I don’t want to go in to a lot of detail in such a public forum, but earlier this week my stepson’s aunt was arrested. Thankfully nobody was physically hurt, but since we live in a fairly small community her arrest did make the front page of the local paper and was on the local news. So it’s not something we can easily ignore.
My first thought was to keep it to ourselves. We don’t subscribe to the paper (we just read it online) and, like many 16-year-old boys, my stepson rarely watches the news (unless it’s a required assignment for …read more

An interesting thing just happened in my kitchen. Out of nowhere I got my kids to discuss something educational. Gone was the talk about video games and World of Warcraft patches and hanging out with friends over the weekend while they played computer games (are you sensing a theme here?). Instead we were debating the Civil War. I know. I’m just as shocked as you are.
It all started when I talked to my mom on the phone. She had called home earlier, but I wasn’t here. So instead she talked to my 14-year-old. My mom (just like myself) is a …read more

I’m starting to think I must speak some foreign language that my teens don’t understand. Or maybe it’s the other way around. I’ll say one thing and they’ll come back with some ridiculous answer that makes me want to smack my head right down on the table. Hard.
For example, last night we were talking to one of the teens about school work. Or lack thereof. It went like this.
You’re missing three homework assignments from Chapter 1.
Yeah, I didn’t feel like doing them.
Umm…what? What do you mean you didn’t feel like doing them?
I already know all that stuff so it’s pointless …read more