All back talk has the same goal, whether it is confrontational or not. The goal is parent—or teacher—control: gaining power and attention.

Backtalk is any noncompliant behavior

Which of the following statements applies to inmates in correctional institutions (jails)?

1. …tries to “butter you up in order to get favors.”

2. …may fake illness to get what they want.

3. …tries to change the subject to avoid consequences.

4. …flatters, acts friendly, inflates your ego to make you emotionally dependent on his or her approval.

5. …does favors for you in order to manipulate you into breaking or changing rules.

6. …asks to be excused just this one time; won’t do it again.

7. …tries to get different people to say “yes” when the answer is always “no” in order to follow rules.

8. …tries to fast talk–guide–you  into ignoring rules.

9. …will take advantage of your depression, carelessness or other weakness.

10. ..tries to get you on an equal basis rather than allow you to be the boss.

11. ..hates being told what to do.

Yes, all of the above are “games inmates play” to get you to lose focus, give them your authority, and take control without responsibility for consequences.

Is it a coincidence that these behaviors start in childhood? Are you rewarding your child’s wrong choices by falling for this stuff?

Discipline is consistent consequences.

If a child gets away without consequences, we are rewarding bad behavior. We only help him or her to perfect his manipulative skills such as those above, drama and lying.

The above behaviors were all taken from The Art of the Con: Avoiding Offender Manipulation, by Gary Cornelius, published by The American Correctional Association, Alexandria, Virginia.

Stress-free Discipline gives a step-by-step plan to relieve stress on you and your child while keeping gentle pressure on the child to make right choices.

Remember, what’s OK is the enemy of what’s best.

“Watching television for two to three hours or more per day is linked to significantly higher risks of developing diabetes and heart disease and dying from all causes, according to a new analysis from the Harvard School of Public Health.” (June 15, Journal of the American Medical Association.)

If it were just health, some parents would ignore the need to change TV habits.  But wait! Thinking ability is also at risk here.

A New Yorker study indicates that “A reader learns about the world and imagines it differently from the way a viewer does; according to some…a reader and a viewer even think differently.” (Crain, 2007, 135)

 In several cited studies, illiterates resisted giving definitions of words, grouping like objects, and making logical inferences about hypothetical situations. (Crain, 2007, 137) Moreover, “in an oral culture, cliché and stereotype are valued as accumulations of wisdom, and analysis is frowned upon…” (Crain, 138) 

Detailed and consistent decline in reading and thus in thinking ability have been reported by the National Endowment for the Arts…

It is much harder to compare viewpoints and ideas between streaming media than to analyze the written word.

Juxtaposed images give the impression of cause and effect where none exists. Logical thinking and learning words become a strain.  Social and communication skills suffer.  Experienced teachers and social workers have noted the trend.  Teamwork, highly valued in the global marketplace and in parenting, is suffering.

According to the scholars Jack Goody and Ian Watt, Crain says, (2007, 138) “it is only in a literate culture that the past’s inconsistencies have to be accounted for, a process that encourages skepticism and forces history to diverge from myth.”  My experience on the Navajo Reservation corroborates all of the above.

Recall is also enhanced by reading, as opposed to merely viewing. Moreover, viewers from the age of eight to sixteen months begin loosing word power for every hour of baby DVD’s and videos they watch daily, according to Crain.

Data on more than a million students worldwide by Micha Razel “found ‘little room for doubt’ that television worsened performance in reading, science and math.” (Crain, 2007, 138)

The N.E.A. reported recently that “readers are more likely than non-readers to play sports, exercise, visit art museums, attend theatre, paint, go to music events, take photographs, and volunteer.” (Crain, 2007, 139)  

If parents cannot read, their children will not be encouraged to learn more than the minimum to get by.  Thus, each generation will become more ignorant.

Apply the Bingo test:  is reading, good health and the ability to live a richer, fuller life worth changing your TV habits? 

Oh yes, we do need to relax from a stressful day of work, and TV will reward us with entertainments which either stimulate or sedate us…just like addictions will. 

According to Dr. Archibald Hart, writing in Healing Life’s Hidden Addictions, “…two basic drives or fundamental needs can be behind all addictions:  excitement seeking and tension reducing…These two drives are directly related to the two basic categories of drugs (stimulants and tranquilizers)…” (p. 57)

 These psychological needs play a “significant role even in non-chemical addictions.”

Hart says that “Since the function of an addiction is to place a buffer between ourselves and our awareness of feelings, wrenching the buffer away results in increased anxiety…”  Hmmm.  How uncomfortable do we get  when we miss our favorite program?  How many of us are truly listening to our children or our body or our felt needs during those hypnotic sessions with streaming media or facebook? 

Do we really need exercise after being chained to a computer all day, or a couch potatoe session?  Do we need real rest or merely a change of activity?

Moms, Dads, and teachers:  Stress-free Discipline of our children will relieve our stress as it happens, and it will provide rewarding, consistent consequences for our children’s right and poor choices of the day (or period).  The reward is time spent with us on educational, interpersonal activities.  Those activities may be a game of basketball ourtside, spell-down baseball inside, or learning good manners at a nice restaurant!

Let’s apply the Bingo test to those activities.  Is what I am doing now building skills and bonding and family teamwork for the long term?  Teachers, are your present choices of stress-relief really working for your body?

Personal financial hardship is only one cost of  divorce. 

According to CitizenLink.org, a study done by the Institute for American Values has found that the breakdown of families costs U.S. taxpayers at least $112 billion yearly.  The national, state and local costs–which add up to more than $1 trillion over the last decade–are caused, in part, by high poverty rates of single, female-headed households, which lead to higher spending on welfare, criminal justice and education programs.” (Williams, 2008, 1) 

What could the government do with a trillion dollars to create jobs and a better quality of life?  What could parents do with a little more in their bank account and lower taxes for preventable problems?  This is not rocket science.  It has to do with self-control and intelligent work toward family health.

The human cost of family breakup cannot be calculated.  While the average mother looses quality of life as she enters the ranks of the poor, there are many hidden costs.  If she got a divorce wanting control and freedom, her impulse control problems have bad consequences.  She is so overwhelmed with an additional work load–an impossible blend of the need to provide adequate income and good parenting–that she is unable to discipline her children or teach them essential skills. 

Happiness research by Dr. Ed. Diener of the University of Illinois indicates that we are most happy when our ability and the task at hand are closely matched.(see www.psych.uluc.edu/~ediener/research/research.html).  Poor parents can only be miserable, single parents are all stressed, and both children and parents suffer the kind of pressures which lead to poor health, depression, dysfunction, violence and full-blown mental illness.

Self control issues–impulse control problems–pass from parent to child, and “may predict health problems, less financial stability and a criminal record by adulthood…a survey of more than 1,000 children who were studied from birth to age 32, found that kids who scored lowest on measures of self-control…were roughly three times as likely by adulthood to report to having multiple health problems and addictions, earning less than $20,000 a year, becoming a single parent or committing a crime than kids with the most self-control.  

The good news is that self-control can be learned. (TIME, February 7, 2011)

What parents want to curse their child to an unhappy, unhealthy and dysfunctional life?  Yet, according to Stanley Bippus, Superintendent of Central Consolidated School District, Farmington, NM, “The primary cause of most behavior and student achievement problems in the public school system is irresponsible and/or incompetent parents…No child is more handicapped that one whose parents don’t understand and accept the responsibilities of parenthood.  Poor parents destroy the lives of more children in this country than drugs, alcohol and gangs combined.”  (published in the Farmington Daily Times, 9/4/1994)

Parenting is the hardest job we will ever do, in my opinion.  The consequences of poor parenting have the largest negative consequences of anything we are likely to do.  Every fallen culture throughout history has preceded their fall with family decline.  David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values, said that “reducing family fragmentation rates by just one percent would save taxpayers $1.1 billion.”  Our impulse-control issues can break this country or build it.  The same applies to our families.

My book, Stress-free Discipline, teaches how to cope with impulse-control issues in both parents and children.

This weekend was a mess with the 4-year-old being sick… he is sort of okay. He was really coughing up phlem last two nights, I didn’t get much sleep… and to top it all off, _______ and I broke up… AGAIN… yesterday afternoon. I think this is the final time. This time I told the boys –

My 6-year-old was devastated and broke down three times in the half hour between my house and his mother’s.  I told her in a text message so she would know what was up – just a complete worthless weekend.

I don’t know really what to say – after four or five times I just figured it best to at least let the kids know. It’s not any fun but they come first in my life and the sooner they get over it the better I think.  I didn’t want to do the same thing I had with my previous girlfriend – just telling them that she’s unavailable.

Oh well, I hope I didn’t scar my oldest for life.

I said,

These are teachable moments:  teach the boys that friends–much as we would like them to be for a lifetime–may self-select out of our circle because of their vastly different values, or by moving away, or having different interests as they grow up…along with examples of what those differences may be.  Ask the boys for reasons and examples to make it real for them, and keep it all interactive.  Use simple sentences, because what I’m telling you is concept-dense.

Everyone is free to make choices, which may be positive or negative in their impact on ourselves or others.

Pain is something God came to earth to heal, and it is caused by sin, a Bible word for selfishness and greed…pray with your eldest that

1. God will heal his hungry heart, and
2. that another person will come into your lives who has interest in you all and willingness to sacrifice time and effort for your benefit.
3. Help him to look for the blessings to come when you submit to God, who allows worldly pain for a purpose.

He is getting old enough to begin defining some important value-laden words such as selfishness (with Bible examples)…Better understanding will shed the light of Christ on that black hole of pain.

Use this format for definitions:  Selfishness is a type of __________ (you fill in the blank:  is it feelings?  attitude resulting in behavior?) with the following characteristics:

• the selfish person cannot see, admit the importance of  other people’s needs,
• a selfish person will not  act on behalf of other people’s needs,
• a selfish person will not consider their feelings, their health or safety, etc.

Print out these definitions and concepts to review with the boys within the next couple of days.  Read about and discuss Abraham’s selfish, fear-based lies re: his wife being his sister–which landed Sarah in painful trouble, and people had to get hurt in order for God to get her out–not to mention her emotional fears and pain.

Pain, then, can be the result of someone else’s sin. Make those connections for the boys: you are translating the world to them.  God’s word translates the world for us throughout our lives.

Pain in this life is the result of sin. Only Christ can heal the hungry heart with that peace that goes beyond our understanding.  God’s forgiveness is the model for our forgiveness.  His Holy Spirit gives us the power we need to be Christ-followers clear through.

Part of pain is the powerlessness of it. Get your children used to the idea that God is the one with the kind of power to heal and save.  We do our best and He does the rest.

Dropping pain at the foot of the cross lets it go with divine help:  use imagery for children by picking up the bag of garbage out of the kitchen and dropping it with them into the dumpster.  Then let them know that just like we are not going to pick up the garbage and bring it back into our lives, we are not going to pick up the polluted garbage of unforgiveness and self-inflicted pain back into our lives.

Use word pictures to explain abstract ideas.  Unforgiveness  festers like splinters not taken out.  Those splinters grow into vast, infected territories of unspoken but acted-out pain.  Satan gains a foothold in those toxic places of the soul.  Explain to the boys what a foothold is in war, and how hard it is to get rid of once an enemy is entrenched.

Toxic places of the soul include the anger we don’t know what to do with socially.  Anger management is an important skill to teach children.

Train them not to bag it up like dysfunctional parents may encourage–”Boys don’t cry” or “It’s nothing:  get over it”.  You’re training the boys in functional anger management.

It’s good to express our fears, frustration, pain and the resulting anger to God (the Psalmists even asked God to “get even” with evil-doers–those are called imprecatory psalms).  Vengence belongs to God–it is not our job to punish.  Our job is to practice clearing our hearts of unforgiveness often, with the help of the Holy Spirit.

Searching the Bible for answers can’t start too early for those daily conflicts which can leave invisible, lifelong scars.  Further, if we do not defuse them, they build into pathology–great grief, mental illness, anxiety or worry.

In my experience, the habit of dealing with feelings via the Bible and via thinking compassionately (praying for our “enemies”) can only bring benefits by glorifying God and cleansing and maturing us.

Symbols are a brain short-cut: they bypass thinking

Because the flag of the United States is a symbol of all our history, struggles and victories, we have great feeling when we see it.  Groups of symbols can quietly manipulate our feelings into, for example, buying a car because it is advertised with a beautiful woman who lovingly touches it.  Our subconscious mind thinks, “chick magnet!”  Desire is aroused by a symbolic association, without words and without appeals to logic.

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole is a clear symbolic affront to Christianity. The “Pure Ones” are the enemy which steals and hypnotizes Guardian babies into a workforce of robots, taking away their gizzards (no guts to resist).  One of the Guardians which goes to fight for the Pure Ones dies in flames in a hellishly graphic end.  The final message of the movie, in case anyone misses it, includes instructions to destroy evil, which I gather means the “Pure Ones’ who steal babies and hypnotize them into slaves.
Unbelievers see Christianity as a rigid, destructive, irrational set of rules which can only subvert a person’s “self” and destroy their ability to act or think on their own.

Relevant background: Follow the money

The movie is done by the producer of Happy Feet, which is another artistic, highly symbolic brainwashing project appealing to the right brain—just feelings—part of viewers. Happy Feet had the cliched “religious” leader portrayed similarly: damaging, rigid and dysfunctional. The Happy Feet religious leader of the penguin colony required everyone to sing alike, think alike, etc. The religious advisor of the penguins was discovered through the plot to be a total fraud, even though lines of suppliants stretched into the distance to see him.

Symbols bypass the logical part of our minds and gain direct access to our feelings.

In the future, you can bet that repetitive symbolic conditioning (just short of hypnosis) will be called upon to bear bitter fruit in anti-Christian bias and severe harassment activities. The graphic artistry of this movie is unparalleled, reminding me that Satan is beautiful and lyrical to the max. As far as similarities between the two movies, one reviewer sums it up in the compared levels of violence:

It may be from the folks behind Happy Feet, but Legend of the Guardians is a heck of a lot closer to 300 than it is to a cute little animal movie.

Are people really unaware of the dynamics of how their minds work?

Our minds have the right brain (feelings) part and the left brain (logical, thinking) part. When we allow feelings to control thinking, we have allowed an irrational roller-coaster of dysfunctional behavior into our lives.

In  my opinion these are two movies targeted at a children / young adult viewing audience which both have strong viewpoints of an anti-religious nature.

Please remember, parents, that invisible realm of feelings doesn’t need to jerk us and our family around!  Educate yourselves and your children about the power of symbols.

Technorati Tags:fact,opinion,T.V.,truth,Bill O’Reilly,Dr. Archibald Hart,depression,mental health,emotional health.conflict,thinking skills.

When I was six years old I came home to report a fight at school. “I said there IS a Santa Claus because my Mommy told me and my Mommy doesn’t lie!”  If passionate intensity is the measure of truth, I had the truth and knew it.

Child discipline includes discernment training:  what is truth?

Unfortunately truth is not that easy to find.

For example, the GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) list put out by the government contains aspartame, but 10% of aspartame is methanol, a poison which causes vision problems, interferes with DNA replication, and causes birth defects. Due to the lack of key enzymes, humans are many times more sensitive to the toxic effects of methanol than animals, upon which aspartame was tested for safety. Here’s another example: mercury in your fillings is safe, according to the government,   but when it is taken out of your mouth it is toxic waste. Truth is hard to find.

Let’s define “Functional Truth” as whatever works whether it conforms to a standard of truth or not.

Our culture prompts us to ask, “Will it work,” not, “Is it true?”

Functional truth, in that light, would be any belief expressed with passionate intensity. Nazi Propaganda Chief Dr. Joseph Goebbels asserted, “It is not propaganda’s task to be intelligent, its task is to lead to success.” Passions mislead people but they do lead anyone weak on thinking skills.

In the Bill O’Reilly Factor for Kids[1], Bill advocates better thinking skills.  He gives some warning signs that TV is becoming dangerous to your mental and emotional health.

Here are a few:

1. If you get depressed about your WEIGHT or your LOOKS or your SOCIAL LIFE because the kids on a particular TV series have it so much better than you, get a grip. These shows are written to amuse you, not to reflect real life.
2. If you have to rush off to the mall the instant you see something ADVERTISED, you’ve been tricked. Did you need this item before you saw it on TV? No? Then you don’t need it now.
3. If you find that you are getting YOUR VALUES about family life or school life from a TV show, watch out. Sure, there are many programs that are written around positive life lessons. Just make certain that you can tell which ones are and which ones aren’t.
4. If you are talking more to your friends about what happened on a TV SHOW than what is happening in your REAL LIFE, you’ve got your priorities wrong. And you’re definitely watching too much TV.

O’Reilly goes on to say “If you’re TIRED in the morning, if you’re falling behind in school, if you’re slowing down on the athletic field, if you’re short-tempered…there could be many reasons, but one possibility is that you are watching TOO MUCH TV! It’s not HEALTHY to be that passive for several hours a night. Your mind and body are telling you to cut back.”  Dr. Archibald Hart says that T.V. watching does not actually relax you.

Wow, O’Reilly’s comments for teens sounds like advice for some adults I know. Their skills have dropped as their TV watching has increased. As O’Reilly says, “…time is valuable. Don’t waste it.”

How much does knowledge of the truth matter to you?

It is hard work to teach your child advanced thinking skills. If you choose to passively let the schools teach those thinking skills, get a marker and write “Victim” across your child’s forehead. You are your child’s best teacher, and you must not be lazy about it. Stress Free Discipline contains methods and materials for teaching advanced thinking skills.

How committed are you to finding and teaching the truth? You cannot slide into home base on good intentions.

Passionate intensity is not a truth substitute. It is a counterfeit. It will not save anyone’s soul or increase real quality of life. Truth will do both. Treasure truth.

W.B. Yeats in a poem titled The Second Coming wrote, “The best lack conviction and the worst are filled with passionate intensity.”

Think about it.

Consider my legacy from my biggest career challenge: teaching delinquents at an alternative high school on the Navajo Reservation. I prayed for weeks and got very frustrated before I was offered that job.  Than I didn’t know if I should accept it. 

I wanted a job where I could express my faith and lead students in meaningful ways.  Should I say “yes?” 

 After three days of especially intensive prayer by my pastor and friends, I dreamed an odd name.: Zerubbabel.

I woke up enough to think it strange, and quickly went back to sleep. Again the name. Back to sleep again. In the morning it came back to me again, and I thought, “Hmm. Might be a demon or something in the Bible.”

When I looked it up, I found Zerubbabel was an ancestor of Jesus who led exiles back to Jerusalem from Babylon. After listening to prophets Haggai and Zechariah, he began construction of the temple. There were major frustrations and obstacles. Yet he was encouraged to be strong (Haggai 2:4, 21ff) and work and not to despise small things (Zechariah 4:10). This new, small temple was disappointing to the old timers who saw Solomon’s temple before it was destroyed, but small progress is still progress! 

How often we forget that important fact: small things may have big results!  We overlook small steps in the right direction, often failing to reward our children for doing small things right!  What kind of legacy is that? 

Who Will Build on Your Foundation?  Will it be a Godly building–a strong, dynamic life?

Zechariah 4:6 has instructions for Zerubbabel:

“Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the LORD of hosts.”

I gathered from my reading that Zerubbabel would make small beginnings, but God would complete the work in the future, perhaps when Christ would rule the world. I was encouraged enough to take the job on the Navajo reservation.  I knew I could do “small beginnings”—just my speed.  I do my best; God does the rest.  I accepted a little job in an unknown part of the country. 

Nothing immense or intense caused sparks to fly in my life.  I teamed up with a missionary who knew Navajo to do Bible Studies at lunch in my classroom.  A  Navajo Baptist pastor led several to Christ. Our small team was on the way toward a legacy that would last by God’s grace.  Altogether, twelve students invited Jesus into their lives.  That result was not my doing; I just introduced them to Jesus and Christ did the rest.

After three years on the reservation, Native Preference in hiring replaced me with a Native American.

Looking for meaning in what I had accomplished, I realized that politics and immense frustrations were part of the big picture that only God knew in advance. Like Zerubbabel I just laid the foundation: others would build.

What kind of a foundation are you laying in the lives of your children?

Is their youth just for fun and fulfillment of selfish desires? Are you building discernment and critical thinking skills into that foundation? What are your long term goals for discipline?

I hope your aim is not just for unquestioning obedience.  Here’s why.

Rachael D. Ramer, Christian Research Journal, writes that

“…demanding unquestioning obedience from children goes beyond what (Jesus) instructed…Authoritarianism goes beyond healthy, positive discipline and demands absolute submission.”[1]

I agree with Ms. Ramer that “many children who receive this type of “training” grow up to fear their parents and any adult figure.” I believe such “training” teaches a child to submit to wrongful dominance as adults.

No surprise: it is hard to “retrain” an intimidated person.

Ask yourself: what kind of foundation am I creating as I raise my child? Excessive punishment without rewarding right choices intimidates a child.  An intimidated child grows into an adult who probably will not stand up to aggressive, wrongful behavior.  You do not intend to produce a coward, but… 

I have raw data and a report done by a licensed private detective on Bible-based, authoritarian cults. Those cults prey on Christian children successfully because the family love bonds are weak. The family love bonds are weak because they are subverted by too much emphasis on unquestioning obedience to authority.  Automatic–unquestioning–obedience is dangerous!

Fact: rules without relationship cause rebellion.

My book, Stress Free Discipline, has an unusual component which retains parental authority but invites in-depth thinking in children.  The stress-free process is simple:  step-by-step, day by day, valuable concepts are learned and practiced.  Right choices are rewarded with quality time playing educational games with parents.

Are you creating a soft, feel-good foundation which will collapse later in your child’s life?  Or are you training your child to think analytically–building a strong foundation?

Three things to remember:

1. The over-riding goal of my work is to unite families into Berean teams: people who search everything in light of the scriptures.  Consider buying my book: Stress-free Discipline.
2. Children can learn critical thinking by dwelling on the Bible and what it means in our lives.
3. Build a solid foundation while you have the chance.

[1] Rachael D. Ramer, Christian Research Journal, Volume 26, Number 1, pp. 33-41.

Is your child really the most important person after God and your spouse? How do your priorities line up? If streaming and social media consume four or more hours of your time each day, how are your children going to learn effective life skills?

Effective life skills are those things everyone has to do–to be an effective adult–or pay someone else to do them. The teaching job required for this list of chores takes time and plenty of work.  It is ongoing, frustrating, lasts a lifetime and is worth every minute of your self-sacrifice.

If your child can do those adult chores fast and well, he or she will be happy, according to “happiness research.” How many of the following adult chores are you planning to teach your child…or how many of them have you mastered? Here’s a list of adult responsibilities which—if you are skillful—will make you a happy adult.  Unplug from the TV and plug into life.

Parent’s Duty and Skill List (Frame this and hang it in plain sight.  Review it often with your child when you assign chores to yourself and children.)

Yard and Home Repairs:

Manage workers or repair and maintain yard and home yourself. Paint, build, plan, budget for and buy materials for projects such as roofing, bookshelves, storage areas.

Bookkeeping:

pay bills, keep records of spending, balance bank statements, track credit spending and loan repayments. Plan and carry out insurance and financial strategy.

Secretarial:

do time planning and errands, phone calls, correspondence, special occasion gifts and cards, schedule appoints, games, classes, and special events. Chauffeur people to these events.

Files:

set up and maintain files on all aspects of the household, including financial, warranty, and physical plant information. Keep records on repairs done and specifics of new equipment installed.

Protection:

Research, provide for, and maintain the following: inventory of possessions, furniture and valuable paintings. Create and maintain safety rules, fire escape drills, tracking of children away from home, etc.

Food Services:

plan menus, purchase food, prepare meals, serve them and clean up after them. Take into account: nutritional balance, personal preferences, special dietary needs, variety of texture, color and type of food, degree of “cooking,” freshness and freedom from unnecessary additives. Food storage rotation and freezer “quickies” for Sunday use must be planned and maintained. Ambiance, service, food preparation and purchase for parties are additional.

Purchasing:

Buy toiletries, paper products, small appliances, gifts, clothing, etc. on budget. Wrap and mail gifts as needed.

Laundry:

Wash, fold, and iron clothing, bedding and towels, schedule and record items sent out for dry cleaning and laundry, get items from cleaners.

Fabric maintenance:

Mend and perform tailoring on clothing, backpacks, and other fabrics.

Physical plant maintenance:

General Handyman tasks, basic plumbing, wiring, carpentry, and other household upkeep.

Daily cleaning:

General pick-up, make beds; straighten, fold, and put away items, organize magazines, books and newspapers, freshen bathrooms, straighten towels and clean bathroom sink.

Trash Disposal:

Empty kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and office trash as needed, recycle coat hangers, plastics, glass and newspapers, prepare trash for weekly pickup.

Weekly cleaning:

Change bed and bath linens weekly, clean shower area, hot tub and shower as needed, wash floors, vacuum and dust.

Periodic Maintenance:

Clean windows including skylights and screens at least twice yearly, clean carpets and upholstery, oil furniture with four coats oil inside and out 2-3 times per year. Remove books from shelves and vacuum books and shelves. Clean gutters and attic or basement areas.

Houseplant maintenance:

Purchase, re-pot, water, trim and feed houseplants.

Gardening:

Water as needed, use weed killer and spray for insects and diseases. Wash or hose off porches and outdoor furniture.

Small Appliance and computer Repairs:

Schedule and carry out computer virus protection, vacuum and other routine cleaning and repair to prevent problems before they happen. Record repairs done and by whom.

Organization:

clean out and organize closets, cupboards, drawers and basement and furnace room. Discard out-of-date items, such as spices over six months old or outdated medications.

Automobile repair and maintenance:

track oil changes, radiator and belts and regular tune up needs, gas and wash car as needed.

Pet care:

daily brushing, walking, vacation planning and vet visits, shots, licensing and shampoos.

Child care:

1. Raise children in the discipline and nurture of the Lord,
2. Supervise and instruct them on reasonable chores, safety, expectations and family goals
3. Teach manners, citizenship, respect for authority and education,
4. Attend school and church events, track homework and project due dates, help with schoolwork, provide quality control of schoolwork and handwriting,
5. Teach and monitor spelling, History, Math, English, Science, etc.
6. Teach and practice problem solving skills, negotiation skills, conflict resolution, communication skills, hobbies and anger management skills.
7. Teach and practice adult skills such as budgeting, spend/save/tithe principles, making decisions, analysis, creativity, synthesis, time management, priority and goal setting, application of right principles, proactivity rather than crisis management, follow-through on duties, life-long learning habits and interdependence.

Does your youth have these adult skills mastered so they can be done fast and well? If not, he or she remains in a submissive, student’s role until time to establish his/her own household.

My husband and I have foster-parented our 9 year-old granddaughter for eight months, learning a lot about all of us in the process.  Now her mother has joined us while she builds a new life for them both.

The school has informed us that–while our granddaughter is in the gifted and talented program with test scores above average–she lacks personal knowledge of real-world facts.  She is immersed–given the chance–in streaming media four to six hours daily.  So are her mother and grandfather.

She is addicted to fiction:  grandpa favors the news and military history.  Dinner is fragmented by different time schedules or is eaten in silence in front of the TV.

All of us are engaged in solitary independent play.  Our granddaughter has substituted media for learned facts and social interactions, placing herself at a disadvantage in the real world.  Grandpa learned his social skills on schedule but does not exercise them with family to build team spirit when he is focused on the news at dinnertime and movies afterward.  All of us are engaged in solitary independent play.

Solitary independent play is what happens with toddlers in a sandbox.  They do “their own thing” without communication, commitment, cooperation or planning.  They continue in that mode until they are taught and required to behave differently.

Is this your family?  How will your child learn essential life skills when the media consumes six hours per day of teaching time?  When will you commit to leadership in teaching essential life skills?  Check out “The Most Important Person in Your Life” post to see what you have missed by your lack of planning.