True or False

Consider what your vote is on the following and why. Feel free to comment/question any or all.

1) Problems are a given in marriage
2) Stress has the capability to strengthen or destroy
3) I am not searching for some issue-less utopia; rather, a workable format for resolving or handling the complexities of my marriage relationship
4) If I am unable to talk with and understand my partner, it is unlikely that we will survive the fallout
5) Financial issues dominate our day-to-day lives. If we don't properly handle these they are likely to destroy our marriage
6) Sex has little to do with physicality and almost everything to do with mentality and perception
7) Anger, fear and insecurity, although justifiable at times can do more damage to my marriage than almost anything else if used inappropriately.
8) Forgiveness, forgetfulness, forbearance - all Godly traits - when missing from a marriage relationship, leave holds that weaken and ultimately allow the relationship to collapse
9) It is impossible to be rightly related to others without being rightly related to God
10) It is impossible to be rightly related to God without being rightly related to others.

Responsibility Cannot Be Taught

Parents are forever moaning about their children's inability to absorb parental words of wisdom. They always seem to do the exact opposite of what we tell them. Cline/Fay say that one thing for sure we can't tell kids is "be responsible". It doesn't work. The fact is, responsibility cannot be taught; it must be caught. Although it's hard to figure out at times, the hardest things in the world to learn are the things we are told we must do. To help a child gain responsibility we must offer that child opportunities to be responsible. Cline/Fay encourage parents to find ways to let children encounter SLO's for their irresponsibility rather than focus on their responsibilities. The key is to look for when kids are ready to learn the next level of life's lessons. Don't waste time reminding them or worrying for them. The attitude to adopt is "I'm sure you'll remember on your own but if you don't you'll surely learn something from the experience". Parents who do this help children understand they CAN solve their own problems. They're sympathetic but they don't solve their kids problems for them. Children who grow in responsibility also grow in self-confidence and thus are better able to make it in the world once parental ties are cut. I would also add it is necessary to bathe them daily in prayer and for yourselves also so that God's Spirit can guide parents to recognize these SLO's and the "next level of life's lessons.

Kaboomers vs Are You Hurts

Cline/Fay say many parents confuse love, protection and caring. Some may refuse to allow their children to fail because they see such a response as uncaring. Thus, they overcompensate with worry and hyper-concern. Protection is not synonymous with caring but both are a part of love. God allows us to put ourselves in jeopardy yet still cares about and loves us without being overly protective. At birth, of course, responsible parents must respond to their infant with total protectiveness. However, as children grow - beginning at about 9 months with very simple choices - the parents must make a gentle, gradual transition to allowing their children the privilege of solving their own problems. By the time children are eleven or twelve, they should be able to make most decisions without parental input. Parental love and attitude determine how almost all children will handle almost all problems through early adolescence. A group of children on an ice rink or playground will inevitably have children who fall. The parents are usually divided into those who say "kaboom" and those who say "are you hurt". The "hurts" kids will say "yeah, come to think of it, I am hurt". The "kaboom" kids will pick themselves up, dust themselves off and go on playing. The "hurts" learn that a fall is painful. The "kabooms" learn from their mistakes and focus on the original objective. The problem is rescuing parents often rescue out of their own needs. They like to heal hurts. They need to be needed. When kids reach high school and love has been shown largely by protection they may be irreparably damaged. At the very least, these kids won't be much fun for their future spouse. Love kids enough to allow them to fail. Stand back and allow SLO's build your kids.

In Defense of Being a Kid

Taking a momentary rabbit trail away from Cline/Fay I'm intrigued, as many are, by the "tiger Mom" phenomenon. Amy Chua is clearly hitting a nerve. Larry Summers (former President of Harvard and the Obama administration) debated Ms Chua at the World Economic Forum in Davos and asserted that part of the point of childhood is childhood itself. Childhood takes up a quarter of one's life, Summers observed, and thinks it would be nice if children got to enjoy it. James Bernard Murphy, professor of government at Dartmouth College, is cheering Summers' insight. He says, "Children are not merely adults in training. They are also people with distinctive powers and joys. A happy childhood is measured not only by the standards of adult success, but also by the enjoyment of the gifts given to children alone. He then states 4 unique blessings of childhood. 1) gift of moral innocence. Young children are liberated from the knowledge of the full extent of human evil - a knowledge that casts a pall over adult life. This innocence permits children to trust others fully and teaches us what the world ought to be. 2) gift of openness to the future. Adults are hamstrung by our own plans and expectations but children are free to welcome the most improbable new adventures. 3) children are liberated from the grim economy of time. Losing all sense of time means time is not scarce and thus cannot be wasted. 4) parents are focused on adult superiority and therefore forget that most of us produced our best art, asked our deepest philosophical questions, and most readily mastered new gadgets when we were children. Tragically, there is a real conflict within childhood between preparation for adulthood and the enjoyment of the gifts of youth. Preparation for adulthood requires the adoption of adult prudence, discipline and planning that undermine the spontaneous adventure of childhood. Parents are deeply conflicted about how to balance these two basic demands: raising good little ladies and gentlemen, while also permitting children to escape into the irresponsible joys of Neverland." He goes on to note the divergence of opinion from Aristotle, who thought the best thing about childhood was leaving it behind to Jesus, who said "unless you become like a little child you cannot enter the kingdom of God." Should our kids have a Tom Sawyer like adventure or be in training to take over the world? Murphy says most parents are stuck trying to balance the paradoxical demands of both preparing our children for adulthood and protecting them from it. He thinks many parents today would benefit hugely by taking a reflective time out from teaching our children to discover how much we might learn from them. Here's my take. I thought he had some pretty insightful comments but I'm wrestling with the last one. It could be argued that one can take a mental time out to reflect but parents need to realize that they're always teaching their children because children are always watching and thus, learning. I feel extremely blessed because I was one of six children.... and in the middle no less. It was easy to "disappear" for periods of time and live in a Tom Sawyer like adventure of my own creation. Inevitably, it came to an end as I was called in to supper, get ready for bed, school, church etc. In those moments of family time I was painfully aware of and empathetic to real world problems my parents faced.... especially financial. Yet, no matter how poor we were and what we lived without I watched my parents tithe. I didn't know this was a big deal until I took a neighbor friend to church one Sunday whose parents were much better off financially. His folks gave him a dollar to put in the offering and he was stunned at how much my folks gave. He was also surprised that my folks gave each of us money for Sunday School offering while not receiving any allowance even though we all had mandated household chores. Later on, I got my first paying job delivering newspapers and my Dad sat me down at the kitchen table the first Saturday I came home from collecting for that week's papers. I received my first instruction on tithing and, more importantly, trusting God as Dad divided my earnings into what I owed the Star Gazette, what I owed to God and what I could keep. I was taught that it was all God's anyway and I was just giving Him back a portion of that which I had received. It was an easy lesson to understand and accept because of my parents teaching by example. I never worried about my parents financial issues or any other issues because I fully trusted that they trusted God and that would make everything all right. Maybe that's what Jesus meant when He said, "you must become like a little child."

You can pay me now or pay me later

Some of us remember that old car oil filter commercial where the object lesson was pay for regular oil changes (with their filter of course) or pay for expensive engine repairs later. Cline and Fay use this strategy in allowing kids to learn lesser expense lessons early in life as opposed to very expensive lessons later in life. Love and Logic tip #2 says the oder a child gets, the bigger the decisions become, and the graver the consequences of those decisions. These early mistakes allowed by wise parents are usually at affordable prices that involve temporary pain and a few tears. Mouthing off to an older, bigger kid may result in a black eye on the playground but a parent who protects their child from the consequences of their behavior may face a bigger problem when a teen mouths off to a police officer. They illustrate a friend who  they observed handing out money to their kids. An inquiry revealed the parent was making loans with due dates, promissory notes and collateral. The parent revealed a recently repossessed $29 tape recorder. They observed that a neighbor kid at 26 years old learned the same lesson when the bank repossessed his Camaro. Their kid has a 16 year head start on the neighbor kid. Is allowing a black eye love?