What’s your ideal image of the perfect parent?

Is it a mom pulling fresh-baked cookies out of the oven right as her children come home from school?

Is it a dad in the yard with a couple of baseball mitts and a ball, inviting his son to come out and play?

Or maybe you imagine someone who’s never too busy, who never raises their voice, and who never gets annoyed or distracted.

Authors Brandon and Analyn Miller remember a season of their parenting when nothing seemed to get them closer to their ideal vision of parenting despite access to an abundance of advice and parenting resources.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: parenting November 10, 2022 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Dr. Kevin Leman says strong-willed children are given a bad rap. We want to raise our kids to be strong-willed. When the world tells them, “Believe this,” or “Do that,” we want our children to know right from wrong and to have the strength of conviction to stand for it.

What we don’t want to raise, Dr. Leman says, is what he calls a “powerful child.” Powerful children have an agenda. They want to win, to control, and to dominate.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: parenting November 2, 2022 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

There’s a lot of talk these days about “toxic masculinity,” that is, what men are not supposed to do.

Author Brant Hansen says that many men – especially many young men – don’t know what they’re supposed to do.

The culture routinely deconstructs, but we rarely construct. Men need a vision for what is distinctly and inherently good about masculinity.

God creates men for a purpose. Every man has a role to fill. Whether you’re healthy or have a disability, wealthy or poor, a student, an accountant, or a mechanic, God is calling you to do something and to be something for Him.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: parenting October 25, 2022 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

It’s been said that it’s “easier to build a boy than to mend a man.”

I agree.

A startling number of boys today are alone, left to figure out for themselves what it means to be a man. They don’t have a father in the home who will engage them.

Oh, Dad may be there. But he isn’t present.

There are a lot of great dads out there, but too many men are disengaged. They don’t see manhood as a quality to intentionally bestow upon their sons.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: parenting September 27, 2022 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

A lot of moms say they’re stressed out. Is it any wonder why? They’re driving themselves into the ground, chasing a standard of perfection no one could possibly meet.

A lot of you know what I’m talking about. You’re a fulltime employee outside the home … a job you go to only once you’ve gotten your children up, fed, and off to school. And when you get home that night, you’re still on the clock. If you’re not cooking dinner or helping your children with homework, you’re probably driving somebody to their soccer practice or dental appointment.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: parenting September 21, 2022 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Imagine you’re sailing on the open sea. You’re out on the deck soaking up the sun, listening to the waves, and enjoying the ocean breeze. Everything around you is peaceful and wonderfully tranquil.

Suddenly, without warning, your peace is shattered by chaos. Your ship comes under attack by pirates.

Moms often feel like a similar scenario happens to them every day. They begin each morning with an expectation for how to make their day go peacefully.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: parenting September 6, 2022 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

Here at Focus on the Family, we regularly talk to parents about helping young children develop a strong foundation that equips them to make good choices. But when children transition from adolescence to adulthood, some veer from the path we hoped they’d follow.

We’re encouraging parents of adult children who have strayed from how they were raised and are making poor decisions on our Focus on the Family Broadcast “Building Bridges with Your Adult Child.”

Our guest, author Brenda Garrison, raised her children like many Christian parents.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: parenting September 1, 2022 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura

At what age would you say that children become adults? Sixteen? Eighteen? Twenty-one?

Answers among parents likely vary widely. Psychologist, author, and expert in adolescent and family relationships, Dr. Ken Wilgus, encourages parents to think of their teenagers as adults in training. Teens, he says, are not big children; they are young adults. Treating them as such is a process Dr. Wilgus calls “Progressive Emancipation.”

Around age 13, childhood comes to its natural end. That doesn’t mean your job as a parent is over, but your job changes.

Topics: Family and Home Tags: parenting August 23, 2022 by Jim Daly with Paul Batura