If you’re like most American adults, you are concerned that some of the youth in your family are going to mess up their lives by bad habits and choices on some moral issue. The ones I hear about the most are sex, money, family, religion, and drug or alcohol abuse. All too often, efforts to […]
Sixteen-year-olds look completely different from the way they looked at twelve. Even more striking is the difference in their personalities. Parental influence has declined by roughly half, due to more influences from peers, media, hormones, boyfriend/girlfriend, and the huge internal need to feel grown-up by acting different from you. Yet parents do not adjust their […]
How Relevant are Traditional Values in our Pornified Culture? by Dr. Paul F. Schmidt Sexual energy, beautiful bodies, romantic love, and close relationships -- as much as they are idolized in our culture, there is nothing inherently good or bad about them. They are all morally neutral resources, because they can be used for […]
Sometimes when we want to talk with someone, we assume they wouldn’t understand, or worse still, wouldn’t listen. Maybe they’d even fire back some criticism at the messenger so they didn’t have to deal with the message. So we send our message through a third party. This is called a ricochet message, or a bank […]
Almost every child from time to time acts negative. They act like they want to ruin things for everybody—peers, adults and even themselves. At times like this, if you're the care-taking adult (parent, teacher, grandparent, babysitter, child care or day-care worker), you're going to have a hard time knowing why or how to be positive. […]
ARE YOU SELFISH AS A GRANDPARENT? by Dr. Paul Schmidt A client recently shared with me a very helpful sermon he had heard from his pastor, Brian Tome at Crossroads Church in Lexington. It helped me as a grandparent, and it made me think about the various styles of grandparenting I have heard described […]
Pornography Abuse in Teenagers: How Parents can Understand and Reverse It America’s surgeon general has agreed with the consensus of research: 9 out of every 10 young people will be exposed to Internet pornography before they reach age 18. Quarantine assumes you are more savvy with technology than your teen, which is highly doubtful. […]
PROTECTING YOUR CHILD FROM SEXUAL ABUSE I hate for people to live in bondage of any kind, especially to be held hostage by fear. If you’re a parent of an elementary school child and you watch the TV news, you’re probably needing some relief from the fear that somebody will abuse your child sexually. I […]
A BULLY-PROOF VEST FOR YOUR CHILDREN Since 9-11 happened, our cultural climate has been filled with fear and hate. Our children are exposed to more and more bullying on television, in movies, in social media, and even in political ads and debates. When the police or FBI go into a dangerous situation, they wear a bullet-proof vest. […]
ADULT CHILDREN: SHOULD THEY BE IN OR OUT OF THE NEST? PARENT: My son wants to move back home, with his tail between his legs. This is the second time he’s lost his job and his girlfriend under the same circumstance: saying he wants to get away from his friends who are pot-heads, […]