Posts

You'd Be Proud

We put our one and only (in every sense of this phrase) 16 year old daughter on a plane to Germany two weeks ago. She has been traveling with a group of German language students and their teacher to the motherland, a trip that has been all year in the making. It was a rather anxious start. Worst was the torrent of rain that she and I drove in from home to the Minneapolis airport. It was probably the worst rain I have ever driven in. If we hadn't had to meet an international flight, I would have pulled over and waited it out. It was as bad as night-time blizzards here in the Midwest, for those who have had that very unpleasant, life-threatening experience. It was all I could do to follow the tail lights of the car ahead of me. Poor daughter. She was already nervous, and she wisely put her head down, closed her eyes, and (I hope) prayed her way through about 15 miles of serious crazy. By the time we arrived at the airport, my head was buzzing with adrenaline, cortisol and every oth

Take Your Vacation!

My most recent newspaper column is about taking all of your vacation time. Spiritual Reflections: Take your vacation time - Savage Pacer: News

The High Family Costs of Traveling for Work

 My most recent post on GoodTherapy.org : The High Family Costs of Traveling for Work

Attachment Parenting : You're Mom Enough Without It

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The latest cover of TIME magazine (5/21/12) with the beautiful 20something mom breastfeeding her 3 year old son had me shaking my head. What WAS she thinking taking that picture, and having her full name on the magazine cover? Ten years from now her son is going to have to face his friends when they ask him what it was like to suck his mother's breasts. Because they have proof. A million covers of TIME magazine, internet pages and downloads later. Really. The social insensitivity of that photo takes my breath away. As for the topic, the so-called Attachment Parenting style advocated by Dr. Bill Sears, well. That, too, has it's serious problems. Let me be brief: Attachment Theory describes the emotional or relational attachment between a developing infant and mother. It was first studied in depth by John Bowlby (and later by Ainsworth, Main, Cassidy, Hazan, Shaver, and others) in the 1950's. It posits that the emotional attachment between mother and child is the main

Monogamy: It's Not for Everybody

Back in the day when I performed weddings, starry-eyed couples would come to my church office to do premarital counseling and plan their (elaborate) wedding ceremony. I guess I never stopped to consider it much, but I assumed, as did they, that the promise to be "faithful until death parts us" was seriously considered and solemnly promised before and during the wedding service. They only had eyes for one another. Yet, I knew that about half of all the weddings I would perform over the years would end in divorce. That statistic didn't stop anybody, it seemed, from being certain about themselves. We can do it, the couple assumed. We can be each others' partner for life. I now have been in the marriage counseling field for 8 years, and practicing full-time for 6. It's not a lot of experience, but believe me: it's enough. Enough to feel like I have a new sense of the difficulties of pledging a life-long partnership, and the challenge of not only growing and ag