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.”

Blue-state progs keep screaming the quiet part out loud: Your kids don’t belong to you!

Tommy Hoyt, a Democratic New Hampshire state legislator, is just the latest example.

A parent urged him to back a bill demanding that schools not withhold info about their kids from parents (i.e., no more secret social transitioning or woke brainwashing).

Hoyt’s remarkable response: “Do you know why children’s results tanked during COVID? Their parents were incompetent teachers. Do your children a favor, let the teachers teach, and shut up. You’re clearly no professional.”

Set aside the obvious self-serving lie here: Remote “learning,” demanded by teachers unions and their legislative lackeys like Hoyt, wrecked the scores, not parental concern.

Far worse is the contempt for parents, all too typical of Democrats today.

Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments. Deuteronomy 7:9   How does a parent help an adult child? When your little boy or girl was small and fell down and … 5 Guidelines To Parenting Your Adult Children Read More »

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.

1. One of the greatest areas that we can pray for our children is for their salvation.
2. At the same time, we can pray that our children will come to have a love for God’s Word.
3. Pray that our children will learn the benefit and joy of submitting to God and obeying Him.
4. Another area that I frequently pray for my children is for them to be convicted of their sin.
5. Pray that God will protect them from evil.
6. Pray that our children will have wisdom and make wise choices in their lives.
7. Pray that our children will have Godly friendships.
8. Pray for our children to make wise choices in a future spouse and to have God’s favor in doing so.

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.

“Read this,” he said, pitching me Catholic priest and writer Henri Nouwen’s spiritual classic “The Return of the Prodigal Son.” It’s a meditation inspired by the author’s response to a reproduction of Rembrandt’s eponymous and hauntingly beautiful painting. How strange the book was there in Amanda’s bookcase, my own poor man’s tolle lege experience. “Your dad is not wrong. None of you are.”

I devoured the book. It taught me that while we tend to be each actor — prodigal son, elder son, even the father — at different stages of life, we ultimately are called to progress to spiritual fatherhood. That is, we’re called to love one another exactly as the compassionate father did, with self-emptying hearts of mercy.

After all, neither the justice the prodigal son demanded nor the justice the elder son expected ultimately satisfies. Knowing this, the father gave his heirs freely and fully not the mere justice they sought but the far greater mercy they needed.

Justice may even the scales, but in mercy, the world is remade anew. As a broken world, so a penitent man. As we need merciful forgiveness, so must we grant it. As we are loved by God, so must we try to love one another. For nothing you have not given away, as C.S. Lewis wrote, will ever really be yours.

In other words, in the parable of the prodigal son we are, in fact, called to identify with the father, just like my old man said.

A Dutch painter inspired a fellow countryman priest centuries later, whose book helped a Tennessee doctor explain the true meaning of fatherhood to a North Carolina lawyer, but make no mistake. I was once again astonished at how much my old man had learned.

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.

But let’s not kid ourselves here. Even had Doocy supplied her with examples, Psaki would have said she needed “context” before being able to comment, and then when she got it she’d still have come out and spouted the same meaningless points that avoided the actual substance of the law.

Further, the White House tapdancing all around this topic by suggesting they stand shoulder to shoulder with parents who are supposedly worried about their kids receiving unequal treatment is a clear signal they are trying to reframe this whole subject into one where the parental rights of those who have LGBTQ children are the ones whose rights are being violated. //

Bonchie @bonchieredstate
They will never answer the question because even they are embarrassed of their stance.

Townhall.com @townhallcom
DOOCY: "At what age does the White House think that students should be taught about sexual orientation and gender identity?"

PSAKI: "This law...is politicians in Florida propagating misinformed, hateful policies that do absolutely nothing to address the real issues."
Embedded video
4:26 PM · Apr 4, 2022

A bioethicist claims there are no moral reasons for disallowing skin cells to be turned into ova and sperm (in vitro gametogenesis, IVG) — already done in mice — so as to allow open-ended means of having children. When coupled with other emerging biotechnologies, there would be few impossibilities! From, “Is There a Valid Ethical Objection to the Clinical Use of In Vitro-Derived Gametes?”:

IVG affords biological parenthood to more family constructions than does natural conception. Concerns regarding this fact constitute a large proportion of those found in the literature. Biological parenthood could conceivably be made accessible to the deceased; postmenopausal women; single individuals; same-sex couples; groups of more than two individuals; children, fetuses and embryos. //

Ethicists discourage objections based on natural law as they have been illustrated to be flawed and morally prejudiced. Even if this were not the case, an attack on the unnatural is a prima facie move which targets the entire medical profession, including medicines, vaccines and other ARTs. This is something that, one must assume, is not the intention of proponents of such a view.

Therefore, one may say instead that reproductive IVG somehow crosses a line and is more unnatural than other medical interventions but even this is difficult to justify. When one is less accustomed to a certain practice, it may attract more distrust or criticism than is warranted; this is a manifestation of the mere-exposure effect, a cognitive bias that renders individuals more averse to the unfamiliar. //

The West is engaged in the most radical remaking of the basic structure of the family in human history — enabled by the most powerful technologies ever devised — methods that can literally change our genomes down the generations and erase fundamental family definitions.

And we are inert in the face of the chaos that could (would, in my view) result therefrom. Not only are we not creating reasonable boundaries; we aren’t even talking about it.

No standards! No norms! Anything goes! These are the seeds of our destruction.

Parents’ bills of rights could still turn out to be gimmicks, but at least it’s an attempt to put parents back in charge of education.

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.

Unfortunately for this young family, though, their nightmare was not over. Instead, two months after their child was returned to them, they received a letter from DCFS notifying them that their names were being added to the state’s registry of child abusers.

It’s “like a nightmare that won’t end,” the father, Chris, told WDSU in their report.

But it is all too common.

Yes, even when the parents have been found “not guilty” of any criminal charges. Even when the family court judge orders the baby returned, declaring that the home is safe.

The system is deeply flawed, preventing most parents from getting any kind of legal due process until after their name has been added to the roll.

At least in Louisiana, it looks like their names are not added until their appeal is waived or concluded. Chris and Tess won their appeal, so their names never actually went on the list. But this is not the norm in every state. And the harm to families is real.

Attorney Andrew Brown of the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) is an ally of the Parental Rights Foundation, working together to bring reform in this area. Andrew was also quoted in the WDSU report: “When you separate a child from their family, you are guaranteed to cause trauma to that child, even if it’s just for a week.”

That’s why we drafted a model bill to provide due process before a parent’s name goes on the list. It’s why we introduced that model to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in 2019 and secured their endorsement of it.

It’s why we supported the work of Brown’s TPPF to bring that model to fruition in Texas during the 2021 session. And it’s why we’re gearing up to introduce similar legislation in additional states in 2022. //

If you know a lawmaker willing to champion such a bill, send them the model (available online here) as a starting point. Then email Michael@ParentalRights.org and let me know who you’ve reached out to (and, ideally, any response you receive).

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!

Attorney General Merrick Garland made a stunning announcement about having the FBI and U.S. Attorneys’ Offices coordinate with federal, state, and local law enforcement to deal with “threats” of violence against school boards and people working in schools. //

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has championed the rights of parents to speak on behalf of their own children — something that should be self-evident and unquestionable — threw down the gauntlet, speaking out against this troubling announcement from Garland.

“Attorney General Garland is weaponizing the DOJ by using the FBI to pursue concerned parents and silence them through intimidation,” DeSantis tweeted. “Florida will defend the free speech rights of its citizens and will not allow federal agents to squelch dissent.”

DeSantis has stood up for parents’ rights in the battle over pandemic restrictions, with DeSantis fighting for the parents’ rights to speak on whether to have their children masked. //

RNC Research
@RNCResearch
Biden's Education Secretary Cardona says parents should not be the "primary stakeholder" in their kids' education.

12:55 PM · Sep 30, 2021

Terry McAuliffe, running for a second, non-consecutive term for the governor of Virginia, let it be known that he thinks parents should have no say in their children’s education, during a recent gubernatorial debate.

According to McAuliffe, “I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decision. … I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

Without missing a beat, McAuliffe’s opponent, Glenn Youngkin, countered with, “You believe school systems should tell children what to do. I believe parents should be in charge of their kids’ education.”

Apparently, McAuliffe, who served as governor of the Commonwealth from 2014 to 2018, is unfamiliar with the law in his own state.

Per the Code of Virginia § 1-240.1. Rights of parents, “A parent has a fundamental right to make decisions concerning the upbringing, education, and care of the parent’s child.”

McAuliffe’s comment, however, is symbolic of the tense divide that is occurring in school districts throughout the nation.

The crux of the matter is simple: Should parents or government bureaucrats determine (for the most part) how and more importantly, what, America’s children learn in public schools.

derkrieger
13 minutes ago
This view of the State über alles is the mainstream view within the Democrat party.

I wish this would get more analysis and reporting but expanding the power and control of the State is now the prime goal of the Democrat party. Obamacare was the most recent step in that direction but the $3.5 T “infrastructure” is a huge leap in that direction.

The Democrats don’t want to govern, they want to rule. The path to the power to rule runs through the welfare state.

When you are dependent on the federal government for food, shelter, health care, education, retirement, child care, and a basic income you are no longer a citizen, you are a subject. Subjects do as they are told and have little to no power over their government.

This is their goal.

Terry McAuliffe: "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach." //.

On what planet should parents not be directly involved in what’s being taught to their children? It is parents who elect schoolboards or elect the officials who appoint them. Kids are not wards of the state, not yet anyway, and it’s jarring to see someone who wants to be governor of a fairly large state pronounce that parents should have no say in whether educators feed their children garbage or not. //

Obviously, this debate is spurned by things like Critical Race Theory and transgender ideology. But even if someone is far-left enough to believe those things are good to teach in schools, it’s a step further to denounce the autonomy that parents have over their own kids.

But this is a symptom of a much larger problem permeating the Democrat Party, both locally and nationally. It is this idea that the state knows all, can provide all, and has a duty to “protect” others from people deemed unclean. //

That’s why McAuliffe said what he said, as politically stupid as it may have been. He truly believes it, and his party truly believes it. They think they can raise your kids better than you can, and they think they have the right to, up to and including crushing parental rights.