Family Friday Newsletter - 2.5 min read by: Finley Robinson A Single Sentence from a Season Ahead Choose your stories wisely because those stories shape your children's futures. Counting By States As Summer travel is winding down for most families, I'm sure parents are exhausted from all the output that has been required. MealsDrivingPackingPlanningRe-PackingAdventuring Family trips often reveal one of the most under-appreciated qualities kids need from you as a parent... being clear with...
11 days ago • 3 min read
Family Friday Newsletter - 4 min read by: Finley Robinson A Single Sentence from a Season Ahead Your kids need help with hard things; sometimes you do things with them and sometimes you do things for them. Between Generations Trips, Vacations, and Visits… When I was young, my family traveled across the state every summer to visit my parents hometown in the Delta. My parents were high school sweethearts and so I had two sets of grandparents in the same small Arkansas town. Every visit required...
18 days ago • 4 min read
Family Friday Newsletter - 2 min read by: Finley Robinson A Single Sentence from a Season Ahead Repeated powerful words carry enormous weight during the power-decade of parenting. The Habit of Helping There is a very specific noise that I hear occasionally in my house. Imagine what a tornado would sound like, except it comes from inside the house instead of outside. The sound combination is part human and part industrial. It is a mixture of grunting and slight-slamming. We call it...
25 days ago • 2 min read
Family Friday Newsletter - 3.5 min read by: Finley Robinson A Single Sentence from a Season Ahead Showing up as a parent, even for half-credit, secretly gets the whole effect you were hoping for. Build Their Confidence At various times during our power-decade of parenting, my wife or I said one of the following statements to our kids. Somewhere between 3-13, our kids heard us say these and dozens of other statements a lot like it... "Hey, sweetie, I want you to go to the window and order the...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
Family Friday Newsletter - 3.5 min read by: Finley Robinson A Single Sentence from a Season Ahead Administering discipline to our kids in a protective and corrective way should also be done in a connective way. 👶🏼 Wait, You're Pregnant? It was exactly 21 years ago this week when my wife and I found out some surprising news. It was the summer of 2004 and our oldest daughter was 6 months old at the time. My wife walked in with a baby in one hand and a positive pregnancy test in the other. I...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Family Friday Newsletter - 1 min read by: Finley Robinson A Single Sentence from a Season Ahead Grace-filled homes recognize that individual growth can take years and leave room for "the imperfect and never finished." Stories Shape Futures Kids gravitate towards great stories. So many of them follow The Heroes Journey. Classics like Moana or Toy Story are legendary kids movies because of how well they accomplish this. Stories in the lives of your kids, end up shaping and molding them. Stories...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Family Friday Newsletter - 3.5 min read by: Finley Robinson A Single Sentence from a Season Ahead In the power-decade of parenting, half-credit is so much better than none at all. First, Pull The Weeds 🌿 My father loves to garden.... but I do not. Since we live next door to each other, though, I am the beneficiary of his green thumb. Gardening is a lot of ongoing work that I don't enjoy. There's something specific to do in every season, and the cycle never ends. It's not complicated, it's...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Family Friday Newsletter - 2 min read by: Finley Robinson A Single Sentence from a Season Ahead Summer is the perfect time for kids to be forced to figure it out. A Volume Of Words Repetition. It's how all people learn new things. Handwriting. Presenting. Cooking. Tying shoes. Throwing a ball. In families, the repetition of words matters ... a lot. They help form the thoughts and emotions that everyone carries in the back recesses of their minds. Repetition leaves life-long grooves. As a...
2 months ago • 2 min read
Family Friday Newsletter - 2 min read by: Finley Robinson A Single Sentence from a Season Ahead The stories you choose to share with your kids do more to shape their futures than you realize. Build The Connection The teenage season of parenting gets a ton of bad press. My wife and I were told several narratives by others that proved false in our family. After our power-decade season of parenting had wrapped up, we expected something different, but were surprised by the teenage years. They...
2 months ago • 3 min read