Children benefit from structure more than they appreciate structure. As the Howards wrote and podcasted a few weeks ago - “Back to School and a Family Reset” - summer days of relaxed rules must eventually give way to the structure of a new school year. We have a few more ideas to share on the subject. To start, getting up on time and going to bed earlier can be a parental challenge to enforce. Curtailing [...]
We've all heard the saying: "There's no free lunch." Economists use the phrase to remind us that everything has a cost. Even when something appears free, someone, somewhere, paid for it. It's a simple idea. But it may be one of the most important lessons we can teach our children. Children begin life delightfully unaware of what it takes to make a family function. Meals appear. Laundry gets folded. The lights come on. The house [...]
Around when your child is 10, play this mental game - “Grab a live chicken. Got ‘em? Ok, now pluck all the feathers off the chicken. Get in there and pull them from the wings, the back, the tail. Get ‘em all. Are they all gone? Ok, now, put all the feathers back on the chicken.” A plucked chicken is good and plucked. Some decisions are irreversible. I don’t know where this came from, but [...]
In these OneFamily Letters, we try to support families with principles, techniques, encouragement, and examples from our own lives and from the many healthy families we know. We often write about what worked well for us. But there is another side to the story. Let’s be real. Parenting is filled with dilemma after dilemma. You make decisions in real time without fully understanding the long-term implications. You act with love, conviction, fear, exhaustion, hope, immaturity, [...]
There is an element in human nature that struggles to appreciate prosperity, wholesomeness, progress, and success. Why that is remains a mystery. As parents, we aspire for our children to fulfill their God-given gifts and capabilities. When we pause to consider the incredible material and personal blessings many of us enjoy today, it truly is remarkable. We, Lis and Dave, own our home and raised our children in it. We made this house a place [...]
Often, it’s not the big issues that determine direction, but the small ideas we choose to adopt along the way. And occasionally, one small idea can compound into something transformational. That was our story. Our kids were very young, and our marriage had barely begun by our 10-year anniversary. We were “happy”, but in our mid-30s, we were just figuring things out. The arguments, the snipping, and the frustrating power struggles were a function of [...]
If you haven’t seen WALL-E, the 2008 Disney Pixar film, you should. It’s a surprisingly thoughtful animated movie about a lonely little robot living on an abandoned Earth centuries into the future. At one point in the film, humans are living aboard a spaceship where every aspect of life has been automated and optimized for comfort. The humans are entertained, fed, transported, and protected—but disconnected, passive, and disengaged. Their comforts have quietly consumed their humanity. [...]
What does it mean to be a Marr? This became one of the most important questions we faced as a young family. It wasn’t something we thought about when we got married. Coming from different cultures—Lis from Sweden and Dave from California—family identity wasn’t a concept either of us grew up with. But as we raised our three children from childhood into adulthood, we discovered that family identity played a significant role in our children’s [...]
“I am my father’s son.” That phrase has carried more meaning for me as the years have passed. When I was a teenager, my father went to play handball one afternoon. Somewhere in the middle of the game, he collapsed. He passed out right there on the court, and an ambulance rushed him to the hospital. For me, as a young man, it felt shocking—something serious must have happened. But the diagnosis was surprisingly simple: [...]
Hey guys, this is Dave. In trying to come up with a topic for today’s letter, I was thinking back on all the things I thought were difference makers, you know, those actions on my part that stood out as a family builder. I did the ‘dad writes a note’ in the kids’ lunch sack, and that was really good, but Lis was the one who reminded me to do it. I ate dinner at [...]