Session Notes

The Family Christmas Tree:

Cheer as a family when the tree is lit. Close the evening in prayer and thanks.

Little traditions like these will encourage warmth, togetherness, and stability in your family.

The Family Christmas Tree:

Cheer as a family when the tree is lit. Close the evening in prayer and thanks.

Little traditions like these will encourage warmth in your family.

Focus on the Family Magazine: Marriage, Money and Merry Christmas

God designed you to be a complement not a duplicate. It wasn’t a mistake for you to marry your opposite. The two of you, like chips and salsa or peanut butter and jelly, need each other’s spending habits to create a strong combination.

This is a good article on capitalizing on your spouses strengths. The saver is benefits from some luxuries they deprive themselves of and the spender benefits form some money being saved. The key is to consult to avod anger and resentment.

The Thanksgiving Test: The Thanksgiving Test

I’m thankful God is working in her even when I can’t see it. Like Taylor’s 6-year-molar that just emerged, at the right time a mature attitude will develop.

Rachel’s Tears

He never let a day go by without us embracing,” Rachel told me. “He helped me to remember that we needed to embrace each moment we had together. That may be part of the reason I’m able to let him go and accept his death — we lived our marriage as a gift.”

Neglect ‘leaves a physical mark’

Study suggests that the primary effects of neglect are found in their ability to prevent a child’s ability to bond.

TrueU.org | Women’s Hall: Simple Chastity

Everything in your relationship gets some of its charge from the uncertainty, the unknown. This may be the single most significant way that married sex — sex as it was created to be — differs from unmarried sex. Married sex does not derive its thrill from the possibility of the unknown. Married sex is a given. It is solemnized and marked in ritual. It is established. It is governed by vows. It becomes a ritual in itself; it becomes a routine. Married sex is exciting, but its excitements are very different, and much more tender.

I do not agree with all points — particularly strange is the idea that seeking to know your spouse more does not elicit excitement in your marriage.

Preparing for Adolescence: Family Mealtimes Decrease Teen Rebellion

She found that dinnertime was of more value to child development than playtime, school and story time. Clearly, there is power in “breaking bread” together.

Teens need to eat with their families 5x a week.

Preparing for Adolescence: Stemming the Tide of Peer Pressure

When we become controlling, authoritarian parents, we suffocate our children and cause them to resent us. The jaws of the peer group are just waiting for a kid who is easily controlled. So our job is not to create a controllable kid who will be devoured by his peers. When a tween/teen does not have something positive to identify with and has no say so over his life, he is more likely to grow up with a nagging feeling that he needs to “find himself.” These adolescents — when they grow up and have families of their own — are more prone to leaving their spouse and kids in a pursuit to finally “find themselves.” They end up chasing rainbows that don’t even exist.

Preparing for Adolescence: How to Avoid an Identity Crisis

when a son believes his mother dislikes him and feels out of place in the family, studies show that he’s more likely to become peer dependent. And the one thing you don’t want your son to be is peer dependent. On a positive note, when a daughter feels like she belongs in her family and receives healthy affection from her dad, she is the least likely person to try to prove something sexual to her adolescent boyfriend.