A mom offered a heartfelt reframing of the statement, 'You only have 18 summers with your kids,' explaining that if parents show up for their kids in the ways they need, their relationship will continue for so much longer. //

Sitting in her car with sunlight streaming through the windows, Heaphy said, “Everyone tells you, ‘You only have 18 summers with your kids.’ Everyone tells you, ‘You only have a few years before they start school.’ Everyone tells you, ‘Blink and you’ll miss it.’ But I want to offer you a new perspective.”

How about we tell people, ‘If you do it well, if you love them hard, if you show up for them when they need you to, it is not just 18 summers.’” She offered words that parents — and their children — will find soothing and hopeful, words that act as a balm to everyone growing older.

Heaphy believes parenting is a lifelong journey, one that continues blooming even as kids grow older.

“What if I told you that these years when they’re young, when you’re both young, are creating a lifetime of love and that you have the ability to shape that. That right now, you are creating the start of a love story that will continue on,” Heaphy said.

“If you do it well, not perfectly, but if you do it well, and what is ‘well’ will be different to everyone, motherhood doesn’t need to be limited to the early years,” she explained. “Motherhood continues until you take your last breath.”

Heaphy holds tight to the idea that the relationships parents cultivate with their kids lay the groundwork for how their future might unfold. When parents are present, when they hold space for their children, loving and accepting them as they are, those children will grow into adults who continuously love and appreciate their parents, in turn.

“So you have more time,” Healy said. “You do. You have so much more time. And what you’re doing right now, although it may seem like it’s fleeting, is building a really solid foundation for the years to come.”

Nebraska has created a unique path for women and families to show reverence for the loss of children in the womb. Other state legislatures should follow.

In Nebraska, any woman who has suffered a miscarriage of her child during a pregnancy that a state-licensed health professional has confirmed is eligible to receive a commemorative birth certificate for the child, without regard to when the miscarriage occurred. So even women who suffered a miscarriage many years ago may request the certificates. Nebraska’s law is the first of its kind to require no minimum gestational period and to be retroactive.

The arguments against sleepovers are logical. In a fragmented age with weakened communities, it’s harder to know where we’re sending our kids. In an age in which broken homes are even more common than when we were growing up, there are myriad variables thrown into the mix that our own parents never had to worry about.

While I am a huge proponent of making babies, and not just in the figurative sense, remember what life was like before you started making them. The freedom, the tranquility, the relative absence of inexplicable destruction to the kitchen can all be yours again, if only for a night. All that’s required is that you bring in a gaggle of other children on some night in the future and let them inflict a multiplicative level of damage upon your kitchen while your friends enjoy getting out the pressure washer and not running the dishwasher for an evening.

It’s not just about selfishness, either. As Dougherty mentioned, there is value in kids learning how to behave and be polite in a foreign environment. There’s the meal the host family loves that your kid doesn’t but has to choke down enough of. There are the differing family dynamics and interactions to navigate. The sleepover is a reality check, at least initially.

For we Gen Xers often moved beyond that reality check and to a point when we had secondary families. You didn’t have to ask what you could eat because you knew. Your dad didn’t hesitate to insist your buddy and you go out in the backyard and split some firewood. Good fences may make good neighbors, but the real magic happens when you have those neighbors who can come through the gate and get some callouses alongside you.

Not that the modern sleepover features much manual labor, unless you count the half-hearted attempts at cleaning the kitchen after the kids get done baking cookies, but they’re still a blending of people together, a little slice of community in an age in which we’re all always on the go.

Our children are fragile. They are mortal. They deserve our fierce protection. They also deserve to be raised to become adults, capable of navigating society and, yes, risks. Maybe they’ll see a movie you wouldn’t have approved of in your home. Maybe you’re the parents who let them watch that movie.

Which isn’t to say anything goes. There’s a difference between getting to watch a highly problematic movie like, say, “The Goonies,” what with its language and ableism and cisnormative displays, and watching porn, but that’s another way in which the sleepover can be beneficial. It can force parents out of their own bubbles and into talking to other parents, finding ones with whom they feel comfortable entrusting their little demons for an evening.

Christopher Ingraham @_cingraham
·
The latest data on happiness from the General Social Survey is truly something else. Nothing remotely like it in the past five decades of polling. https://thewhyaxis.substack.com/p/new-data-shows-americans-more-miserable
11:05 AM · Jan 28, 2022

Americans are also having fewer children than ever before, with the nation’s birth rate falling for the sixth consecutive year in 2020 to its lowest ever. Just 3.6 million babies were born, according to CDC statistics, down from 3.7 million the year before.

There are a lot of reasons why Americans aren’t having more children. Marriage is declining so rapidly that married people will soon be the minority. Faith, the bedrock of a moral society that incentivizes children (and empirically raises levels of happiness) has deteriorated so much that church membership has already dropped below 50 percent, according to Gallup. Americans aren’t even having as much sex, or even engaging in masturbation which signals a lack of interest. //

A happy population is one that flourishes with procreation, so enamored by its miracle that it chooses to pay it forward with pride so that future generations may experience the same gift. That no matter its trials, life is worth living, and it’s worth bestowing onto others.

Instead, life’s rejection of the unborn out of spite for an allegedly evil and crumbling civilization is a signal of deep-seated anguish on the rise today.

Many low-resource areas of the world are short on medical technology, including incubators. So why not turn parents into pseudo-incubators? When a baby is born prematurely, a good way to help the baby survive and thrive is simply to hold it close to a parent's naked chest. No technology needed!

That's the essence of kangaroo care.

It's a method of holding the baby, clad only in a diaper, right up against a parent's bare chest for skin-to-skin contact. In 1978, physician researchers Edgar Rey Sanabria and Héctor Martínez-Gómez introduced the technique at the maternity ward of the San Juan de Dios Hospital in Bogota, Colombia. //

"It was what we had to do and it saved my child's life" //

"It creates a link to my child and brings me closer with my wife" //

"I started taking part ... to give the love of a father to my children"

Welcome to Screen-Free Parenting. Becoming a mother led me to start this site back in 2016 to help parents, doctors, and other caregivers tackle the challenge of raising a child in today’s tech-heavy world.

Since 2016, a lot has changed and the pandemic has forced rapid adoption of tech by many families that were otherwise very thoughtful about screen time.

We’re here to help. Since our inception we have been scouring academic publications and written hundreds of articles to help you make smart choices and advocate for the children. Over the years this site has gotten deep with research results and helpful, fun parenting tips.

This positive journey has led me to write my book Spoiled Right: Delaying Screen Time and Giving Children What They Really Need, and develop an old-fashioned family board game called Starting Lines.

Without mystery, hero, handsome prince or fairy godmother — Goodnight Moon has now lulled millions of children to sleep, in more than two dozen languages, for 75 years.

Guidepost’s findings include an email sent by the executive vice president and general council of the SBC’s Executive Committee, in which he comments on those bringing accusations against the SBC:

This whole thing should be seen for what it is. It is a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism. It is not the gospel. It is not even a part of the gospel. It is a misdirection play.

This line of thinking has played out on the mission field, too, as can be seen in published reports on the treatment of victims of child abuse overseas. For example, in 1997, the Christian and Missionary Alliance’s Independent Commission of Inquiry reported on claims of abuse at Mamou Alliance Academy, a boarding school in Guinea run by the C&MA from 1950 to 1971. About the students at Mamou, one missionary mother told the commission,

They were never allowed the freedom of expressing their hurts, their problems, their emotions to us. Each week the obligatory letter was not only read but censored, and forced to be rewritten if it appeared at all negative. This destroyed a vital link that could have helped maintain a fragmented family bond. They were repeatedly told not to share adverse happenings either by letter or by word on vacation with parents, lest it upset the parents and interfere with the work they were doing for God. The hidden message to the child was that God was more important, work was more important to the parents that [sic] one’s own child.

The commission summarized the reasoning behind censoring letters as “Children were advised not to upset their parents, lest their ministry to Africans be compromised and Africans left to their pagan ways.” //

We must be alert. Talking points for conversations with children—and adults—should include that secrets shouldn’t be kept, wrongs shouldn’t be hidden, and complaints shouldn’t be silenced in order to “protect the mission.” That needs to be said out loud over and over again to combat all the times that the opposite has been spoken or inferred.

Abuse in the church hinders the mission, not the exposing of that abuse. Silencing or shunning those who make accusations hinders the mission, not the act of hearing them out. //

There’s more to the mission of the church than just going and making disciples. There’s listening to and looking out for the oppressed and the vulnerable. There’s shining the light in dark places. And there’s speaking and acknowledging what is true.

The mission. The mission. The mission. The whole mission.

For those who still think aborting special needs babies is necessary in order to spare them, and the parents, burden, pain, and difficulty, Hartman had this to say:

Here’s what I can tell you: Many times people speak about special needs as being a negative and I’ve seen it as nothing but a positive. My daughter and I are much closer than we would have ever been because of her special needs. Morgan is someone who has taught in a very positive way not just my wife and myself and our family, but also other people about the importance of life.

And because Morgan was the spark that inspired Gordon Hartman to create a world where she belonged, other special needs children and their families now have a place of belonging and welcome too.

1. Wise Digital Citizens Understand that the Digital World is Public.
   There is no private message or disappearing photo that can’t be made public. Screenshots, using one device to take a photo of another device, and a quick “copy and paste” are a few of the ways that images and words shared electronically can be saved and shared by the recipient to an unintended recipient. //

2. Wise Digital Citizens Understand that the Digital World is Forever.
   Similar but different to the “digital is public” truth, digital is forever. Only a few short decades ago, when a note was passed between students in school or a photograph shared, it could be torn up into tiny pieces, doused with water, and thrown in the trash, even burned or put through a shredder. It would take a CIA-level forensics lab to even attempt to reassemble the message if there were any physical paper or part of the photograph remaining. Kids could truly destroy something they wrote or a photo of themselves.

All the same ways of saving things that were mentioned above apply here. That not only means that words and images can be shared but also that they can be stored. Forever. It’s not entirely unheard of for a business or educational institute to learn more about an individual through social media or an Internet search. Preteens and teens struggle with the idea of long-term consequences by the very nature of their maturity. Have your kids ask themselves, before posting: “What would I think about it if an adult I admired posted or shared the same thing? Would it be bad?” //

3. Wise Digital Citizens Understand that the Digital World is Human.
   It is approximately one billion times easier to say something mean across cyberspace than to someone’s face. Looking someone in the eye is powerful. Extreme emotions are easier to express when you don’t have to look the person in the eye and deal with the consequences. Cyberbullying is outrageously common, especially for young girls. For example, it may be hard to physically get up and move everyone at a lunch table, leaving one person to eat alone, but it takes less than a second to delete someone from a group chat or post a nasty comment on someone’s Instagram post. //

4. Wise Digital Citizens Understand that the Digital World is a Security Risk.
   Full names. Emails. Phone numbers. Addresses. Birth dates. The amount of data systems and strangers can get from profiles is disturbing. The same is true for using public wifi and clicking on links from unknown senders. Hackers don’t limit their attacks to adults, and if they can get a child’s data, they can make their life miserable as they grow up and begin interacting as an adult.

Referencing the “digital is public” point, have family ground rules for what is shared in a profile, especially those that are public on platforms or in systems by default. Read the fine print to know what you can hide from strangers when you are entering personal information. Talk about how to create unique passwords, where to store those passwords, and how never to click on a link sent by someone you don’t know. Have expectations for what kind of apps you use to transfer money, and make sure that kids know to never share things like their social security number. //

5. Wise Digital Citizens Understand that the Digital World is Powerful.
   Words, images, and videos all shape us. Studies show how viewing porn can be addictive and alter brain chemistry, and that is a massive problem in our world today. However, consider how the kind of content your kids consume shapes their behavior in other ways, as well. Most kids (and adults!) will say that media doesn’t shape us, but it’s difficult not to reflect on what we consume or not become numb to things that should bother us.

Germany is adding greater risk to its playgrounds. Some of its climbing structures are now three stories high. And who is requesting this?

Insurance companies. They want kids to grow up "risk competent." Ironically, "safety" culture is stunting kids' risk assessing abilities, in their estimation.

"This is fantastic progress in understanding childhood as the right time for children to learn to recognize and mitigate risk," says Gever Tulley.

Tulley should know. He's founder of the San Francisco Brightworks School author of 50 Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do). //

Perhaps out of fear of just that kind of thing, one school district—Richland, Washington— just plain got rid of its swings, arguing that "swings have been determined to be the most unsafe of all the playground equipment."

That's only because all of the merry-go-rounds, and see-saws, and monkey bars have already been uprooted.

Thus does American childhood remain, for the most part, a mulch-chip, no-slip, primary-colored plastic safe space. Or, as a German insurance exec might put it, a risk-ignorance breeding ground.

the real issue here is kim’s suggestion that healthy parenting means letting children do whatever “brings them happiness.”

half the battle of parenting is implementing rules that interfere with a child’s “happiness,” but we do it anyway because we know what’s best for them. we limit sugar, strap them into car seats, and enforce bedtimes, even despite their often loud protests. why would we not do the same with technology?

in naomi schaefer riley’s book, “be the parent, please: stop banning seesaws and start banning snapchat,” she addresses our cultural and moral failure to help parents actually be parental. riley sternly calls out parental ignorance, explaining that by ignoring common sense and choosing to hand our kids screens anyway, we are choosing “not to parent.”

93.6% of Americans Agree:

“In general, parents have the constitutional right to
make decisions for their children without government interference
unless there is proof of abuse or neglect.” - 2010 Zogby Poll

Children need to be raised and represented by parents who love them, not by disconnected government officials.

Research has found that having children is terrible for quality of life—but the truth about what parenthood means for happiness is a lot more complicated. //

The early research is decisive: Having kids is bad for quality of life. In one study, the psychologist Daniel Kahneman and his colleagues asked about 900 employed women to report, at the end of each day, every one of their activities and how happy they were when they did them. They recalled being with their children as less enjoyable than many other activities, such as watching TV, shopping, or preparing food. Other studies find that when a child is born, parents experience a decrease in happiness that doesn’t go away for a long time, in addition to a drop in marital satisfaction that doesn’t usually recover until the children leave the house. As the Harvard professor Dan Gilbert puts it, “The only symptom of empty nest syndrome is nonstop smiling.” //

The attachment we have to an individual can supersede an overall decrease in our quality of life, and so the love we usually have toward our children means that our choice to bring them into existence has value above and beyond whatever effect they have on our happiness.

This relates to a second point, which is that there’s more to life than happiness. When I say that raising my sons is the best thing I’ve ever done, I’m not saying that they gave me pleasure in any simple day-to-day sense, and I’m not saying that they were good for my marriage. I’m talking about something deeper, having to do with satisfaction, purpose, and meaning. It’s not just me. When you ask people about their life’s meaning and purpose, parents say that their lives have more meaning than those of nonparents. A study by the social psychologist Roy Baumeister and his colleagues found that the more time people spent taking care of children, the more meaningful they said their life was—even though they reported that their life was no happier. //

Raising children, then, has an uncertain connection to pleasure but may connect to other aspects of a life well lived, satisfying our hunger for attachment, and for meaning and purpose. The writer Zadie Smith puts it better than I ever could, describing having a child as a “strange admixture of terror, pain, and delight.” Smith, echoing the thoughts of everyone else who has seriously considered these issues, points out the risk of close attachments: “Isn’t it bad enough that the beloved, with whom you have experienced genuine joy, will eventually be lost to you? Why add to this nightmare the child, whose loss, if it ever happened, would mean nothing less than your total annihilation?” But this annihilation reflects the extraordinary value of such attachments; as the author Julian Barnes writes of grief, quoting a friend, “It hurts just as much as it is worth.”. ///

Seriously?? Something is wrong if this is the case!

A fertility awareness method (FAM) is a modern, evidence-based method of charting one’s menstrual cycle, through observable biological signs unique to each woman, that helps a woman know more about her hormones, overall health, and when during her cycle she is naturally fertile or not. With the information obtained by observing and charting certain biomarkers of fertility, a woman is equipped to reach health goals with greater precision and family planning goals with high rates of effectiveness.

Fertility awareness methods can help a woman understand her body’s menstrual cycle and hormone health and identify and treat reproductive disorders. They can also be used as methods of natural family planning (NFP) that equip a woman to know when she is fertile and when she isn’t, at natural times in her cycle. By avoiding intercourse during periods of her cycle when she is fertile, a woman can use a FAM as a form of natural birth control, and at effectiveness rates that rival pharmaceutical birth control. //

Which FAM should you choose?

The first and most important question is “What do you feel that you can commit to today?” A person’s needs, hormones, and capacities shift over the years, so what works today might not work in a year—or in five years. It’s important to take into account variables like the cost of the method, accessibility to a certified FAM educator (although these days most of them teach online!), and fitting biomarker observations and charting into their schedule. //

One of the greatest advantages of using a fertility awareness method is how they can help identify hormonal imbalances and teach you more about your body than you ever could learn while on hormonal contraception. And that’s why it is crucial to have Reproductive Endocrinologists, OBGYNs, and General Practitioners well versed in fertility awareness methods. //

For more information on getting started charting your cycles with a Fertility Awareness Method or method of Natural Family Planning, check out the following resources:

1. They praise the process
   When you praise the process (e.g., the kid putting effort into a math assignment), instead of the talent or outcome (e.g., the kid's natural ability to solve math problems quickly), kids are more likely to develop a positive attitude toward future challenges. //

2. They never make it a competition
   Parents love to compare — we can't help it! And sometimes, we'll even tell our kids that they're better than others ("You scored more goals than all your teammates combined!").

Often, it's done with good intentions. We want them to feel as proud as we do, and to be motivated to do even better the next time ... but for all the wrong reasons.

It's not healthy to be trapped in a vicious cycle of competition. Social comparisons can teach kids to always measure success based on the outcomes of other people. //

The better approach? Encourage them to compare their past efforts with their present efforts, rather than with other people. This gets them into the habit of shifting their goals away from being better than everyone else and toward self-improvement. //

3. They use observational language
   Instead of saying, "That's so good!", you may want to say, "I love the colors in your painting. Tell me more about why you chose them." (This is what it means to praise the process.)

Another example: Instead of saying, "You looked like a pro riding that bike!," parents of motivated kids might say something like, "You were so careful and focused while riding your bike. Even when you wobbled a bit and almost fell off, you kept going! That was cool to watch." //

Lastly, it's important to create an environment of emotional safety. If your child failed a spelling test, refrain from telling them they should have studied harder. Instead, ask them what they think they can do to improve next time.

Kids need to know that they can come to their parents not just when they've done something well, but also when they are struggling with a specific task or challenge.

AntifaBook.com
@JackPosobiec
BREAKING: UNICEF says any efforts to block children from accessing pornography online might infringe on their human rights
UNICEF Report Says Pornography Not Always Harmful to Children - C-Fam
c-fam.org

After controlling for demographics, the study found, 'young adults who attended Protestant schools are about 70% more likely than their peers who attended public schools to be in an intact marriage.'

'Parental Control Kroha - Screen time & Family Locator' is a powerful child control app for screen time and family location. 'Parental Control Kroha - Screen time & Family Locator' is designed to secure kids and protect kids using smartphones or tablets. You can manage your kids’ screen time, block app, limit app usage, family locator, GPS tracking, website control, night mode, protect eyes, calls history and SMS history. Use the application to limit phone usage and screen time limit for kid’s phone. The application has unique features such as Social Media Chat Monitoring and Eyes protection. 'Parental Control Kroha - Screen time & Family Locator' provides strong parental controls to keep kids safe online and your family link. ★ App Lock: • Block applications and block games on the child’s phone; • Block social media apps; • Limit app usage and apply screen time limit remotely from the parent’s phone; • Set schedules or limit phone usage for family time, bedtime and study time. ★ Screen time: • Screen time shows a detailed view of the daily phone usage; • Apps usage statistics (daily, weekly). Apps screen time; • Set daily screen time limits for each day. ★ Social Media Chat Monitoring: • Monitoring messengers (WhatsApp, Viber); • View SMS history of a child’s phone; • View the calls history on your child's phone. ★ Family Locator & GPS tracking: • Monitor your child’s location on the map in real-time; • Set geo-zone and get notifications if a child leaves this zone. ★ Eyes protection: • Use Night Mode to protect the child’s eyes from intense blue light in the evening; • Use eyes protection to keep your child’s phone screen at the correct distance from your eyes. ★ Block websites & Block Youtube videos: • Monitor websites which your child visited; • Block access to inappropriate websites; • Monitor YouTube videos which your child was watched; • Block inappropriate YouTube videos and channels; • Turn on SafeSearch to protect your kid’s searches online. also app gives you an opportunity to: • Monitor and control the phone book of your child; • Monitor the latest photos taken by the camera or stored in the gallery on the child’s phone; • Monitor the battery level of the child’s phone. Use 'Parental Control Kroha - Screen time & Family Locator' to improve your family links. Spend more family time without mobile phones. Please install this application on your mobile device (smartphone/tablet) and then on your child’s one(s) to perform remote control of a child’s device. Both your phone and your child's phone should have network data capability, as the app uses data to send and receive configuration commands, reports and alerts. The application is designed exclusively for children's protection and safety. If the application is used inappropriately, the company disclaims responsibility for the consequences. Price for the one-year license includes controlling of five different family devices, which can be activated in any mode (Parent/child). Use one account for the whole family Link all your family devices to the account. Mode switching takes several seconds and is free of charge. Check out the subscription price: https://parental-control.net Feedback If you have any issues or questions, you can always contact our support team: support@parental-control.net Permissions This app uses the Device Administrator permission. We can ensure that: • Your children will not uninstall the app without your knowledge. This app uses Accessibility services. We will be able to: • Anonymously protect your children against inappropriate websites; • Measure the amount of time your children spend playing games or by using apps. //

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