Once upon a time, the wheelbarrow was the latest technology. A Chinese politician claims to have invented it, so I’m guessing someone else did and he took credit. Whoever invented it, and it could have happened in more than one place, I can just hear the naysayers.

“Kids these days will not understand real work!”

“This generation will forget how to use their arms!”

Or when the printing press was invented –

“People spend too much time getting artificial and unverifiable information from books.”

“All those fictional stories are keeping kids from developing their own creativity or getting enough exercise.”

There is a tendency in each generation to define technology narrowly as that which has recently been invented. People often complain loudly about the supposed negative impact of new technology. However, the definition of technology is

the application of (scientific) knowledge for practical purposes

Some creative person comes up with another way to harness the features of the world around us in ways that enhance productivity. This leaves us freer to spend less energy struggling with some things. Sometimes it makes fun more practical and other times it makes work more practical. And sometimes fun and work overlap.

Sometimes people view the latest technology like the TSA views forks. The potential bad uses loom so largely in their minds that they forget that forks are quite useful and that most people use them to great advantage. There are many foods that are eaten much more efficiently and with less frustration with a fork.

A fork was once the newest technology. I’m pretty sure someone said it would *make* people fat because they could eat too quickly. Those who grew up just using knives bemoaned the life lessons that eating with a knife taught them, all the while showing off their lip scars…

True, some people probably used forks poorly. Some people might have paid too much for forks. Did some people spend too much time admiring their forks? Maybe if you had never had a fork, you would too!

Those with forks were probably alternately accused of having an unfair advantage because they could eat faster or of abandoning the natural ways of their ancestors. They were probably warned that forks would make their lives more stressful because they would have more time available to make more decisions. There were probably even those who claimed that eating with individual forks was a sign of feeling superior.

Then there were bicycles. S

Nightmare or fond memories? Adding a pet to the family can result in either. Young children often clamor for a pet. New parents often don’t remember the real work involved in having a family pet. And the combination of pets and small children may surprise parents.

Having a pet is sort of like having a child that never grows up. While there may be different philosophies about self-ownership of animals, the practicalities are that pets have to be provided for and even sometimes locked up. There have to be rules of engagement, so-to-speak, so that the animal does not ruin property, hurt people, or get hurt from not understanding the limits of the environment.

For a pet to be enjoyed, and to enjoy its life, there are important factors to consider and prepare for:

Some people are more comfortable with and more naturally intuitive about animals. My husband is one of those people. When he goes out running, dogs just join him of their own accord. For a while, they don’t seem to remember they ever belonged to anyone else. He even pet a bear once that walked right by him when he was about 7 years old. I, on the other hand, was attacked by a dog in high school and it took me years to get over the fear of dogs.

For a family to have a good pet experience, parents should honestly evaluate their own experiences and assumptions about pets. It can seem so normal to have a cat or dog or fish. However, these are not just toys you can take the batteries out of. Basically any animal other than a snake or fish needs daily care.

Pets that are neglected are a high risk for destroying the home and yard, getting bugs or ailments that complicate life, and ending up as wild animals. Each family has its own considerations that might make a pet an easy or a traumatic relationship. It is okay to say ‘no’ to a pet if you judge it not a good time, regardless of the encouragement of others that “every child should have a dog.” It will be best for the pet and everyone in the family if the parents feel ready for the challenge.

One of my uncles had a pet snake (Burmese python) th

What are your main considerations when deciding what and how to feed your children? I think the basics are:

A parent ends up, whether consciously or not, searching for a manageable balance between factors. Sooner or later, every parent is faced with how to fulfill the parental responsibility in feeding a child no matter what a child’s preferences in eating.

Other than the moral obligation of parents to provide food for their own children, there is not anything obviously moral about exactly how it is done. That doesn’t mean that there might not be better or worse ways to go about it for the sake of personal habits for the children or family relationships.

Let’s start with talking about the budget, because, let’s face it: someone has to pay for the food. Someone is doing the work to grow and sell the food and they reasonably want recompense for their efforts. Then, the parents work to provide the food in ways that children often fail to comprehend. A parent should feel free to put limits on anything, from what is prepared to serving size. This helps to make the best use of the food available. While the end goal may be to have our children understand economics and make good food choices, for a while the parents have to be the ones to do that.

As a child matures, he will understand decisions more, but that doesn’t mean the child needs to be convinced in order for a parent to be justified in a decision. A child does not need to agree with what is being bought or available to eat. A parent is best suited to make these decisions. Disagreements from a child about how it is done are only important in the sense of how the disagreement is handled.

In most cases, it is a minor preference of the child’s and an attempt at taking over the parental role in the family. Almost all children try this at one time or another. Food issues are a likely trigger for it since eating is frequent and can be a stressful point of the day. A parent can communicate concern for the child’s desires, while at the same time retaining the role of parent.

Even if a child gets some money to spend on his own food, a parent has the responsibility to guide that. Since nutrition is particularly important for a growing body, this should be a priority for parents. The more time the child spends away from home/the parent, the harder this will be.

I’m not suggesting that every bite of food needs to be absolutely nutritionally perfect or that that is even possible. However, parents see the bigger picture and have a better idea of how to weig

How much supervision do children need? Who gets to decide what supervision is appropriate? And who gets to supervise? This should depend on things like:

Sometimes it will also depend on the experience of parent and that is okay. Parents are faced with such decisions on a daily basis. They must weigh how various things are coming together.

Honestly, there is not one set perfect way to supervise all children or even one child at a given time. The overall relationship and communication of the parents and child will have more affect on how any supervision affects the child than exactly what kind of supervision is going on. It is one-dimensional to label someone else’s supervision approach. It is also typically more self-gratifying than helpful.

I highly suspect the term helicopter parent was coined by a psychologist who only sees families seeking help for conflict. This would probably include many families who don’t really have significant problems, but were referred by meddlesome school personnel. For some weird reason, children are suppose to be closely guarded in schools, but a parent who wants to keep a close eye on his own children is overbearing.

Ironically, after the child has spent hours every day away from home, the parent is often labeled as hovering and intrusive for asking simple questions about how the day went or what the child’s current plans are. One could get very suspicious that the goal of those running the schools is to drive a wedge between parent and child. Having a derogatory label to shame interested parents makes this much easier.

The combination of hours spend under the supervision of others and the subsequent diminished value of parental influence unsurprisingly leads many children to disregard parents. In the child’s mind, parents become easily relegated to the roles of janitor and bus driver. From the parents’ perspective, they have to be constantly asking what is going on.

To hear some people, parents are supposed to be all-knowing and held accountable while at the same time be invisible and never interfere. Don’t follow your toddler too close around the playground, but don’t let him get hit by swings. Don’t set limits on where your child can explore, but make sure he does his homework every night.

Supervision sounds like a super power. And maybe it is. It is a skill that parents need to feel free to develop so that their children can grow and mature without suffering serious consequences. The prefix ‘super’ means above

There is nothing quite like parenting to expose our weaknesses and flaws. Every strength we thought we had is challenged. Every selfishness will be revealed. Every inadequacy tempts us to self pity.

Yet, the model is for a child to be born to two people with no prior parenting experience. True, some people have had extensive experience with younger siblings or have taken care of other people’s children. However, it is never the same as the responsibility and delight of parenthood. And while it is helpful when there are friends and family to lend emotional support and occasional live action help, the parents will bear the load of parenting.

Children were designed for long term care. This has a uniquely human potential for relationship with parents. It makes it possible for families to grow together in ways they would not if children were out of the nest every year like little birds.

Everyone comes to parenting with different advantages and disadvantages. We all have to learn to appropriately use our advantages and overcome our disadvantages to the best of our abilities. No matter what background we come from, we all have an innate sense of our children needing to be nurtured and guided.

There are both helpful and harmful cultural norms that parents would do well to examine. It helps a lot to learn to see through misinformation and manipulation. There are those who would try to insert themselves between parent and child.

But no one human being knows how to or can care for ALL the children of the world. There is no cookie cutter method of training or educating all the children. These are principles, but these have to be applied in creative ways. It takes knowing a child personally to get insight into his needs, strengths, and desires. It takes deeply relational communication to answer the most important questions of life or to help in difficult times. It takes a parent.

If you love your children and honestly want what is best for them, give yourself the benefit of the doubt. Give yourself room to learn and problem solve, because this is obviously how it is set up especially for first time parents. Then, keep in mind that you are always parenting any given child for the first time.

Aim for a humble confidence. Be confident that you are capable of being a good parent. Be humble about the need to problem solve on a regular basis.

Don’t confuse adult-adult relationships with parent-child relationships. Children are not little adults to be given all the same personal freedoms. Children are immature humans that need both protection fr

Learning about friendship can be traumatic for children. A parent who can blend compassion with problem solving will have the undying gratitude and trust of his child. The goal is to express the delight you have in being part of the child’s life, while at the same time nurturing other important relationships. Figuring out which relationships to keep working on is an important skill in life. There will be some rejection, which we all know cuts to the core of the soul.

I have already written ideas for being your child’s preferred friendship coach, but here I am going to specifically address how to help when your child feels rejected. It might be tempting to say, “Buck up, that’s just life.” Or to the other extreme of “they are just stupid for not wanting to be your friend.” Neither approach will do much to help your child in productive ways.

There are a few simple questions that can help children gain perspective and give them better tools for dealing with relationships. These questions begin with the child evaluating themselves, then proceed to see what might affect other people’s perspectives.

There always seem to be those people whom everyone wishes they could be friends with. But why is this? Is it because of good looks or charisma? Is there something about feeling accepted by such people that makes us feel validated and worthwhile? Possibly it is because we feel there will be advantages for us socially or in business? While it is not wrong to seek out helpful connections, that is not what friendship is built on. Friendship might grow in the midst of such connections, but a true friendship will be based on much more.

This can be a good time to become aware of personal biases or misconceptions. Not all biases are bad, but we are all subject to coming to conclusions for the wrong reasons. Do we feel superior to someone because they look a certain way or don’t have the same speech patterns? Do we feel we would be risking our social reputation to be seen with some people? It is a shame when friendship is missed because of shallow criteria.

It is also good to ask how many people can you be good friends with? As finite people, we have only so much time and energy to devote to more intimate friendships. It is fine and good to be friendly with many people, but we can not get to know them all to the same level

There has been a lot of talk lately about goals versus systems. Many times goals are thought of as something reached at an endpoint, something that can be checked off. The trouble with these types of goals is that a person can tend to be never satisfied. While the effort is being made to reach the goal, the joy of the moments along the way can be missed.

A system is seen more as how life is lived on a daily basis. Goals can be a part of this, but are not considered the major inspiration. Life as a system is more about habits and ongoing relationships. Goals are reached as one proceeds, but are not end points in the same way.

Consider going to play cards with friends. There may be a goal of arriving at a certain time, as well as intentions of sharing stories of the week and attempting to win the card game. However, all of these goals are really fluid steps in enjoying the relationships.

When it comes to work activities, a strict goal orientation will lead to frustration since there will always be more work to do. Clothes will get dirty. Food needs to be prepared. We get tired. Money gets spent. Having a system attitude toward these inevitabilities will help a lot. A system attitude helps you find a pace and set priorities in a sustainable way. It helps you be satisfied with how you interacted with your system regardless of particular goals reached in a given time period.

In the title of this article, I am trying to use the word goal in the sense developing personal priorities and standards. These types of goals are more about how choices are made and how people are treated, no matter what opportunities or challenges are faced. These are the sort of goals that form the foundation of how a person responds to disappointment or success.

To help our children set good personal goals, it helps to figure out what our goals as parents are. What is directing how we advise or praise our children? How well have we considered the signals we are giving them? Are we more concerned with how their choices make us look than how their choices will affect them? Are we spending enough time with them in ways that is deeply relational, rather than surface level, fast, and merely functional?

Another way to evaluate our goals for our children is whether the goals are related to real adult life. For example, learning music or playing on a sports team can be fun and healthy in many ways, but praise for such things is often out of proportion to usefulness. Should not the child who is diligent in learning to fix his own bicycle be equally encouraged. Too often parents reward activities associated with fame more than practical mundane habits that are likely to have a much longer impact on a child’s life.

Most of us are normal. That is, we won’t be famous or win grand awards. What we sometimes fail to understand is how rewarding

I have never met a toddler I could trust. That doesn’t mean they don’t have their endearing moments of (apparently) supreme thoughtfulness. But toddlers can go from sweet to impish in zero seconds flat. So, no, I don’t trust them.

When there are toddlers in the house, my radar is on. If I am in charge of the toddlers, my radar is tracking big time. They don’t get any privacy. I don’t have to knock before I enter. I don’t have to ask if I can watch what they are doing. I am more observant than the NSA.

Alas, or fortunately, depending on who you talk to, toddlers grow up. The question is: When are they grown up enough to have a reasonable expectation of privacy? I don’t think there is some magic age at which this happens. In a loving home with good communication, increased privacy for the children is something that will develop based on certain criteria.

The younger a child is, the more likely it is that attempts to hide mean he is trying to get away with something. Certainly any child old enough to walk may just wander to another room without nefarious plans, but even if he isn’t trying to hide, there is more than one reason to check on him whether or not he “wants to be alone.”

Obviously safety is a major concern. It is pretty amazing how fast a four year old can get out her father’s shaving supplies and go for the jugular. I do speak from experience. I don’t care how much privacy she might want in the bathroom, it is not healthy for her.

Destruction is another issue. It is very difficult to child-proof a house. There is no substitute for supervision – and even that will never be 100 percent. A parent can only keep trying. That’s why I have a beautiful cross stitched picture hanging in my house with mended scissor slashes across it’s skyline. That little fiasco was a three year old’s attempt to work on mommy’s project for her… in secret. I’m glad I interrupted when I did.

Young children are unconcerned about being seen naked, until one day they just are. I have always taken this as an indicator that it is time to begin giving them some privacy. However, this was not done in an all or nothing sort of way.

As long as children need parents, their parents have the prerogative to decide how much privacy is appropriate for a given situation. Such privacy may be temporary and subject to quick reversal. It is similar to the issue of property rights that I discussed in

Teasing is not something unique to the world of children. In fact, my husband teases me a lot. When trying to understand teasing, we really need to look at each instance and each relationship. All teasing is not equal. Here are some reasons people tease each other:

Not all of these reasons are mutually exclusive. For instance, boredom might give rise to affectionate teasing. There is nothing wrong with that. But possibly it would help to have a better definition of what teasing is before we go further.

It is interesting to note that the first definition of tease in the dictionary has to do with gently pulling something apart, often for untangling or revealing. It is a persistent, careful action with the hope of reaching a positive result, such as brushed hair or scientific discovery.

The meaning of tease when it comes to relationships can be either positive or negative. It can be meant to be harassment or it can be meant to be playful. The end result can depend as much on the person responding to the teasing as the person initiating it.

In our house, we had the guideline for any teasing or jokes that “if the other person didn’t know what was going on, it was probably not appropriate.” The gist of it was that if the other person might end up believing something that wasn’t true, it wasn’t a good joke. If the object was to make the other person react a certain way solely for your own entertainment, it probably wasn’t good teasing. We also discouraged teasing someone for something they might legitimately feel insecure about.

Our reasons for this were two fold. First, we wanted people within the house to be able to trust each other. Secondly, we wanted everyone to learn to think of the other person.

Here are some examples of unacceptable teasing:

All of these kinds of teasing tend to be done with a mean or selfish spirit. However, it is also true that some things can become more acceptable as the children grow up and become more secure. In our family, it is now pretty reasonable to make comments about each other’s uncommonly large feet or quirky habits. It brings smiles when a hormonal girl is teased for crying or a young man is teased for being sweet to a young lady.

For teasing to be mutually understood, there has to be trust. The teasing should not undermine that. Thus, when o

The claim, “That’s not fair!” will almost certainly come out of a child’s mouth at some point. A parent should be prepared to respond. It is important to address the child’s claim without being manipulated by it. So the first step is for the parent to have a clear idea of what fairness is and how that can be applied to family life.

My father did a good job of dealing with my concerns about fairness as a child, so I felt prepared for this as a parent. When it came up with my children, I told them that they were each different and so we would be meeting their needs differently. Not all things could be equal, because they were each unique. It was made clear that we loved them all equally, which was why we would go to the effort to make individualized decisions for them.

It can be helpful to read through the definitions of fair in the dictionary. For this application, it can be summarized as meaning “just and honest, according to rules (of the household and of how we should all treat one another), and without giving preference to one’s own interests.” If a child is old enough, this can be a jumping off point for helping them understand decisions that they claim are unfair.

A child typically means all or one of three things when they claim something is not fair:

Even a young child can often benefit from pondering their own claim. A parent can calmly and confidently ask the child to explain himself. What is not fair and why does he think it is not fair? The point is not to argue, but the child may need some help realizing that you are not asking because you need to defend your decision. The point is so that they can learn. Before a fruitful discussion can proceed, a child has to be able to be honest.

A parent can guide them to giving honest answers by not being defensive or angry. If the child is stubborn about answering, then the parent can decline to talk about it at the moment, but indicate availability when the child will be humble and kind.

If the primary concern is jealousy (1. I want it, too), it should not be too difficult to come up with examples of times when the complaining child got something or was able to do something when someone else didn’t. Does everyone have to have all the exact same things – exact same number of clothes, exact amount of time talking with friends, or the exact same flavor of ice cream – for everything to be fair?

If it is an issue between siblings, the matt