"I am sorry Daddy." Forgiveness - a child's gift

Scolding Ammon for some serious misdeed--I had truly lost my temper. He told me over and over that he hated me and was screaming and yelling at me. I worked my way over to him and held him on my lap and he just melted into me--the man he "hated"--and wanted to be held and comforted.

Alysia...a master at forgiveness and apologies.

"Force follows Force blindly!"

Dealing with CONFLICT! 1st Response in the heat of the moment...

The "Mother Eagle" parenting style

We're roaming around our home with our eagle-eyes scanning the children's activities and we see a hand raised--our eyes now laser focused--and hand blurs toward the siblings face.. Our response...?

Keeping perspective on children's behaviors. Focus on the now vs. projecting misbahavior into the future and responding with the intensity of the potentially future misdeed...

Why Family Response?

Shelley and I are the parents of 8 wonderful children who absolutely consume our lives, energy, attention and resources. As I daily wrestle with my responsibilities and behaviors as a father, I see this single challenge of "raising a family" as the greatest test of my life--a test that will continue throughout my life.

Given the immense challenge and the massive potential impact for good in this world in raising a happy and healthy family, I want to pull together resources, insights, inspiration and answers to help all of us meet this family challenge with responses commensurate to the challenge. Dr. Stephen R. Covey explained that we can write all of history by a simple formula: If the Response = the Challenge, then we have success. As the challenge or situation changes or increases in degree of difficulty, the Response must rise to the level of and be commensurate with the new challenge in order to succeed. With this simple formula we also need to realize that we cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking we were using when the problems were created. We must see things differently and apply a new level of thinking and understanding to solve our problems and respond to increasing challenges. How can we begin to see and respond to our relationships differently? What principles do we need to understand and apply or live consistent with to meet family challenges with a sufficient response to succeed?

My personal mission in summary is to "help others find peace and joy," knowing that this mission in turn brings me and my family peace and joy. During the past 22 years I have studied and discussed human performance, family, relationships, parenting, psychology, counseling, organizational behavior, etc in professional and personal settings with some wonderfully gifted and insightful people--some of them professionally and academically trained and/or just taught for decades in the school of hard knocks.

I want this site to be a clearing house of ideas, insights and solutions focused on improving family relationships. Please join my journey and add to the collective wisdom and inspiration that can make a difference in our response to this wonderful challenge of raising a family.

-JTP