Signs of Life
I was talking to a friend who is somewhat particular about his yard, and he told me there are two parts of his yard that are his favorite spots. I…
May 13, 2021 · 3 min read
If Your Approaches to Parenting Differ…
When people come into my counseling office with marital problems, I always ask them, “When did these things start to be a problem?” The majority of…
July 30, 2020 · 5 min read
How Parenting Can Improve Partnering
In my last post (How Partnering Can Improve Parenting,) we looked at how improving your marriage could improve your parenting. It stressed the…
June 7, 2018 · 3 min read
How Partnering Can Improve Parenting
We don’t often think of how parenting can improve partnering. Usually, we think of just the opposite…how parenting makes partnering harder. We…
May 25, 2018 · 4 min read
How Parents Can Bring Out the Best in Their Teenagers
In my last post, How Teenagers Bring Out the Worst in Their Parents, I talked abut the very difficult job of raising teenagers, and how it can effect…
April 5, 2018 · 5 min read
How Teenagers Bring Out the Worst in Their Parents
I typically write posts focused on marriage, but this post is going to veer more into the area of parenting. Specifically, parenting teenagers, and…
March 29, 2018 · 5 min read
How Did You Get Here?
I woke up in a different bedroom beside a young female I wasn’t use to waking up with. As I looked at her all tangled up in the covers, I asked…
June 1, 2017 · 5 min read
What Does a Ham Have to Do With Marriage?
At the beginning of every year, we look at things we can do to make the new year better. But when it comes to marriage, what you do now will not only…
January 3, 2017 · 4 min read
The Power of a Few Seconds
Sometime back I was listening to a news report about a school shooting when I heard the newscaster say, “It only took 80 seconds for a high school…
October 27, 2016 · 3 min read
Kids and Marriage – What Were We Thinking?
There are some things in life that seem like a good idea at the time, but later cause you to ask, “What was I thinking?” Maybe it was that person who…
August 15, 2016 · 3 min read
The First Day
It’s Monday morning, I’m walking in our neighborhood, and it’s the first day of school. School buses are crisscrossing the neighborhood like bees…
August 8, 2016 · 4 min read
How to Put Your Kids and Your Marriage in Their Proper Place
When I stepped into the waiting room, I noticed that Bryan and Christine (not their real names) were sitting in separate chairs and weren’t talking…
May 1, 2016 · 6 min read
Lessons From Living in a Shack
In twenty years of marriage counseling, I’ve seen couples put more and more emphasis on their house. I’ve seen engaged couples believe they couldn’t…
April 7, 2016 · 7 min read
Rearranged
Strong marriages and families practice flexibility. Whether it’s with the introduction of the first child or the first grandchild, there’s a…
July 21, 2015 · 2 min read
Playing With Blocks
When’s the last time you played with blocks? I’m talking about the old fashion, basic shapes, pre-Lego, low tech, wooden blocks. I was at my…
April 18, 2015 · 6 min read
The Way It Used To Be
These are days of rapid and amazing change. Drones in the skies. Microcomputers in our pockets. The private sector in space. Social media in…
November 23, 2014 · 4 min read
How to Better Live With Your In-Law – The Bottom Line
Have you ever been listening to someone talk about something and thought to yourself, “Come on! Just get to the point! What’s the bottom line?!”…
November 11, 2014 · 3 min read
How to Better Live with Your In-Laws – 5 Steps
In the last post, we talked about the tug-of-war that comes with learning to live with your in-laws. In this post, we’ll look at 5 steps to improve…
November 4, 2014 · 5 min read
How to Better Live With Your In-Laws: Tug-of-War
In the last post, we began looking at how to better live with your in-laws. When you get married, in-laws are part of the package. There can can be…
October 28, 2014 · 4 min read
How to Better Live With Your In-Laws
“Meet the Parents” is a movie that looks at learning to accept and be accepted by future in-laws. The movie is funny at times, awkward at times and…
October 22, 2014 · 3 min read