I’m so excited about this week’s Parent Talk! Tune in at 10 am Est.

First up, Mary Connealy on Seasons of Life. She’ll share her journey to publication and beyond and we’ll chat about those seasons that come and go–too quickly! You can check out a guest post by Mary, Seasons of Life, and then be sure to tune in on Friday for Parent Talk, or grab the podcast at the bottom of this post as soon as it’s available!

There’s a giveaway! You can enter to win a copy of Mary’s In Too Deep simply by leaving a comment here, at the Seasons of Life post, or by RTing a promo tweet!

Next, author, Carla Stewart, and I will talking about lies and forgiveness–leaving things in the past. Why is it so hard? How can we do it once and for all–or can we? 

Stardust is the story of a young mom who’s unfaithful husband drowns in the bayou of East Texas in 1952. Shortly after she buries him, Georgia Payton inherits the derelict Stardust Tourist Court from a distant relative. Faced with opposition from the aunt who raised her and others in the town, Georgia breathes new life into the cottages.… continue reading

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In many ways I measure my writing life by my youngest child, the fourth of four daughters. I typed, “It was a dark and stormy night” (well…my version of it) for the first time the year Katy went to Kindergarten and my first book released the year she graduated from high school.

All those years writing, laboring in mole-like anonymity were frustrating. I pursued publication to the best of my ability all that time. It’s not like I was WAITING for her to grow up. I just couldn’t get published.

I started out alone (so very, very alone!). No internet…well Al Gore had already invented it, but I didn’t have it at home. One computer that our school had thrown out. An Apple e2, I think it was. It had NO MEMORY. Get that? If the lights blinked you lost everything that you hadn’t saved to a disk. NO MEMORY. Can you believe they even bothered to make the stupid things when they couldn’t remember anything?

I had this file of floppy disks, they held one or maybe two chapters on the whole disk so a book was a big stack of disks.… continue reading

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It’s that time of year when parents thoughts turn toward where their kids should go to school in the fall. For some, their thoughts will turn to homeschooling. How can you evaluate whether homeschooling might be right for your family?

I have often heard my mom tell people that homeschooling is for every child…it’s just not for every parent. What she means is that every child can thrive in a one-on-one tutoring type instruction. It simply makes sense. Place a child with a caring instructor who can tailor his or her learning to the needs of that child and the child will learn and excel.

However, not every parent has the discipline, patience, endurance to make homeschooling work. I love my kiddos. Adore them even, but there are still days that it would be a lot easier to send them to a school. Fortunately, my kids would still do fine in a regular classroom environment. Yet we choose to keep them home even as we discuss the options available to us.

Why?

• Homeschooling is a calling. It may not be a forever calling…I honestly don’t know…but I know this is where our kids are supposed to be right now.
• It allows our kids to accelerate at their own pace.
… continue reading

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Loyalty is an important part of relationships with friends and family. What does loyalty mean and how far show it go? Does it require that you support people even when they’re doing something wrong and/or dangerous, or does loyalty actually require you to stand against those things for your friends’ sake? In other words, in order to be loyal, does it mean you have to turn a blind eye to bad behavior, or does it mean you should lead your friend into righteous living?

Those are questions that will arise in various forms over the teen years, and it’s something you should prepare for now.

To begin that preparation, in true HOT BUTTONS fashion, tell your teen this story as though it’s really happening to him/her:

You’re really close to your cousin and he confides that he been smoking pot. He assures you it isn’t a lot, but encourages you to give it a try. He offers to set you up with some. What do you do?

Present the following choices to your teenager:

• Cool! You’ve been thinking about giving it a try. Now you can!
• No way. You want no part of trying it, but your cousin can do whatever he wants to.
… continue reading

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It’s so rude, really.  You pack on the pregnancy pounds for them, suffer through labor and delivery, feed them, diaper them, shop for just the right Easter outfits and Christmas presents, help with homework, dry tears, patch up skinned knees, ignore impending hypothermia and threat of heat stroke at sporting events, hand out free dating advice, endure driver’s training, sit up nights worrying, visit colleges, help with applications, stalk the mailbox waiting for acceptance letters…

And then they think they can just… LEAVE?  Seriously?  How is that fair?  How can it be “the plan” that we hard working, devoted (and totally awesome I might add) parents end up all alone in empty houses, left only with the fading Field Day ribbons, the dusty sports trophies, the crispy construction-paper valentines, the dry rotted high school letter jackets, the closets full of clothes they no longer want?

It seems like such a dastardly scheme, such a cruel twist of fate.  You put your body and soul into a job, and then Poof!  Gone!  At this point, I calculate that I’ve been mothering people more than half of my life.  It’s instinct now.  I know the power of these instincts.  As a farm girl, I’ve seen them at work firsthand.… continue reading

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“Where Are You With Guys Right Now?”

That may seem like a lame question to ask a bunch of teenage girls, but there are actually as many answers as there are girls themselves. Contrary to what it looks like in every teen-focused magazine you see at the grocery store, not everybody is having to make major decisions about which prom invite to accept (have you noticed?). Wherever you are on the subject of boys, you’re probably pretty normal. Which means you aren’t alone. Which means you are neither a geek nor a boy crazy wacko. Let’s prove it.

Below you’ll find six scenarios. Read ‘em all. Then put a number between 1 and 6 next to each one, according to how much it’s like you – a 1 being closest to you and a 6 being like the farthest thing from your mind.

BTW, be totally honest. There are no “supposed to” answers here and besides, what good’s it going to do to answer like you’re somebody else?

Here we go:

_____ Girl A.   “It seems like every girl I know is obsessed with guys, but I’m never the one to go, “Okay, that guy is HOT!” I’m just not into them, you know, and I’m fine with that until I get in a situation where that’s all anybody can talk about.… continue reading

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Melany wrote: This question is mainly for Nicole. I’d like to do something really special for my mom since she works so hard and has been a single mom for a long time. She loves me and my brother and never yells at us. I know she’s tired and wishes things could be different. How can I let her know that I love her, in a special way without any money?

Nicole: I’m so glad you wrote. I think it’s so wonderful—and too rare—that you can recognize your mom’s hard work and dedication. Single moms have it really rough because they have to bring in money to support the household plus care for you kids and hopefully have some fun with you, too.

It would be my guess that your mom doesn’t get much time to pamper herself. What if you gave her a spa day? Wake her up with breakfast in bed. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, even a bowl of cereal and a cup of cof- fee would be enjoyable. Tell her the day is all for her to relax. No work. You can give her a manicure: massage her hands with lotion, file her nails, paint them a pretty color.… continue reading

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One night, just as I was going to bed, I went to check my e-mail on Yahoo and they had posted a photo of an all black penguin on their news page. It was one of the top stories of the day. A story of a penguin made the top stories list. Why?

Apparently it’s a very rare penguin. One in a zillion, according to the article. Wow! One in a zillion! Nobody has ever seen one! The article teased and said that he was very underdressed for a penguin (no tuxedo) and “look at those legs!” Evidently his legs are much thicker than your average penguin. Poor guy. Not only is he under dressed but he’s also got fat legs – sometimes I can relate!

We tend to call it an oddity – you know, when something doesn’t fit in with it’s surroundings or it isn’t like the others of its kind. It’s odd – it doesn’t belong. Poor penguin.

Seriously, this bird is one in a zillion and we feel sorry for it? It’s had articles written about it for crying out loud! How many penguins can say that? It will go down in history and be studied for generations.… continue reading

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Let me begin by clarifying one simple thing: prayer is cool. It’s about the coolest, most effective thing we can do this side of heaven.

Yeah, it’s a bit of work. And hard sometimes. Dry. Dare I say boring on occasion? But so are many other cool things in life.

How many of you play a sport? Or a musical instrument? It’s work, right? Drills, repetition and practices are not knock-your-socks-off exciting. It’s the same-ole, same-ole. It’s doing the same move, the same scales over and over.

To be good at anything, even video games, you have to practice. You have to give yourself to the “thing” you love so much.

Good grades requires study. The top level on a Play Station or favorite video game requires persistence, playing day in and day out.

To stay in shape or build muscle you have to be disciplined.

Everything good and worthwhile in life requires devotion, discipline and above all, desire.

So why do we think sitting down to pray should be easy? Simple? Why do we think prayer should just “come to us” like a ray of light in the midst of our busy lives? Why does it seem anti-Christian to block off a time each day or every other to pray?… continue reading

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This is what friendship looks like in magazines, doesn’t it? Or on Clean&Clear commercials, anyway:

This is a snapshot of me and my friend, Rachel. I’m the one with my head thrown back, laughing like a hyena at who knows what. There was a middle-aged guy in a G-string sunning himself not far from where we were, (Welcome to Daytona Beach) so maybe Rach had just pointed him out to me.

But I digress.

As a freshman in high school, my Uncle (who was a Pastor at the time) asked me to contribute to some magazine distributed to Southern Baptist teenagers. My topic was, “How should I choose friends?” I had about 200 words to respond.

This should be easy, I thought. I’ve always been a girl who fell in with the “good crowd.” And even on the occasion that I hung out with a few edgier friends, I somehow became the token good girl in the group. Like a mascot or something.

So I sat down to write my short article. Since it was for a religious publication, I figured I should make it Biblically based. I started off talking about how we should choose friends the way Jesus chose disciples.… continue reading

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Friends, you’re going to want to tune in to Teen Talk Radio on Friday, May 11th at 11sm EST for the encore presentation of this show. Both Jim and Mary have a special place in my heart because of the way they feel about YOU! They love their readers and that care is evident in every word they write.

James L. Rubart is a professional marketer, speaker, and writer. He serves on the board of the Northwest Christian Writers Association and lives with his wife and sons in Seattle, Washington.

If someone gave you a chair and said it was made by Jesus Christ, would you believe them?

When an elderly lady shows up in Corin Roscoe’s antiques store and gives him a chair she claims was crafted by Jesus, he scoffs. But when a young boy is miraculously healed two days after sitting in the chair, he stops laughing and starts wondering . . . could this chair heal the person whose life Corin destroyed twelve years ago?

As word spreads of the boy’s healing, a mega-church pastor is determined to manipulate Corin into turning over the chair. And that mysterious woman who gave him the piece flits in and out of his life like a shadow, insinuating it’s Corin’s destiny to guard the chair above everything else.… continue reading

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