Category: Parenting

“My kids need guidelines! What rules should I impose?”

Not so fast. What good are guardrails if we don’t even know where the road is going?

Yesterday I proposed that guardrails are only part of any road taken, and the biggest question to consider is… where is this road going? Once parents provide a Biblical foundation for their values, then the guardrails can flow from this truth.

So I guess the process looks like this:

1. Embark on the road of Biblical truth (I talked about this in yesterday’s post).
2. Plot your trip, knowing where you’ll be, by when (we’ll talk about that in today’s post).
3. And finally… set guardrails that keep you from veering off course (my next post, now posted).

So let’s talk about “plotting our trip,” to continue using the road analogy. In other words, where do we want our kids to be, and by when?

No rules by 17½
My goal is that my daughters won’t have any rules by age 17½.

Some parents think I’m nuts. But consider my reasoning Continue reading “No Rules by Age 17½”

This week I’m posting a series in this blog about the guardrails parents need to set along the road of life. After all, I’m asked the same question at every parenting workshop I teach. It usually sounds something like this: “In a culture that provides so many profane distractions that are impossible to dodge, what guardrails should I set to protect our kids?”

Nothing like being under the gun—when I’m asked that question during a ‘question & answer’ time where the format provides only one to two minutes for answers. I’m always thinking, I teach a two hour workshop on this very subject… how am I gonna answer this in two minutes!

I guess the short answer is this:

Guardrails are only part of any road taken. The biggest question to consider is… where is this road going?

This brings up the foundational issue of Continue reading “Guardrails Are Only as Good as The Road”