The above picture of ‘Little Tiny Buddy Kevin and Shelli Belly’ has been pinned up in our office for almost 22 years. Taken before digital photos had really caught on, it’s a little tattered and a lot loved. If the house were to catch fire, this is what we’d run inside for. This picture captures for us the love of our family. Last year, we sent you a Letter entitled Sibling Best Friends Forever. The [...]
In our Five Minute Warning letter, we discussed the idea of creating an environment to succeed by establishing a time frame for obeying and honoring relationships through offering a window of compliance. Similar to that idea, last summer, a dear friend of ours from Trevor’s baseball team shared with us a pearl of wisdom she had heard in a sermon at her church and how she creatively applied it in her family – Take Five. [...]
This issue of getting the kids involved in family chores and what to pay them for allowance, if any, was a confusing bit of parenting for the Marr family. Now that the kids are grown and we can reevaluate our handiwork, we can validate some of our decisions and might revise others. Family chores are life’s maintenance activities that must get done in order to have a reasonably orderly life. As always, in raising children, [...]
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” ― Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) / Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153) This might be a bit overstated for our topic today, but it does drive home the point. How many times have we said this: Someday I’m going to… Once I get through this, I’m going to… This spring I’m going to… I’ll do it next time… …and then it never happens. You don’t follow through or, [...]
After Dave spanked our son for doing nothing other than being a little boy, he came back to bed totally defeated. “I have no idea what I’m doing.” Lis was pregnant with Michelle and was due in a month. So in anticipation of the new arrival, we moved Daniel to a ‘big boy bed’ well in advance so he didn’t feel kicked out by his sibling. The first night Daniel got out of bed repeatedly. [...]
On a recent business trip, Rich encountered a special moment when he noticed an older business couple had brought along their two young granddaughters – maybe 6 and 8 – to help handout company literature at the business reception. Cynically, Rich initially thought “What a despicable and cheap way to use your granddaughters to promote your business interests… Why didn’t I think of that!” But, seriously, as the afternoon and evening wore on, Rich witnessed [...]
Have you ever considered the temperaments or taken a temperament test? Shelly and Trevor are Phlegmatic while Rich and Alex are Choleric. These are the temperaments in our family. Like love languages, temperaments are a tool that help us to describe our emotional/personality characteristics. We have found that knowing our own temperament and our boys’ temperaments has been very helpful in our parenting and understanding some of the dynamics in our relationships. We have also [...]
Disagreements are a part of married life. Often they are temporary misperceptions of intent and priority. Sometimes little irritations accumulate over time and are like small items not put away until you look around and see that things are a mess. These little irritations can easily be blown out of proportion where discussions can lead to accusations of character flaws, indifference to shared priorities, and even loss of love. Our early marriage went down this [...]
One of the greatest joys you can experience as a parent is when your child lets you into their private world. What is the private world? It is a special place where we hold deeper thoughts, treasured memories, and we feel the most vulnerable. It is the essence of who we are. The private world is what we share with our spouse and only our closest, most trusted friends. As our children begin to grow [...]
Current research shows us that having a shared Family Mealtime has huge benefits for marriages and families. A recent Cornell University Report tells us that families who share meals together, at least 3 meals per week, will: Have improved psychological well-being Increase academic achievement Establish healthy communication Significantly decrease the risk for eating disorders or becoming overweight Create “space/margin” from a hectic day Build healthy relationships among all family members Develop feelings of closeness and [...]