Hey everybody.  I hope youare enjoying your children right about now. Thank God here in Missouri the winter appear to be completely over and we are enjoying beautiful weather. This time of the year

It is with sadness that I great you today. It is a sorrowful, and horrible incident that happened to young Travon Martin. I can't think of any news more devastating than to hear that your child is dead. At the heart of this case is what do we teach our children about their environment?

It is believed that emotionally healthy children can trust their environment. But can they? Are young people less emotionally stable if they have a healthy distrust of their environment?

To distrust their environment may requiere your teenagers to curtail how they live. They may not take jobs that require them to be out after dark. They may have to watch what they wear on a daily basis. Your teen may learn to be leery of law enforcement, or they may learn that it's safer in numbers. (This could cause more problems.)

What will you teach your teen in light of this horrible incident? Is it possible to teach them to be careful without instilling a lot of fear in them? Besides, isn't this one of the major problems we have with our teens. e Wwant to restrict them for safety purposes, they want to have freedom, because they believe they can take care of themselves?

This incident is indeed unfortunate, and it puts a blaring spotlight on our greatest fear. Our teens could be fatally injured for no real reason. 

What do you think, should we teach our teens to distrust their environment.

Hey Everybody,.... Is It my imagination or is it a real problem going on? More and more often I run into young people who lie for no reason. Whether they are in trouble or not, these teens just lie. They lie about the obvious. They say they are making A's when they are making F's. They stare you in the face and tell you they aren't suspended from school when you have the paperwork in your hands.


When they are caught in their lie, there are no tears and confession. They aren't humiliated and frustrated. Most often they become angry, that they were caught in the middle of their lie. They go into attack mode, and blame others for their problems.

So far, it has been frustrating attempting to get teens to admit to mistakes, but I have found that consistently challenging the lies and holding the teens accountable for their mistakes may curtail some of the lying.

What have you found that was helpful to in curtailing lying in your teen?

Did you know that there is an estimated seven million, eight hundred seventy five thousand children who are living in poverty today. There are several causes of poverty, early teenage pregnancy, addictions, but the most devastating is spending habits. Poor spending habits is a major problem in the United States.

Indicators of poor spending habits are: living from paycheck to paycheck, using credit cards to supplement paychecks.

Hello everybody. Recently I played a good old fashioned game of marbles with a group of little boys and girls. The children were shooting the marbles all over everywhere. They were missing the whole pile of forty six marbles. There were many life lessons that were pointed out during the game. These lessons were repeated over and over throughout the game.

1. The children had to be redirected often. It's easy for young people to get distracted and lose focus.

2. There are rules that have to be followed in order for the game to be fun and fair.  At some point someone attempted to break the rules, or attempted to change the rules in the middle of the game. It's interesting to watch the other children defend the rules, and make each other accountable to keeping the rules.

3. Pick a goal and go after your goal. When this was taught the children became much more successful at knocking the marbles outside of the circle. They caught the vision quickly, and everybody's game improved.

4. Several games were played so the children learned that everybody wins, and that everybody loses.


5. Most importantly, the children learn to have fun and enjoy themselves.

Have you been trying to teach a life lesson to your children. There is nothing like a good game to illustrate life's lessons. Playing games is an excellent way to build a good relationship and teach life lessons with your children.

What games are you playing with your children?