Daly Focus Blog
Do you ever feel like advertisers and commercialism have taken over Christmas? Does it seem like it’s gotten worse in the last 15 to 20 years? Well, if you answered yes, you might be as surprised as I was to hear that Christmas, as we celebrate it today, was almost single-handedly created by commercialism.
As recently as 150 years ago, Christmas wasn’t the most important holiday in our culture. That was Easter. The focus began to shift once department stores got involved.
I love Thanksgiving.
You get to eat great food – thank you, Jean – and you get to watch plenty of football. Of course, most important of all, Thanksgiving is a time to thank God for His incredible blessings.
I’m thankful for my wife and two boys and for the help we’re able to provide families through foster care. I’m also thankful for the Lord’s work through Focus on the Family. Marriages and preborn babies are being saved.
If I handed a baby to you, the infant would likely snuggle face first into your shoulder for comfort.
That’s not how it was with my colleague John Fuller’s youngest son. They adopted him when he was nine months old. Even as a baby, he would physically turn away when he was held. He’d accept chest-to-chest and back-to-chest snuggles, but never face-to-face.
That’s how deep attachment issues in adopted children can run. Many children who have lost their parents in some fashion suffer from a sense of rejection and lack of emotional connection that reaches to their soul.
Several years ago, I asked whether or not you thought pets went to Heaven.
The response was robust!
Personally, I’ve always appreciated how Dr. Billy Graham responded to that question:
“God will prepare everything for our perfect happiness, and if it takes my dog being there, I believe he’ll be there.”
But today I thought I’d ask a less eternally minded question, but a practical one nonetheless:
What’s the best family dog?
According to the American Kennel Club, here are the ten best:
1.
What can you do tonight to deepen your relationship with your children and empower them to develop strong character?
Simply this: in a genuine way that fits you and your child, make an effort to connect. It doesn’t have to be expensive, complicated, or excessively time-consuming. Even the simplest gesture of love, affection, and physical touch can strengthen the relationship between a parent and a child.
That advice comes from clinical child psychologist, Dr. Todd Cartmell, my guest on our Focus on the Family Broadcast “Raising Kids of Character.” He’ll be providing equally helpful answers to questions that many parents ask:
How do I get my children to listen to me?
I know what you’re probably thinking.
The headline of this post is a bit much. It’s a bridge too far. A significant overstatement.
Sure, you have a great deal of respect for adoption and adoptees, but has the institution of adoption really changed your life and the way you live?
After all, the odds are pretty good that you weren’t adopted. Just between two and three percent of American children are.
Maybe you know somebody who was adopted – or whose family adopted.
It’s not easy for a single mother to raise a son. It’s even more difficult when that son has autism.
Emily Colson can attest to that. Her husband walked out when their son Max was just 18-months-old, saying he couldn’t handle the stress.
And there was a lot of stress. Max’s autism was so severe that, for a time, Emily couldn’t leave home with him – not to the grocery store, not to friends’ houses, not to church.
When my first child Trent was born 17 years ago I knew two things right away:
I loved him desperately.
I didn’t know how to be a dad.
I doubt I was much different than most guys. There’s a lot about fathering that men have to learn as they go. But every new dad and soon-to-be new dad could benefit from a playbook. We’ve got just the thing for you on our Focus on the Family Broadcast “Helping Men Prepare for Fatherhood.”
We’re talking to Benjamin Watson about his book “The New Dad’s Playbook: Gearing Up for the Biggest Game of Your Life.” If you and your wife are expecting, you’re going to want to hear this program.
In his popular Morning Briefing yesterday, Southern Seminary president and former Focus on the Family board member, Dr. Al Mohler, wisely summed up the current challenge facing Congress regarding DACA – the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy – this way:
“Our current immigration laws are a complex of confusion; they do not reflect either what this country intends to enforce, by means of its police and its law enforcement agencies, nor does it reflect a coherent sense of national priorities.”
How can any reasonable person disagree?
Officials say that Ohio’s problem with heroin is reaching epidemic proportions. Ohio has the nation’s highest rate of deadly heroin overdoses, killing at least 23 people in the state each week by some estimates.
And as so often occurs when it comes to drug abuse, children are among those who suffer the most.
About half of all the kids in Ohio’s foster care system are there because one or both of their parents are drug addicts – and some counties report a rate of over 80 percent.
Jim Daly is a husband, father and President of Focus on the Family and host of its National Radio Hall of Fame broadcast. His blog, Daly Focus, is full of timely commentary and wisdom designed to help you navigate and understand today’s culture. His latest book is Marriage Done Right.
