Category Archives: Parenting
Three Undeniable Things
Unfinished Business
Your Kids Will Make Their Choices
On this Earth,
Your kids will make their choices—
Which is exactly what
God has put them here to do.
To Suffer the Bully
I don’t suppose
I have ever been the one
To suffer the bully,
But to deny him face to face.
Yet to this day,
I meet so many bullies
Who have learned from experience
Not to expect any
Efficacious pushback.
And I can’t help but to wonder
Whether our culture
Actually deserves the menace
When we refuse both
The courage and wisdom alike
To put it in its place.
The bully who must be stopped
With a bullet when he is thirty
Might have been reformed
With a bloody nose at twelve,
A firm rebuke at seven,
Or a fine example at three.
Spare the Rod
The behaviors that now get one labeled as a “narcissist”
Bear a striking resemblance to those for which
Certain toddlers used to earn efficacious spankings.
Our Son
Our son—
This wonder to us
With a mind of his own
That sees and hears the world
And reports back to us his own findings
In this sweet fellowship into which we have grown
In these nineteen years—
Kids Afraid
I have seen kids afraid.
Afraid of me.
Afraid of one another.
Afraid to think.
Afraid to wonder.
Afraid to be uncomfortable.
Afraid to invest themselves.
Afraid to take a chance.
Afraid to get it wrong.
Afraid to get it right.
Afraid to miss out.
Afraid to join in.
Afraid to love.
Afraid to be loved.
The One Child Has Learned
Modern Man Doesn’t Know How
The pendulum may continue to swing until
Modern man doesn’t know how to do anything anymore
Except to work a job to pay someone else to do everything for him—
Farming out nearly everything out until he has forgotten how to do anything for himself.