Insight for Today's culture

A Teenagers Dream, and A Parent’s Nightmare [One Minute Feature]

Dropping out of school may sound pretty tempting for your high schooler. In their minds, they’ll just eat your food, sleep in under your roof, and effectively mooch everything off of you for the rest of their lives.

This scenario sounds like a dream come true for teenagers, but an absolute nightmare for their parents. Before they decide to drop out of school, it’s time to issue some tough love.

Prioritizing Home with Carrie Gress [Podcast]

So much of successful parenting has to do with the dynamics involved in not confusing the urgent with the important and then knowing how to prioritize the things that actually are important. So, how do you measure your success as a parent? Is it gauged by how you or your kids are made to feel all the time? By your kids’ grades? By your financial status or the number of material blessings you can provide them?

Have we mortgaged our kids' childhoods for "stuff" and status? Why shouldn't our success be gauged more by the relational peace, contentment, fulfillment, joy, and security that we and our kids actually bring to one another? And by the eternal …

To Trust or Not to Trust [One Minute Feature]

As parents, we want to trust our kids. In everything! Feeling as though we can’t trust them must mean they’ve given us a reason to think that way.

This simply isn’t true. It’s our responsibility to guide our children through life, and this may mean not always trusting them in every situation.

Last Resort [One Minute Feature]

Residential care can be the saving grace for a troubled teen. But should it be the first line of defense?

I like to equate residential care to heart surgery. It’s often needed to correct an underlying problem, but it should be viewed as a last resort.

Starving and Choking [One Minute Feature]

Daily, we see images of the struggles of children around the world. Kids living in filth, and wondering where their next meal will come from.

Meanwhile, in America, our kids are worried about trivial things like not having to eat their vegetables, and whether they style their hair just right.

Hot Topics [One Minute Feature]

There are a lot of crazy things going on in the world today. It’s only natural to want to shield our children from them.

The unfortunate thing is that it’s becoming harder to hide these things from our kids. We need to be at the forefront and discuss these issues with them before someone else has a chance to influence their thoughts.