You can feel it when you walk in the door – families have a particular culture or personality! Whether intentional or not, every home will develop its own manner of living and interacting. The question is – how can you encourage a healthy family culture that will strengthen as it goes on? How can you avoid a negative, or even toxic, family life that drags everyone down?

Sonya Shafer at Simply Charlotte Mason

“Potty Mouth” – A Big Deal, or Not? – “What should I do about my kids’ ‘potty mouth’?” asked a young father in our church. Learning appropriate behavior and speech patterns is part of socialization, but is there a bigger issue than being “socially acceptable”?

Encouraging More Edifying Speech – The Bible says a lot about the power of the tongue – the question for us is, how do we train and encourage our families to speak in a more gracious and edifying way, when the culture around us grows more unkind and profane every day?

Raising Kids to Love Their Siblings – Is sibling rivalry just something to expect? Is it a foregone conclusion that our kids are going to be simmering with jealousy, rivalry, and unkindness toward one another? Or is there a way to promote friendship and affection between brothers and sisters? We have eight kids, and while they’ve had their moments of conflict, we’ve been blessed to see them grow in genuine love as they’ve matured. How can we foster this sort of relationship in the home?

Name-Calling and Why It’s Important – Sticks and stones … right? We’ve all heard that, and probably told our kids that one time or another. Yet name-calling is not only a plague of childhood, it’s actually a problem throughout life … and we adults are warned by Christ Himself to be wary of the temptation! This episode, we look at what the Bible says about a deceptively simple and “harmless” practice that can trip us up when we least expect it!

We recently finished three events in Alaska (Sterling, Anchorage, and Fairbanks) and recorded this episode in a cabin between Fairbanks and Anchorage. It’s an amazing state!

Locals told us that only 30% of visitors actually get a clear view of Denali – but we did! We took this picture from Talkeetna, about sixty miles away. The day before, you couldn’t see any mountains whatsoever – the weather just covered that whole 20,000-foot peak. We consider ourselves blessed to get a sighting on our first trip – some people visit for years and never see it.

We’ll be speaking at three major conferences in the coming weeks:

Be sure to stop by our booth and say hi!

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