Who Gets the Blame in Your House?

Dare 10 - 7 Steps to Get Out of the Blame Game

Let’s face it, as moms we know our kids.  We know what they are capable of and what they might do and most likely what they won’t do.  Hopefully we understand their hearts and what motivates them. And we definitely know which of our kids is most likely to cause trouble in the family.   I can’t tell […]

What Are Your Parenting Truths?

  When my kids were in the teen years and there seemed to be more conflict in our home than I wanted to deal with, I started doing some introspection as to what truths I held in my parenting.  What I discovered was that all the things I had learned from my parents during my childhood weren’t necessarily […]

The Best Gift You Can Give Your 20-Something

Having had four teenagers under one roof at the same time, I know what it was like to literally feel as though every second was accounted for. I took my role as Mom seriously having given up a corporate job when my kids were little. For me, motherhood became a passion, a calling that I […]

6 Steps to Help Validate Your Kids

The word validation has been cropping up everywhere I turn for the past two weeks.  It’s something that I’ve struggled with for years.  I always thought empathy and validation were essentially the same thing.  I tended to be pretty good on the empathy front so I assumed that my empathy was in fact validating my […]

Are You Cultivating the Relationship?

The phone had been silent for several days and Shannon began to worry. Silence usually meant something was going on that her daughter didn’t want her to know about. Silence meant whatever was happening was something that her daughter knew she wouldn’t approve of. Silence meant this chasm would widen, the earth would give way, […]

When Our Kids Come Home

Melanie lay across the university lawn excited yet tentative. She couldn’t wait until finals were over…one more to go and she would be finished with the semester. Yet she wasn’t ready to leave the university. She loved the comradery of being with the other kids not to mention the independence of doing what she wanted […]