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Encouraging Heroes. You can be one too.

Limiting Choice Can Improve Sanity

I’m going to come right out and admit that I had a meltdown on Saturday. I had just picked up the older boys from a friend’s birthday party and was relating to them how their father and I had taken apart the trailer in their absence. We were expecting to...

Guest Post: Ambition, Your Child, and You

Editor’s note: I’d like you to welcome Kathy Wilson, our latest guest author here at Earnest Parenting. Kathy has quite an essay to share. I’m excited about sharing it in part because I disagree with some of it, and her writing has caused me to think...

Raising an Alpha Male Has its Challenges

When TechnoBoy and The Mercenary were little we refused to tell them who was older. This wasn’t intended as any kind of sociological experiment; we were just trying to keep the playing field balanced. TechnoBoy, who was born first by 5 minutes, was smaller...

A Little Hard Work Never Hurt Anyone

A theme I keep coming back to in this blog is the disconnect between my work ethic and the boys’. I am a workaholic. Plain and simple, I’d rather be pursuing a task than sitting still. The older I get, the more I want to be completing things. Don’t...

Tweaking the Plan Can Reduce Parental Stress

There are a lot of things that mystify me when it comes to my boys; the need to destroy-ahhh, I mean disassemble everything they touch, the constant violence, persistent bathroom humor…ugh. The biggest difficulty has been our differences regarding work. I think...

We Need A Plan

A battle that the older boys and I keep returning to is pretty straightforward: I think they should work. They disagree. Early in school, we struggled (A LOT) over learning issues. They’ve definitely grown past those, but somewhere along the line the picked up the...