I do have one question for you - - How do you handle the issue of the movies shown in the classroom?  My boys are K and 1^st grade. Both have excellent teachers, but it is standard practice to use movies on rainy days and during testing cycles. Some of these movies are not what we would generally allow (although they are G rated) and we sometimes deal with nightmares as a result. The school does not give us ...

On January 31, 2012 the Pritchards became a family with 11 children!! Mesellu, Asefa and Dejen officially became part of our family!! After a twelve hour flight from Washington D.C. to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on Monday, January 30 we drove 2 hours to the orphanage in Adama to meet our children. We went to lunch with them, bid them good bye and drove back to Addis to spend the night. Tuesday morning started early with breakfast at our ...

Another question from a reader:

The siblings enjoying some time together decorating the Christmas tree

For those of you reading this that have never heard us speak of “age hierarchy” you might find the question, let alone the answer at best strange and at worst wrong. We’d ask you to consider holding off your conclusions until you’ve heard a little more about what we teach. Also, we have put out a CD called Sibling Affection – raising kids that love each other. I’m not trying to promote our CD, ...

A couple that recently attended one of our parenting seminars sent us this question: We’ve implemented Family Meetings. The first one went fantastic, but the second one not so much. Our 7-yr old and 9-yr old sons would not engage, were silly and distracted, and made the time insufferably difficult and long. We had scheduled a few fun things into our meeting—a game 1/3 of the way through and a fun snack 2/3 of the way through. But ...

Many of you know, but Kelli is with her mom in Florida as she deals with some medical issues. It delayed her getting this first installment for the daughter's rite of passage. We would covet your prayers for Kelli and her mom during this time! She will post another installment to cover the other two rites of passage for the girls.

We have talked much about rite of passage and the meaning it carries for our children. Today I want to share with you what has evolved for our girls as we raised our children. With our ...

Last week I shared a story about Tavita’s first Rite of Passage. It was an event we created to mark his transition from boyhood to manhood. He was 13 at the time and much training took place after that ceremony, but he was forever different on that day 10 years ago. One of the great resources available on this topic is “Raising a Modern Day Knight” by Robert Lewis. It helped us with ideas and structure for what we did. We typically do ...

We were at Malibu serving for four weeks as Camp Manager. Our oldest son, Tavita, was 13 years old. It was day 5, which at Malibu meant ropes day – the entire camp of 300 campers would go through the ropes course in one day. It is a long day for our assignment team (the group of adults assigned to Malibu for the month) and for the property staff. But it is also a rewarding day as we help many kids overcome fears and insecurities and get front row seats as they beam with satisfaction over doing something ...