Daly Focus Blog
Here’s an important parenting question:
What if your hands were empty, but I asked you to give me one of the apples you were holding?
That’s not a trick question, a riddle, or some odd math problem from your junior high days. It’s a simple question that makes an equally simple point.
We can’t give away something we don’t have.
How does that concept relate to parenting? In this way: We can’t parent our children with God’s grace if we haven’t embraced it ourselves.
Do your children have smartphones?
My boys, ages 15 and 13, don’t. Jean and I have considered getting the boys simple flip phones for emergencies, but yet … we hesitate opening that door.
Beyond the dangers that come with smartphones, we recognize how easy it can be to become addicted to them. Americans now spend an average of 4.7 hours a day on their phones. We sleep with them on our nightstand and carry them in our pockets.
To go into debt, or not to go into debt?
That is the question – one many college students ask themselves as they think of how to afford a college education.
You hear horror stories about twenty-something college graduates leaving school with a four-year degree in one hand and a load of debt in the other they may spend the next couple of decades trying to repay.
Is it worth it?
And if it is, what’s the best way to keep the debt at a reasonable level relative to future earning potential?
“I’ll never forget the day when I said to God, ‘I’ve done everything I know to do, and it’s not working.’”
You might expect to hear a comment like that from the average husband or wife trying to learn how to build a successful family. But would it surprise you to know that the person who said those words is now one of the most respected family experts in the world and has been married nearly 40 years?
Funeral plans for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia were announced earlier this morning. The body of the first Italian-American to serve on the bench will lie in repose in the Great Hall of the high court this coming Friday.
His funeral, which will be open to the public, will take place on Saturday at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.
It’s impossible to overstate the effect Justice Scalia had on the Supreme Court during his nearly 30-year tenure.
I heard a story not long ago about a young man who didn’t receive the grade he felt he deserved in one of his college courses. Right there in the middle of class, surrounded by nearly 200 fellow students, he dialed his mom and complained to her.
If this was your son, what would you have done?
This mom said, “Put your professor on the phone.”
The young man marched to the front of the room and handed the call over to his professor.
Dr. John Townsend hits a parent’s struggle during the teen years right on the head when he says it’s “because we’re needed the most and wanted the least.”
Our teenagers need us as much as ever in their final years at home before they venture into adulthood, but they don’t exactly want us interfering in their lives.
Remember when your teen was a 10-year-old? They were more likely to say, “Mom and dad, can you help me with this?” Teenagers, on the other hand, say, “I’m a grownup; I don’t need your help.”
The unofficial mantra of teenagers everywhere is “Come close.
A colleague of mine was recently visiting some friends at an assisted living complex here in Colorado Springs. Sitting with men and women in the twilight of their lives, he asked them about their respective marriages. Many were now widowed but others were still married, some for fifty and sixty years.
What had marriage taught them about love and life?
What advice would they give to couples just starting out?
If they had to do it all over again, what would they do differently?
Rachel lost two years of her life.
Maybe the first thought that comes to mind when you read that sentence is that Rachel suffered some sort of tragic accident that threw her into a coma – or she bonked her head and lost two years to amnesia.
But neither of those are accurate, and what happened to her can happen to any of us.
Her life was filled with distractions.
If our to-do lists are never-ending, and we’re always thinking ahead to the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing, then we can easily miss out on the real life that’s happening right in front of us.
I remember my son Trent’s first science project when he was in fourth grade. Jean and I agreed that we needed to let him do the project on his own. After all, the whole point was for him to learn, right?
Well, at the end of the semester, we discovered not every parent shared that view.
The school had an open house, so the parents could see the work the kids had done. It was pretty obvious whose mom and dad had been involved in their child’s schoolwork – like the rocket ship that had been built from scratch by an actual astronaut!
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.
