full of devotions that are more than a brief snippet of inspirational thought. They have meat to them, and leave you with a few questions to consider afterward. The book is not a daily devotional, but a weekly one, with only 52 devotions included. But that doesn’t present a problem, since we have found that it takes more than a few days to fully digest the topic that Thomas sparks in our thoughts and prayers.

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Bring Me To McDonald’s

Godly Men: Being Deliberate With Our Wives and Kids

The things my kids say… This happened when my son, Jadon, was four years old. He is now nine.

Bring Me To McDonald’s

My wife was at her doctor’s appointment for this last (hopefully!) week of her pregnancy.

I was at home with the rest of the kids. All of them were still asleep except for my four-year-old.

So I took advantage of the moment and had some good conversation with my son. In the course of our talking, laughing, and enjoying our time together, I asked him what I could do to be a better dad. This was mostly tongue in cheek, since he’s four…

He scrunched up his face, thought for a moment, and said, “Ummmm… Bring me to McDonald’s!”

Now, I could explain why we don’t eat often at McDonald’s, and the unhealthiness of it, and the expense of it, and lots of reasons why this is a bad idea. In fact, I can count my visits to McDonald’s in the past five years on one hand. Or I can explain that his happiness shouldn’t depend on what I buy him.

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Being A Pat Of Butter

Godly Men: Being Deliberate With Our Wives and Kids

I ran across this quote from Minnesota radio personality Garrison Keillor.

Being A Pat Of Butter

By way of disclaimer, I know nothing about this man, other than what I just read in a quick Google search. I can’t vouch for his website, his radio show, or his books.

But this quote is especially poignant.

The father of a daughter is nothing but a high-class hostage. A father turns a stony face to his sons, berates them, shakes his antlers, paws the ground, snorts, runs them off into the underbrush, but when his daughter puts her arm over his shoulder and says, Daddy, I need to ask you something, he is a pat of butter in a hot frying pan.

I have found this to be true in my relationships with my kids. And I think it’s a pretty universal fact. Fathers parent their sons differently than they do their daughters.

We train our boys to become men. We expect more different things from them than we do our daughters. We fiercely protect our little girls, no matter what their age.

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The P’s of Dadhood – Presence

Godly Men: Being Deliberate With Our Wives and Kids

There are several essential qualities that dads must develop to become the best dads they can be. These qualities include practice and patience, persistence and perspective, passion, and… presence.

The P's of Dadhood - Presence

Presence.

That’s a great word, but what does it mean exactly? It sounds rather vague.

But it is one of the most essential qualities that a dad needs to develop.

Too many dads simply pass through the lives of their kids, never really engaging with them in any significant way. They aren’t really present. Oh, they may be there, home every night after work with the TV on or the newspaper in hand. But they aren’t engaged in the lives of their kids.

Why is this?

I believe it’s because they don’t know how to be engaged with their kids. Doing so is tough, and it requires effort. And most men struggle with this because their own fathers struggled with it.

My dad was a pretty good dad, but he struggled to be engaged in the lives of his kids. For example, he tried a few times to teach me how to drive a stick shift. He had an old ’64 Chevy pickup, with a three on the tree transmission. I don’t know how many times he wanted to teach me how to drive this, but after about three minutes of killing the engine by letting the clutch out too fast, he would give up in frustration and tell me I’d never learn how to drive a standard.

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The Four – No Eight – P’s of Dadhood – Passion

Godly Men: Being Deliberate With Our Wives and Kids

Some of the first posts I wrote for Deliberate Dads was a series on the Four P’s of Dadhood, which I soon expanded to eight. These articles discussed four essential qualities of dadhood. The first two are practice and patience. The second two are persistence and perspective.

The Four - No Eight - P's of Dadhood - Passion

Soon after, I came to the conclusion that my list is incomplete. I’ve identified at least four more essential characteristics that it take to be a great dad. The first one from this extension that I want to discuss is so obvious I really don’t know how I could have overlooked it.

It’s a quality that all dads have to have for their kids, if they want to have any type of relationship at all.

It’s crucial.

Passion

As I thought about the idea of passion, I realized that there are really two aspects to this quality of dadhood. Both of these are a part of the idea of passion, and as such, are sort of related. But they are also separate and distinct qualities that every dad needs to hold on to.

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Sons Need To Have Fun Times With Their Dads

Godly Men: Being Deliberate With Our Wives and Kids

A few years ago, my son Titus and I spent the weekend at a father/son retreat at Lake Aurora Christian Camp. And it was pretty incredible.

Father Son Retreat in 2012

We had some great experiences together. Titus and I first hit the waterfront and took a paddle-boat out onto the lake. It was pretty comical. Titus weighs significantly less than I do, so the paddle boat listed to the side pretty hard. Kinda made it hard to turn…

That evening after dinner, we had some game time, a campfire with singing, a devotion, and s’mores, and a hayride around the camp property.

Late night activities included dodge ball, capture the flag and other games.

The next morning, there was a great opportunity for father and son devotions together after breakfast. This was probably the most meaningful part of the weekend for me. Sharing in God’s Word with my son that morning is a memory I will cherish.

After our devotion time, we headed to the climbing tower. Titus successfully attempted to climb the medium difficulty wall. This is one of the proudest moments I’ve experienced with Titus. After all, he was only eight, and this was a pretty significant achievement for him. Once on top of the tower, he zip-lined down the eighty foot cable to the bottom.