Being a parent, otherwise known as how to bankrupt a person one college at a time, has truly been one of the most satisfying experiences of my life. Being the father of 4 in a blended family, I thought I would share some thought on, in my view, what makes a good parent.

What makes a good parent starts with realizing you don’t know everything and then conveying this idea to your kids. Once you’ve had this epiphany, the doors are open for you to talk to your kids in a way that really is fun and enriching. Why I say this is an epiphany is because relationships are based on connection.

Connection is based on Continue reading Getting the Most Out of Parenting

In looking at what makes a good parent there are some key points. The first of which is that you don’t have to be perfect, the smartest, or always right. What you do have to do to be a good parent is be a leader in your own home.

What makes a good parent, and by proxy a good leader, is to take a stance for your kids. Be a place that they can draw from for stability, safety and love. That being said, a crucial part of what makes a good parent is letting them know you are human. What this means is you will make mistakes with them and in your own life. It is important that you know that and that they know that. Furthermore, it is important that they know you know that.

What is important about the last statement? Continue reading What Makes a Good Parent

In the last article on “Patience and Leadership in Blended Families” we talked about the need for patience in bringing two families together to become a blended family.

Before we can move on to leadership in blended families, we need to talk about a sensitive area. That being, “What didn’t we do so great in our first marriage”. The worst thing we can do, I believe, when attempting to start a new family, is not look at how we can improve our skill levels as parents prior  to the commencement of it.

Let’s get it out in the open. No matter how much we want to blame the “ex”, ask the question, “Does it help me or my new family any bit to blame the ex”? Of course, it doesn’t! All we can do is keep improving ourselves. Understand, for what ever reason you are starting new blended families, (I say families because we are all in this together), you are taking a bold and risky step. I did it myself. So, I know.

How are you going to prepare yourself to be a better spouse and parent in new blended families?

I like quotes, so I’m going to give you one here. Continue reading Patience and Leadership in Blended Families: Part 2

Blended families, for those who are new to the term, is the bringing together of two adults and their kids in one household. For me, this means a committed relationship and not just people moving in together for convenience or economics. Its not that the non committed relationship can’t become a great family…it just isn’t defined as one yet.

Let’s get to it then.

In blended families, everyone needs to have patience. America has become, what I call, a fast food society. We want everything fast. We want our food fast. We want our problems resolved fast. We want results fast. Unfortunately, or fortunately, life isn’t a McDonalds^TM hamburger. In life, there isn’t a counter we can just walk up to, know what we want, know what the price will be and pretty much know how long it will take.

Humans need time to adapt, even little humans. In blended families, we have the offspring of two marriages Continue reading Patience and Leadership in Blended Families

This blog will be a little more practical than the two previous ones. If you are having problems getting your kids to do their chores or want to give your kids chores and don’t know how to, this is for you. Parenting tips and chores.

Why should your kids have chores?

Can you answer this question that will make sense to your kids and get them to do them?

If you can’t answer the question you just figured out the first problem. If you can answer the question and your kids aren’t doing their chores then you haven’t explained it to them properly.

Parenting Tip #1 Continue reading Parenting Tips and Chores

I like to read a lot of online periodicals to get a feel what parents and other adults are thinking and talking about. There is a lot of good stuff being written in regard to marriage and families. Even when I don’t agree with some premises, I often get some interesting ideas to write about. I want to talk about parenting tips for judgments of others.

Whether you are religious or not, you most likely consider yourself someone who is ethical and moral. This is good. It means you have taken some time to realize you want to be a good person. Maybe the most important thing we can impart to our kids is a desire to be a good person. The first of the parenting tips is this: Continue reading Parenting Tips and Judgement

Many parents ask me for parenting tips when it comes to their teens. They want to know how to stop yelling, how to get their kids to do their chores, how to make rules in the house and the list could go on forever. Today, I want to speak about something that kind of addresses all those issues.

The first of the parenting tips is to connect to your children. Do you remember when you were a kid and sometimes you just didn’t understand or agree with your parents. Were you right? Were they right? The odds are sometimes you were and sometimes they were, but more often then not it was the parents. In teenage parenting, or any parenting, the point is that if your kids don’t understand why you are upset with them or why you say what you say there will be a disconnect. A disconnect means there will be a break from connecting with them.

It won’t matter if you are right if the connection isn’t created. I’ll give you an example from our family. My second son is just shy of 18. He has been accepted into a couple of colleges and is doing really well in school. He just doesn’t ever want to come home. He’s having a great time. So, my wife called him and told him to come home. He said “why”? My wife told him because she said so. He didn’t get it and stopped answering his phone to her. This is the disconnect.

The parenting tip is this. Continue reading Parenting Tips in Teenage Parenting

First of all, we have all experienced yelling in our homes. That being said, clearly yelling is one of the most ineffective ways for a parent to get their point across and should be avoided at all costs. For today’s parenting tips, lets talk about the three most important issues here,

1) Why does yelling occur?

2) What harmful effects come from it?

3) What are the alternatives?

Parenting Tip 1

Yelling occurs from two paths. The first being it is a trained behavior that different cultures use and it was how the parent’s parents dealt with issues. The second being, and the more important one I believe, is when the parent loses their composure due one of many reasons.

Parenting Tip 2

The harmful effects to children, Continue reading Parenting Tips and Yelling

Today, we are going to talk about the issue of what happens when parenting styles are different. We hear a lot about parenting styles these days in regard to blended families and their problems. The truth is there are many parenting styles but what is most important is that the core values of the parents are in sync. What we mean by core values are those values that are most important to the parent.

For instance, love is a core value. Now, we can all agree that love is important in the home and most parents will express it to some degree.

We will now take a commonplace example of a core value, that although it seems like nothing, can really disrupt blended families. The core value of Continue reading Help with Blended Families: Part 3

As mentioned before, blended families are diverse and often complicated. Tackling these issues can be difficult but the rewards are huge.

Today we are going to talk about when, in blended families, the stepchild doesn’t accept the stepparent. Before going too far it is really important to handle this issue before the families come together. If in your case it didn’t it is not something that can’t be handled, but it will take a little more work. The adage “when you have lemons, make lemonade” really applies here.

Blended families are usually formed because two adults feel they have found that person who really is “the one”. When people get married the first time, often they were naive and too young to know better. Now, however, hopefully they have learned a thing or two. This can be used to the advantage in blended families.

The first step to success is, Continue reading Help with Blended Families: Part 2