Category Archive

. . . said my daughter to her sister.

And this was the situation. All throughout suppertime, our middle two boys, especially Barrett (9 years old) were telling Debbie and I that they had something prepared for us in their bedroom, and kept asking us if we were done so we could go down there.

Finally we were and we followed them down. They had set up, in their room, a fairly impressive restaurant. This included two candle lit tables with checkered tableclothes and chairs. The room was decorated and the “walls” (blankets over the bunk beds) were lit from behind. There was music playing.

They had set up a kitchen in the closet. They gave us menus with several items to choose from. And then they took our orders and prepared the food for us. And at the end they gave us ice cream that they had made. I was impressed.

Adelyn – younger sister – was aware that her brothers were going for a certain atmosphere, and when her sister said something that went against that atmosphere,  she made the suggestion (as noted above):

“Don’t wreck the restaurant.”

She was saying – the boys have gone to a lot of work. Don’t screw it for them.

This, I deem, is the responsibility of guests. To allow the Host or Hostess to serve them. To not go against the plan. To let the plan flourish.

Husbands and wives, I suggest that you follow this advice with your spouses. To her or him who has prepared and worked, give them the decency of letting them enjoy the fruits of their work. And if you enjoy it, make sure they know.

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So how do you like that? Moralizing and Bragging Dad all in one post.

If you go to our church, at our campus, and attend the 9:00 service – you may disregard this post. In fact, please do!

Parents, do you want your kids to feel more apart of your church service? Do you want it to feel more real for them? Do you want them to be more interested?

Move up to the front. Your kids will be able to see better. They will feel more present. You will feel more a part of the worship.

We choose the second row. Obviously you don’t want to sit in the front row. It will make you feel uncomfortably bare. Because obviously, the worship leaders or pastors may pull out their laser guns and shoot you. You need at least one pew to act as a sort of barrier or shield. But only one is required for this kind of protection. And the closer you are to the front, the greater the chance your kids won’t be directly behind some 6’4’’ hulk (like me) that will make it so they can’t read the words on the big screen.

A word on behavior: One thing that keeps people from sitting up near the front is the fear that their kids will act in a negatively impactful manner. And this will be more visible to more people if you’re up front. True.

But these are behaviors you could attend to no matter how far back you are. Attend to them. Bring the child out of the service. Administer whatever discipline you use for your kids. Then bring them back in.

Having your children enjoy and think about worship is more important than not looking bad.

You might be thinking: But Jamsco, your kids never give you problems, right? You’ve never had to deal with behavioral issues in the middle of a church service! Au Contraire. And consider this. If your children are closer to the front, they may be more interested in the service and be less distracted and less prone to act in distracting ways*.

Other Perceived Downsides:

(1) Sitting up front, you risk people thinking you think you’re a better than average family.

(2) You also risk thinking you’re a better than average family.

But read some of the passages in Proverbs about pride and humility. And think about how really good looking families on the outside are sometimes the most dysfunctional behind closed doors. Considering these things will help Downside 2 go away.

And then Downside 1 isn’t really a problem, right? If it is, find other ways to appear humble.

Worship happens in all rows of the sanctuary. But kids who can see are more likely to hear from, learn from, and participate in the worship.

*And can we recommend practicing sitting still at home? We call this “Bible Time.” My wife does this daily with our kids.

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Here is my post linking to all the posts in this “Why I do this” series of posts.

Our Family is enjoying a week with cousins, aunts, and uncles. One of the cousins (Age 12) set up a Thanksgiving Jar with pieces of paper that we could write down things we were thankful for and put them in the jar.

About an hour ago, the host read them out loud as we were eating our desert. Here are some of the items put in the jar that were my favorites (I claim no originality):

I am thankful for –

Trees
Books
My Job
Cousins
My Bed
The Sun
A house
Our church
Cubbie bear
Thanksgiving
Cranberry rolls
A happy Family
Pictures of my family
Foster (our youngest son)
We always have food to eat.
Susanna and Violet (my dolls)
That God provides all our needs.
That we have a cow and a chicken
Adoption – Physically and Spiritually
The Creek that flows into Reese Creek
Day trips and vacations with my family
That there’s always more fighter verses to record
That God gives us things to do, like school, work and play
A Way to be free (through Jesus) from enslavement to sin
A person smart enough to think of having a thanksgiving jar

Yes, that last one was mine. I thank God for many blessings.

. . . and Mommy-Blogging*.

Life is decisions based on factors: Risks, Costs, Benefits, Rewards, Work required.

Parenting is the same thing; you make decisions for what you do as a Father or Mother based on the good and bad you feel might happen as a result of your choices.

And what about blogging parents? Or parents who are on-line in other ways?

My friend Vox Day says that no person should ever put a picture of their child on the internet

. . . Not on Facebook, not on invitation-only Live Journals, and certainly not on public blogs. It’s not only reprehensibly stupid, it is completely disrespectful of a child’s right to make his own decisions about his public profile in the future. True, sometimes this is unavoidable, such as when a child happens to be in the news for one reason or another. But barring that, no responsible parent should ever upload a picture of a child to the Internet, no matter how proud one might happen to be.

I’m actually fairly surprised to see Vox say this. He is not what you would call timid or jumpy.

So I back to the Risk/Reward Analysis aspect of parenting. And let’s consider a different issue: Guns.

Given previous statements of his on the topic of firearms, I assume that he has guns in his home, for purposes of self-protection among other reasons.

Should he ever have children, I assume he will continue this practice.

No one can fault him for that, and millions of people have made similar decisions. But in doing so, he would be running the risk, albeit slight, that one of his children will be injured by his own guns.

Vox, being bright, would be aware of this risk when making the decision. But this risk won’t stop him. Why? Because he believes the potential benefit outweighs the minimal risk.

That’s why I am willing to post specific details about my kids, including pictures. There is risk. But there are benefits:

• I’m a blogging Dad. Of my two blogs, this one especially is focused on being a dad. My hope is that giving people information about my family makes me more real, more authentic for my readers.
• There is a certain part of the blog reading population that enjoys a good kid story. This helps me reach them.
• I love my kids. Providing details about them helps me show this.
• Showing pictures of my kids might be one way in which I glorify God.

Regarding disregarding the “child’s right to make his own decisions about his public profile in the future” . . . C’mon, Vox! Every day parents make decisions which will permanently affect their child’s future. Every day!

Every day, I disregard many future “rights” of my children, to wit:

• My child’s right to make his own decision about where he will have lived before leaving our home.
• My child’s right to make his own decisions about his schooling history in the future.
• My child’s right to make his own decision about what kind of health care, diet, church experience, . . . . he will have had as a child when he become an adult.

Let’s just say that my child’s right to make his own decisions about his public profile in the future is not one of my greater concerns, and I would be delighted to hear why it should be. This is one of the rights of parenthood.

One more thing I’ll add. In the comments of Vox’s post, someone suggested that someone like Vox, were he to someday have children, would have a good reason to not speak of them, since he makes such controversial statements on his blog that sometimes angers his readers. My response is, have you ever heard of something bad happening to a child as a result of their photo being placed on the internet. I mean something worse than being posted on an ‘imitation blog**’ – the issue at hand in the post I linked to?

So I stand by my decision to post information in the form of text and photos about my family and encourage others to do so.

And Vox, any issue where Nate and I both disagree with you is one that you should reconsider.

* I’ve just up on my blogroll a great example of excellent Mommy blogging photography here.

** As a disclaimer, I will say this. Any act of knowingly going against the will of a parent regarding placing online information about their child is reprehensibly evil. And just plain mean.

. . . and your family!

Last March, I told you how JamFam (my family) proactively avoids difficulties with the Spring Daylight savings clock change.

Now the Fall Daylight Savings Clock Change approaches and this one you can use to your advantage.

Are you the sort that wishes you could start waking up earlier or get an earlier schedule? This weekend’s time change makes this easy for you. Just don’t change the clocks back an hour. You’ll wake up early and feel like you have an extra hour to do things before church.

And then when Monday comes, you can get up an hour early and get to work earlier, or get your kids breakfasted and homeschooled earlier (or – if they go to school – I imagine there are things you and they would like to do together before hand – like a family Bible Study, or exercising, or reading outloud).

The only drawback is you don’t get to sleep in this Sunday – deal with it.

This is, so to speak, Molly Piper’s
Plan only backwards. Or something.

Some time ago, I began the practice of praying (outloud if my family is present) everytime we’re in the car and an ambulance drives by with lights flashing.

My prayer includes things that you might expect:

– That the patient be healed and experience a small amount of pain.
– That they drive safe as they speed along.
– That the caregivers will have wisdom.
– That the family involved (which is now going through some significant crisis that they didn’t expect) seek God as a result of this. And that they we feel peace.
– That God be glorified in the ambulance and the hospital.

The benefits of praying like this with your kids include:

– It teaches that you don’t have to have all of the knowledge about a situation to pray about it.
– It shows them that praying for strangers is valuable. Looking outside yourself for prayer requests is something most of us do too little.
– It shows them that the fact that you’ll never know the outcome is not a good reason to not pray.
– It brings to mind how God can be glorified even in traumatic events.
– It brings to mind how Peace can happen even in traumatic events.

Gentlemen,

Over at my other blog, I just posted a list of specific prayers from a group of men.  You might be helped by it.  Go see.