by Chip Dodd | Nov 27, 2018 | Parenting with Heart, Relationships
Our lives as parents must not be about perfection, but about the courage of affection. We live our affection clearly and courageously through confession of the following, and we must do so imperfectly because that is the nature of life. Remember that affection is no...
by Chip Dodd | Oct 23, 2018 | Feelings, Parenting with Heart
What follows are four gifts that we can give our children (of any age), and those gifts will be delivered imperfectly: We can take responsibility for our own feelings. We don’t have to make our children responsible for our emotional conditions. Your feelings are your...
by Chip Dodd | Jun 19, 2018 | Keeping Heart, Parenting with Heart, Relationships
Children really have only a few essential questions of caregivers. Will you grow with me? Will you help me become grown up? Will you live in the struggle of remaining present with me? Children need to be able to take the affirmative answers to these questions for...
by Chip Dodd | Jun 12, 2018 | Feelings, Longings, Parenting with Heart
I noticed the other evening just before dark the lightning bugs flickering here and there. To me, like the robin heralds spring, lightning bugs announce summer. When I was a child, some summer nights my brothers and sister and neighbor kids spent hours catching...
by Chip Dodd | May 15, 2018 | Change, Longings, Parenting with Heart, Relationships
When my sons were little, we planted a slim stick of a poplar tree beside our driveway. We must have planted it during the exact sign of the moon in Farmer’s Almanac, or something like that. The poplar grew very fast, from no more than a stick 18 inches tall to four...
by Chip Dodd | Feb 13, 2018 | Parenting with Heart, Relationships
My son had been moved to a hospital room after surgery. He had only hours before undergone a complicated procedure in which he had a tumor removed from his spinal cord. Sonya would not leave his side more than a few hours for the next five days, and would be beside...
by Chip Dodd | May 30, 2017 | Parenting with Heart
My sixteen year old, youngest son and I pulled into the driveway one night on the way home from youth service at church. William was suffering from a significant muscle tear in his hip, a baseball injury. Even more, though, he ached from the heart pain of loss. He had...
by Chip Dodd | Mar 20, 2017 | Hope, Longings, Needs, Parenting with Heart
The heart of the human being often becomes a rejected treasure that children begin to hide when they do not experience themselves as pursued and affirmed. This common experience is a great sadness. When the heart is experienced as the enemy of the child, then God,...
by Chip Dodd | Feb 13, 2017 | Needs, Parenting with Heart
We are born to grow into who we are created to become, so we can do what we are created to do. Children grow from within by having their hearts affirmed and confirmed by caregivers. Affirmation says, “Yes” to how a child is created as an emotional and spiritual...
by Chip Dodd | Jan 23, 2017 | Parenting with Heart
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by Chip Dodd | Oct 24, 2016 | Parenting with Heart
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by Chip Dodd | Oct 10, 2016 | Parenting with Heart
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by Chip Dodd | Sep 12, 2016 | Parenting with Heart
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by Chip Dodd | Jun 13, 2016 | Feelings, Keeping Heart, Parenting with Heart
A parent’s inner sense of love for the child is not in question when it comes to parenting with heart. Parents on the whole love their children deeply, and wish everything good for them. Parenting with heart is about the parent’s ability to live well imperfectly, with...
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