I have just returned from a junior high retreat with my daughter.

OH. MY. GOODNESS.

The good thing was that it reinforced for both of us that homeschooling is a good thing. The other kids (not the ones from our church) were almost uniformly crazy. I don't know where we got this idea that FUN=CRAZY when kids are young. Why can't fun just be fun? Why does it have to involve doing dangerous things, or running around at 1:30 in the morning, or eating 6 candybars at once?

I was just really unimpressed with a lot of the kids I met, which I know is a terrible thing to say. But the maturity level wasn't there. Our kids from our church, who tend to come from strong families, were the exception, I thought.

But the pandering, even from some youth leaders, to this craziness I find difficult to handle. Perhaps I'm a fuddy-duddy, but I don't think so.

Junior high is also a difficult age. A lot of kids are going through things they shouldn't be: pressure to smoke, drink, use drugs, or watch pornography. For those kids, we need youth retreats that will tell it like it is and encourage them to stick with God.

But a lot of our kids (mine included) are experiencing nothing like that, and are still beautifully innocent. If speakers start going on about pornography, we could easily ruin that. So it's a hard line to find when you're ministering to this group, and I don't envy those who try. I just wish that it could be done in a little less crazy a way, so that at least we could get a little bit of sleep!

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A church I was once very involved in has recently changed their philosophy of ministry for children, and I've never been entirely comfortable with it but I couldn't figure out why. Today it came to me.

Here's what's basically happened: they have a successful youth ministry, and they're taking that model and using it with the kids, too. Each kid will be in a small group with a teen leader and an adult leader (even those as young as Junior Kindergarten). The leaders wil be expected to get to know the kids personally, and send them cards if they miss church, and phone them, and befriend them, and in general help them out and participate in their lives.

Now here's where I have a problem. I think that works great with teens, because teens are trying to separate from their parents (that's the point of adolescence), and having strong Christian mentors is a good thing.

But kids can't be seen as individuals in the same way, and so the ministry should not be to them as individuals. It should be towards families.

Honestly, if someone from the church called and wanted to talk to my 10-year-old, I'd think that was a little creepy. Even if it was a woman I liked. Katie's relationship with God right now is something that I am in charge of, along with my husband, and the church supports us. It doesn't supplant us. And this seems a little strange to me.

In the same way, I don't think that sending a card home to a child who misses church is appropriate or effective. After all, they can only get to church in the first place if their parents drive them or arrange a ride. A teen can take that upon his or herself to arrnage for transportation, but a kid can't. So why write a note telling the kid you missed them? Why not instead design programs for adults to come to as well, so that they'll get to know people in the church and will want to take their kids there?

I think children's ministry should really be family ministry. Sure they may have Sunday School, but the parents have to be involved. Anything that tries to get the child in a mentor relationship with someone outside the immediate family, when the family is a strong Christian one, seems to me to go against what the Bible says is the parents' responsibility towards raising their kids to love God.

I mean, I love a lot of adults in that church, but I don't agree with them on all doctrinal issues or on lots of stuff. It doesn't mean I think they're not Chrisitans; it's just that I want to be the one to influence Katie and point her in the right direction.

I think the trend in Children's Ministry across North America is this kind of thing, and I think it's wrong. Don't come between me and my kid, even if you think you're just helping. It ain't right.

What do you think?

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Many Canadians are dealing with work stress by delaying having children, having fewer offspring or deciding not to have any, says a study released Wednesday.

A quarter of the nearly 33,000 surveyed for the federally funded study say they are having fewer children than they'd like because of difficulties balancing work and family.

Twenty-eight per cent said work stress caused them to delay starting a family, or resulted in the decision not to have children at all.

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My syndicated column last week was on food fights--and not the kind that cause potatoes to fly into people's hair, but the kind that cause broccoli to not enter into someone's mouth. Here it is:

After a recent column imploring stay-at-home moms to give themselves a break, a reader e-mailed me to thank me. She had been exhausting herself trying to create the perfect home, complete with “irresistible” dinners for the family, and she was running out of steam.

Preparing “irresistible” dinners, though, is not really our problem. We all know how to do that: ketchup with hotdogs on the side followed by ice cream, ice cream, and more ice cream. For kids (especially mine), ketchup is its own food group. When my oldest daughter Rebecca was little, she would dip her french fries in it and lick it off, never actually consuming said fry until it was a slobbery mess, at which point she would graciously offer it to me.

            Irresistible, then, isn’t hard. But preparing healthy food that kids actually want to eat is. The simple fact is that healthy isn’t fun, and there are so much more appealing foods readily available. When our first was born, we read all the baby books that told us there was no need to introduce sugar until they were two. But the book forgot to warn us about grandparents, and sure enough, our child had ice cream and chocolate galore long before her second birthday. Part of the joy of being a grandparent, after all, is making kids happy without having to be the responsible ones. I can hardly wait to have grandchildren myself, but in the meantime I’m stuck trying to convince my kids that broccoli can be just as appealing as ice cream.

Kids see right through this. One reader wrote me about a time she was trying to convince her son that this particular green vegetable would indeed tantalize the tastebuds. “Look, honey, Mommy and Daddy like our broccoli,” she said, as they both dutifully lifted their forks to their mouths. Their son peered at them suspiciously, “Yeah, but which of you wants seconds?”. Kids get smart way too early.

It’s not only that kids reject the healthy stuff. They turn their noses up at the way it’s served, too. My children, for instance, cannot eat anything if it is actually touching anything else. So if we have stew, and I want them to actually eat it, I have to separate out the meat and the carrots and the potatoes, so they don’t contaminate one another.

But even if you do everything right, kids still eye the food suspiciously. Very early in life they develop strategies for how to consume the least amount of “gross” food as possible. Rebecca refuses to eat anything that looks like it has a spice or an herb in it. So she’ll painstakingly remove all the green flecks of parsley off something, and eat the rest, consuming approximately 8.5% of any given item, and leaving the remainder in minuscule pieces all over her plate.

With all these strategies, how do we get kids to actually eat? Don’t give them a choice. I don’t make them actually eat (I remember too well eating stuff that I honestly thought was going to make me vomit), but I don’t give them anything else either. They just go hungry if they don’t eat their dinner. This means, of course, that snacks in the house must be kept to a minimum. If a kid knows that if they don’t eat their dinner, two hours later they can demolish a bag of chips in front of the TV, dinner will seem even less attractive. But if snacks consist of only fruit or vegetables, dinner suddenly may not seem so bad.

If that’s too drastic, you can try what some of my friends do: offer them a once weekly “out”. Let them know they can choose a hot dog and an apple for one meal—but only one—each week. If they hate Monday’s dinner, they have to figure out if there’s a possibility Thursday’s might be even worse.

            Struggles over food are almost universal, yet miraculously most kids grow out of this picky stage. While they’re in it, just stick to your guns. The more you do, the more you’ll be able to drown out all the “EWWWWs!” and sit back and enjoy your meal. Even the broccoli.

A friend wrote me after I sent the column around (I send it out by email every week; you can sign up here) and said that she thinks the issue is what food babies are exposed to. If you cook your own baby food, they eat broccoli as babies, and they don't mind it later. But no commercial baby food includes broccoli, so kids don't tend to like it.

I think she may be on to something! I did make my own food, and my kids actually do like broccoli (I just picked on that vegetable in the column). But I still hate squash, and there's nothing anybody can do about it.

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I don't know what happened over the summer, but our children have completely changed their attitudes towards homeschooling.

My children have always been good students, but they also have tended to complain about doing work, or cried in the middle of the day, and basically been a little difficult at times, even as they are joys overall.

But this year they've been wonderful! They've worked hard and efficiently, and we're actually done school by 2:00 everyday, even though they're doing way more work (because they're doing it faster!). It's really a relief.

It could be just that they're getting older; Becca's almost 13 and Katie is 10. Maybe it's because we went back to Africa this summer and they saw how blessed they really are here at home. Or maybe God's just been working in their lives. It could, of course, be a combination of all of those things.

But I'm grateful anyway! I love my kids!

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Last night I decided to get productive and organize all the kids' schoolwork from the past seven years. I had loose papers sitting in a filing cabinet and I couldn't have found anything specific if my life depended on it!

So I grabbed all our empty binders and other miscellaneous paper organizers, and started to work. I threw out most of their things and just kept a few things from each subject for each year. It was really a fun process, because I got to see how far they'd come, how much they'd learned, and how cute they were when they were little (they're 10 and 12 now, though they're still cute!).

One paper really made me laugh, though. Katie, when she was barely 6, wrote this:

Once there was a egell (eagle). She had a mom who had to werck all the time. Sometimes her mom came home and they all had hot chockelet. The egell's dad was home all of the time so the egell could be saef.

Sorry for the spelling mistakes, but that's what she wrote!

Anyway, the reason I thought that was so funny is that I've always been home the vast majority of the time! I do do some Christian speaking, though, and sometimes I'll have to leave for an evening or overnight. This must have been written right after one of those episodes. My husband, though, works quite long hours! But to little 6-year-old Katie, what really mattered was that Mommy should be home. It was very cute, and it just goes to show how upset she would have been if I'd gotten a "real" job! It's such a blessing to stay home with my kids.

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I received a question in an email today from someone who had heard me speak once, asking what to do about a 5-year-old perfectionistic daughter who refused to speak in the house as a way of controlling the parents.

That's an interesting problem, isn't it? That little girl is probably above average intelligence. She's figured out how to push her parents' buttons already.

I think kids often do this--they try to find ways that they can have control over the family by controlling their own behaviour in a negative way. Refusing to talk is perfect. The parents get all upset, and after all, how do you make a kid talk?

What I told this woman was that I wouldn't put up with it. You have to win some battles just so that the child knows that they are not in control. For one thing, it's an issue of obedience and respect. For another, it can be scary for a child to truly have that kind of control over the family.

So I told her to set up family rituals that involve speaking and singing. Not to single out this one child, but to force her to participate in family activities, so that she is not the center of attention. For instance, you can begin each meal by everyone stating what their favourite thing to do today was. After dinner you can work on memorizing a Bible verse as a family. You can sing your "morning" song and your "evening" song as you clean up, like "Jesus Loves Me" and "This Little Light of Mine". And if the child refuses? They don't get to participate in family things, like movie nights or games nights or even family mealtimes, perhaps.

I hope that's not too strict, but I just don't think we should give in when children try to hijack the family. The problem, it seems to me, is that we've gotten away from this idea that parents should set the tone for the house, and we've allowed children to do it. It leads to a lot of self-absorption and to dangerous behaviour when they're teenagers.

Right now, my 12-year-old has started rolling her eyes. That's not going to last very long, I assure you. She's a really wonderful kid. But she's starting to act in some ways like a typical teenager, just as she acted like a typical 18-month-old when she had temper tantrums all those years ago. But we didn't stand for that, either, just like I won't stand for the rolling her eyes thing.

But what do you all think? The woman emailed me back and said she liked my suggestions, and she was going to try them. So I'll be eager to hear how they turn out!

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Warning: this is not an endorsement of the movie! But I rented Idiocracy solely based on its premise: in an army experiment gone awry, a man who was supposed to be placed in hibernation for one year wakes up 500 years later. But the world he wakes up to is awful. The media has made us so dumbed down, and in the 21st century smart people stopped reproducing while Britney Spears-addicted teens kept reproducing that the human species "de-evolved" into really stupid creatures. He is now the smartest person on earth, even though his IQ in 2006 was only considered 100.

The movie is awful. It's too crude, there's way too much swearing, and it doesn't do with the plot what it could have done. But the premise is hilarious. In 2506, the world is completely debased. Everything is a swear word. No one understands the rule of logic. Everybody is hooked on propaganda and advertising. And inane media is what the world revolves around.

It was a pretty scary picture, and unfortunately maybe too accurate. It made me want to make sure that my kids read even more books, and made me regret not having more children to live up to my duty to make sure human intelligence goes up, not down!

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Happy Valentine's Day! I thought I'd share with you some thoughts I wrote in my column last week on what men want on this very romantic day. See if you think I got it right:

I mentioned to a friend that for a change I was considering writing about Valentine’s Day from a man’s point of view. Instead of focusing on what we women want, I would write a column about what men want. She snickered and asked, “how many words do you have to write again?”. “Seven hundred,” I answered. “What are you going to say for the other 699?”        

            We females tend to believe men are a little bit like dogs; they’re just not that complicated. Give them some affection and they’ll be perfectly content. In fact, that’s why they spend their lives following us around with their tongues hanging out. They’re begging us to give them what they most want, and no matter how many times we rebuff them, they never give up trying.

            And that’s why women can get grumpy when we think about what our husbands expect on Valentine’s Day. Their demands seem kind of, well, pathetic. Our demands, on the other hand, are lofty, noble, and certainly justified. We want romance, and mystery, and a gift that doesn’t go in the laundry room. After all, we spend every other day of the year looking after everybody else. Today should be our day.

That kind of superior attitude must be really annoying to men. We’re so sure we deserve all the adulation, because we think we’re the ones who do all the real work for the house, the family, even the relationship. I think, though, that that’s mostly because we value what we do, and not what they do. We forget that we married these men because they were different from us. And while those differences were once attractive, they now irk us when we are always the ones to change the toilet paper rolls.

While men’s locker room conversations supposedly are dominated by tales of imaginary conquests, women’s conversations are quite different. We don’t brag. We complain. He doesn’t know what a mop is for. He can’t dress the kids in clothes that match if his life depended on it. He ate all the granola bars I bought for the kids’ lunches, so they had no snacks today. He throws his dirty underwear everywhere except in the laundry hamper.

Much of this complaining stems from honest frustration. Women still do the bulk of the work around the house, although that is slowly changing, and many feel very taken for granted. That’s a lonely place to be in a marriage. But sometimes we make ourselves even lonelier by failing to recognize what men do contribute. We notice what we do around the house, but not what they do in the yard, with the car, or even with the insurance agents.

This Valentine’s Day, I think what my husband would most like is that I start thinking like a man. Certainly valuing affection would be a big part of that, but not the whole thing. It would also involve valuing what he uniquely does. So thanking him—creatively, of course—for his contribution to our family would be a good start.

And what am I grateful for? He’s there to listen when I’ve had a hard day. He can get the kids in line far faster than I can because his voice is a lot firmer than mine ever could be. He’s big enough to wrap his arms around me. He warms up my feet. He’s someone I can count on to stand up for me when a technician on the phone asks me for the fourth time if I have tried unplugging my computer, or when the store won’t take back the defective ice cream maker, or when the repair shop asks for too much money. He always tells me I’m beautiful, and he doesn’t notice that extra ten pounds I’ve gained in the last two years. He works really hard, and keeps our bank account in the black.

Valentine’s Day is not all about me, and this year, I think my husband would like to know not just that I love him, but why I love him. That’s not too much to ask, is it?

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I normally love watching baptisms. We go to a Baptist church, so people are baptized as believers, and they give their testimony before they're dunked. It's loads of fun, and usually very touching.

But I was thinking something the other day. We were doing communion, and one of the elders was praying before the passing of the bread. He said, "Lord, we were all once alienated from you. We didn't know you. We were your enemies, lost in sin. But you saved us through your broken body, and we thank you for that."

What he said was entirely scriptural. He quoted lots from Colossians, and it was great. But as I was listening to him, I thought to myself, "my kids have never been alienated from God, have they?".

How do we define when a child becomes a Christian? Rebecca said "the prayer" when she was 6. So did Katie. They were both in their beds, and I prayed with them. Were they enemies of God beforehand?

Just bear with me on this one, because I'm going to make a point in a minute. I know what I'm saying maybe isn't very orthodox doctrine, but hear me out, because I've been thinking about this a lot lately.

When Rebecca was 3 1/2, we were living in Toronto, and we basically lived on the subway. We were always going someplace or other. And Rebecca loved to make up songs. I remember one particular time we were riding in a rather crowded carriage when Rebecca started singing, in tune and rather loudly (she's very musical) a song she made up that went like this: "Jesus died on the CROOOOSSSSS, for me and for Mommy and for Katie and for Daddy and for EEEEEEEVVVVVEEEERRYOOOONE! And He loves me, and He loves Mommy, and He loves Katie, and He loves EEEEVVVVEEEERRRRYOOOONE!".

She had a habit of doing things like that. She was my little evangelist, totally oblivious to what was going on around her.

Are we to say that she was an enemy of God at 3 1/2, when she was evangelizing the city of Toronto?

I remember another time when she was 5, and I had the hiccups. I was so frustrated. They hurt. I couldn't get rid of them. And she looked at me and said, "you should ask Jesus, Mommy. Here, I'll pray for you." And as she closed her eyes, I said a prayer of my own. I said, "God, you better come through now to help my little girl's faith along." And she said, "Dear Jesus, please make Mommy stop hiccupping. Amen." And I didn't hiccup again. She had faith. But she hadn't said the prayer yet.

Now, let me go back to the baptism issue for a minute. We usually get most excited when someone telling their testimony goes on about how they had abandoned God and done drugs and left their family behind and lost their job and their truck and their dog and everything that meant anything to them, and then God caught them and they turned their lives around. I don't mean to mock; I love stories like that. But let's be honest: the person who has been involved in destructive behaviour has left a lot of broken lives in their wake. They have major baggage they still have to deal with. Isn't a better testimony something like this: "I grew up in a Christian home where I always knew God. I sang about Him. I prayed to Him. I always knew He was there. Today, as I get baptized, I'm doing it to claim that this faith is not just my parent's, but mine"?

I got in a conversation with my girls about this today at school and it was wonderful. They started talking about their frustration because they don't have a "testimony". They don't know what to say about what their lives were like before they knew Christ. I ended up telling them they have always known Christ. It's not about a pre-Christ life and a post-Christ life for them; it's simply about deciding to declare that it's their faith, and not just mine.

Anyway, does that make sense? I just think in the evangelical tradition we focus too much on this idea of saying the prayer, and miss the better message: that it is possible to raise kids who have always known that God is real, who have always felt Him, and who have always loved Him. It may not be exciting, and it may not have a great tale. But isn't it a better one? I'm so grateful that is the story my girls have to tell, rather than the one about drugs and everything else. And I will continue to pray that their "testimony" is as boring as possible, but still very deep and meaningful.

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What does it mean to really be a parent? What is our role?

I was thinking about that when I wrote my column last week. I didn't think it was that controversial a column, but I've received reams of emails about it, some negative, some positive. Some very anti-Christian, which I thought interesting, since I didn't even overtly mention God. My column goes out in about 10 papers around Canada. Here it is:

The other day, I spotted a girl of about 15 sporting a T-shirt with big pink letters announcing “I make good boys BAD”. I assumed, by her choice of attire, that she wished to advertise the fact that she was a nymphomaniac sexual predator. But in watching her, I also assumed a lot about her parents.

To begin with, I’m pretty sure they’re not that involved in her life. No self-respecting adult would let a child don that shirt. Whichever adults are on the scene, then, it’s obvious they either think it’s funny—in which case they have no right to call themselves parents—or they’ve given up. That’s just teen culture, and what can we do about it? I’d rather not make a scene. And that’s just sad, because our kids deserve more.

A lot of parents have thrown in the towel, many without realizing it, because they’ve forgotten their primary purpose. It is not to be your child’s friend. It is not to make your child like you. It is not to make your child’s life easy. It is to raise your child to behave responsibly, morally, and eventually independently. Often we believe our kids will just develop this by osmosis. Keep them safe and feed them, and they’ll be okay. They may make some mistakes along the way, but everything will turn out fine.

I’m not so sure that’s true. If we take a hands off approach, I think it’s likely things may turn out much worse than we hope for. Our culture does not exactly exude responsible behaviour and good choices. The tabloids are filled with Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan and more stars gone wild galore. If we want to raise good adults, we’ll have to do it ourselves.

Parents, though, don’t necessarily share this view of their role. I recently heard the stories of three different responses to 14-year-old girls who needed parental guidance. First, my niece had her grade 8 graduation last year, and some parents from the class offered to have a coed sleepover in tents. My sister-in-law had only one question: are the parents going to stay in the tents themselves? If not, then my niece wasn’t going anywhere near the party. She wasn’t old enough or mature enough to handle the issues she may inadvertently face.

A few days later my sister-in-law was talking with other moms. Several expressed their own dismay at the party, though that dismay hadn’t translated into forbidding it. “I didn’t want my son to go,” one mom said. “But all of his friends were going. How could I say no?”. Tina looked at the mom incredulously. “You are his mother, aren’t you?” she asked.

Another friend, we’ll call him Rick, was dealing with a daughter who was out of control. She had been sneaking out with a very bad crowd from school, and he was determined to stop her. One night, after Rick flat out refused to let her go to a party, she headed for the door anyway. Rick beat her to it. He stood there, between her and the doorway, for four hours as she repeatedly hit him and punched him and tried to get him to move so she could escape. He wasn’t budging. He didn’t yell; he didn’t scream; he simply held his ground and kept repeating “I love you. And someone who loves you would not let you do this.”

His words are very profound, aren’t they? Love is not making sure your child is happy, or popular, or cool. Love is giving up your evening to make sure she doesn’t party with a bad crowd and hurt herself. It’s throwing out the T-shirts with rude sayings that give the message your child is open to abuse or objectification. It’s enduring the “I hate you’s!” because you know that giving in will mean your child, who is more precious to you than your own life, will only hurt worse. It’s allowing your own heart to be seared and ripped, in the prayer that you will prevent your child from coming to harm.

It takes guts. It takes work. And it takes time. But that is the very definition of being a parent. “Someone who loves you would not let you do this.” If only all parents would heed those words.

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So Rebecca, 12, has been going to her youth group for a couple of months now. It's interesting to see her blossoming there, because I never did (but then I went to school!).

I was talking to our youth pastor, who is a friend of mine, about how she's managing. Here were a couple of his comments:

1. She is totally not into popular culture, and she doesn't care who knows it. If kids are talking about the latest TV show or pop singer, she doesn't participate. But she's not shy about it; she just simply thinks it's a little silly. So she doesn't try to pretend to be something that she's not.

2. She hangs out with the boys (and that's not a bad thing!). I think in school kids get the idea that girls hang out with girls, and boys with boys, and the only time you cross the aisle is for romance. But Rebecca finds many of the boys interesting, and she's not afraid to talk to both groups. I think that's great. Yesterday our homeschooling group was skating, and it was amazing how well the girls and boys always play together, and how the older ones look out for the younger ones when they're doing something physical together. I think that's rare today.

3. Some kids don't like her, but it doesn't devastate her. She just hangs out with the kids who do like her. I think that's neat.

Anyway, I would love to know what some of your experiences are. But it just shows to me, again, that socialization is just fine when you homeschool.

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How do you effect change in a community? The question is plaguing me right now because of an ad that's up at our local mall, targeting 13-15 year-olds. Its slogan is "be your own girl", and it's for birth control pills. I was livid.

I've emailed the mall. My friends have emailed the mall. My syndicated column, which goes out to over 60,000 homes in the area, was about the ad. I've had tons of mail in return. But the mall has said nothing.

I'm thinking of organizing a petition campaign called "No Mall in March", encouraging people to boycott the mall for the month of March until they promise not to run ads like that again, but how do you get people engaged? People will say they agree with you, but in the end, are they really willing to change their behaviour?

I'd love to know what you think. Here's a copy of the column. Hope you like it! 

Catching My Eye 

           A few months back I was approaching a busy intersection when a billboard caused me to become even more of a road hazard than normal. An herbal store had thrown up the words “Breast Enhancers: Buy 2, Get 1 Free”. I stared at that sign, my foot on the accelerator, while my daughter yelled, “Red light, Mommy! Red light!”. Luckily, we averted any major disaster once I was able to avert my eyes from the sign. But I couldn’t help wondering, where does the third one go? Once I realized they were referring to bottles of pills, it made more sense. But I still wished I had had my camera.

            It reminded me of a recent poster up at the hospital where my husband works, promoting an “Elder Abuse Workshop”. When I teach a “writing workshop”, I teach how to write. When my daughter takes a “Drawing Animals Workshop”, she is learning how to draw animals. When one takes an “elder abuse workshop”, what, exactly, is one learning how to do? It’s amazing how people can say the exact opposite of what they mean without even realizing it.

            McDonald’s does this, too, much to their own detriment. They proudly state that their burgers are “made with 100% pure beef!”. That’s like saying my chocolate chip cookies are made with 100% pure vanilla extract. Sure there’s vanilla in there somewhere, but that’s not the only ingredient. If they were to say their hamburgers are made entirely “of” 100% pure beef, that would be one thing. By saying their hamburgers are made “with” 100% pure beef, though, they’re implying there’s a whole lot of stuff of the non-cow variety in there.  From what I’ve read, their hamburgers truly are pure beef, though they taste absolutely nothing like the pure beef patties I have in my freezer. That’s why I have a craving for the golden arches, and not for my own cooking. But if the hamburgers are pure beef, they should get their prepositions straight and say so, rather than leaving the door open for very different interpretations.

            And then, just last week, I turned on my computer to find this brilliant headline blaring on Sympatico’s website: “Gender linked to prostate risk”. I am glad they offer news bulletins like this every so often, because otherwise I might hear about the high rates of prostate cancer and worry that I may one day fall prey to it.

            Then there are the ads that stop you in your tracks because you just can’t believe what you saw. Over Boxing Week, when out with my daughters, I saw a large billboard comprised of a collage of good looking girls, who appeared to me to be around 13-15, doing things like swimming, gazing in the mirror, and playing in a band. The slogan of the ad was “try being your own girl”. And the product being advertised? Birth control pills. That’s right; the way young teenage girls should assert their newfound independence is by having sex.

            I’m quite familiar with the argument “they’re going to do it anyway, so they may as well use protection”. However, that is totally irrelevant here. The ad is not mentioning safe sex; it is encouraging kids who may not otherwise be having sex to have it by equating birth control pills with a hip lifestyle.

And Janssen-Ortho, the company that is plying these pills, also pointed girls to their cool website, directed at those “13 and over”. Nothing like starting them young to consider these pills their friends, I suppose. I know they make a perfectly legal product and thus have every right to advertise it. But that doesn’t make it morally right. As far as I’m concerned, no one has the right to tell my 12-year-old daughter or my 14-year-old niece that having sex as a young teen is hip, cool and fun, and it infuriates me that a company would think this is appropriate.

I don’t want either a third breast or a prostate gland; I don’t want to learn how to abuse my elders; and I would really like the McDonald’s ingredients thing straightened out. But those ads made me laugh. This ad made me scream. And I hope that company hears it.

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Here's reason to homeschool #22351, or some such. My kids right now are downstairs making chocolate chip cookies for me while listening to classical music. It doesn't get much better than that.

They really do like classical. I think I may even take them to a concert of Handel's Messiah next week. They're not into the music other kids listen to at all. I remember when I was in school I used to listen to all the "cool" radio stations. I didn't like the music or anything. But I listened anyway. My kids listen to praise CD's and classical. It's awesome.

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Happy thanksgiving all my American friends! It's just a regular old school day on my side of the border, but we're taking a lunch break right now and I thought I'd write.

I interviewed Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller from the National Center for Biblical Parenting yesterday on my radio show about their book How to Stop Whining, Complaining and Bad Attitudes in You and Your Kids. We had a great time, and I'll probably have them back.

One thing they talked about that I really appreciated was the definition of honouring your parents. It's not obedience; that's only a portion of it. Honouring goes beyond that. It's doing more than you're asked and doing it with a good attitude. It's not trying to get away with the minimum.

They suggested a bunch of games to help kids catch the fun of honouring. For instance, if they're asked to set the table, they have to set it, but then think of a way to go beyond that. Maybe drawing pictures to go on the place settings? Putting a napkin in Mommy's lap? Helping to clear afterwards? You can then turn around and do it to your kids, too. We honour them when we read that extra chapter at night, or drive them to a friend's house to play even when our schedule is packed tight. If we talk about these things, they may get the definition a bit better and be more inclined to help.

I really liked what they said about complaining, too. But maybe I'll make that a separate blog post!

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A post by schoolworks got me thinking about this question. She was reporting on a woman she knows who says she hates being a parent. I think that's actually quite common, though few come out and say it just like that. Homeschoolers, I don't think, fall into that category or we wouldn't homeschool. But it is common. Here's what I said on schoolworks' blog:

I think it's very common, really. But I think it all comes down to the way you raise your kids.

Have you ever been around kids you just can't stand? None of us wants to admit we don't like certain kids, but if we're honest, they're out there. And chances are it's because they're out of control, or they whine, or they're just difficult children.

Those kids didn't get like that automatically. Some kids are definitely born more challenging than others, but with the right parenting you can channel them in the right direction. But a lot of parents don't know how to really parent, and it takes too much energy. So they drive their kids to all these activities, they buy them the toys they want, and they let them watch TV a lot.

And what happens? Their kids aren't that fun to be with. Parenting is now miserable because your kids treat you badly and aren't pleasant. No wonder people don't like being parents! Essentially, I think, many people are raising kids that are very difficult to like.

We aren't modelled good discipline and consistency in our society, so when it's time to be a parent, many parents don't know how. And then it's downhill from there.

My children are very pleasant to be around. They weren't necessarily when they were two. But we worked on them, and their characters are now lovely. It takes work, and it's hard, just like you said. But it's worth it. I only wish more parents could see that a little work when kids are young yields great rewards.

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My 11-year-old is growing up. It's wonderful, but at the same time you feel like she's a whole other person. I don't always know what's going on in her head anymore, and I think that's good. She needs some space.

But one thing I've been so happy about is how well she seems to be making the transition.

She started youth group at church this year, and the big difference that I see between her and the other girls is that she's not so reticent to talk to the boys. Some of the boys are her best friends! It seems that in school there's so much gender segregation that it's not "cool" to be with someone of the other sex. Rebecca's never really experienced that, so she makes friends from among kindred spirits. As such, she's very popular, from what I can see. And she doesn't care what other kids think of her to the same extent that some of the others do.

It's funny, because last year we were struggling with her because she just felt like she didn't have a lot of friends. She wanted to go to school just so she could be with some friends everyday. So we started praying for her to find friends, and this year she's connected a lot better with a family that lives close to us, she's had a much better time in the homeschooling coop and is socializing more with the kids there, and she's found her youth group. I think she'll be happy to stay home.

So prayer works!  :)

Sure she gets moody. All girls her age do. But she has a very positive outlook on life, and she's really coming into her own faith life, too. It's wonderful to watch. She's a joy today compared to what I was at her age, and I think most of my problems were school based. I'm actually looking forward to the teenage years!

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