Hal Young's Blog, page 7
May 28, 2018
Ten Ways to Keep Your Family From Being Devastated by Porn and Predators
We got another one last night. My heart sank as the sweet mama sobbed out her story. Please, Lord, not another one. Please no.
It was, though. Another family crashing into the morass of sexual sin, completely unexpectedly.
It’s happening all the time these days. Moms and Dads telling us through tears about their son’s addiction to pornography for years “and we didn’t know he had Internet access!” Their child’s molestation at the hands of someone they trusted, sometimes even by a sibling. Teens sexting when their parents didn’t think they even knew about sex. Marriages on the rocks due to porn or adultery.
THESE AREN’T FAMILIES FROM SKID ROW. THEY AREN’T EVEN WORLDLY FAMILIES. They’re families just like the rest of us – Christian, conservative, close families, even homeschoolers. Some of them are families that have followed our ministry for years and have heard warnings, but didn’t think it could happen in their home. Believe me, it can.
Sadly, we personally know of more than one boy raised in a conservative Christian homeschool family that is now a registered sex offender. Yep, just like you hear about in big cities and institutional schools. They got caught in a web of temptation which led to awful sin and lifelong consequences for them, their families, and their victims. Please take it seriously.
Here are ten ways you can fight for your children:
1 – Talk to your kids about sexuality early and often. The Talk isn’t one talk, but a bunch of natural conversations as the opportunities arise (or as you make them!) You’ve got to be the one there first with the best information — and always in the Biblical context of love, marriage, child-bearing, and holiness.
2 – Remind them to come to you with questions (and don’t freak out when they do!) Why? Because many children are first introduced to Internet porn when they hear an unfamiliar word – at church or homeschool group or in the neighborhood or from his cousins or from a magazine at the grocery store. They go home, watch for an opportunity, then Google it. The sites and images are right there. Make sure they know they can ask you anything without getting in trouble for it.
3 – Teach them that no one has a right to touch the parts of their bodies covered by underwear unless they need the help of a parent or doctor until they are married. And that outside of marriage, it is wrong to touch anyone else there, too. Boys understand underwear. They may not change it, but they know where it goes. This makes an easy, concrete boundary, and avoids the awkward results of vague “good touching / bad touching” talk.
4 – Explain to them that it’s wrong to look at (or take) pictures of people who are undressed because those are special parts of our body designed for marriage alone. Remember Jesus said, “I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Many times kids are exposed by friends with photos on their phones. They need to know what to do!
5 – Tell them it’s wrong (and illegal) to take pictures of undressed children and teens – and it’s wrong to look at them or share them, too. To a teen, looking at a racy photo of another teen is just exciting. To God, it’s sin. To law enforcement, it’s a felony. A kid may not get that, and ruin their lives because of it.
6 – Make sure they understand there are no secrets that exclude their parents – and assure them that we can take care of ourselves. We tell our children that if anyone tells you, “Don’t tell your parents!” that’s the sign you should immediately tell your parents! “And if anyone threatens you or your parents, be sure to tell us right away. We can protect you and we can protect ourselves!”
7 – Teach them practical ways to fight temptation. See below for help on this one.
8 – Ask them regularly, “Is there anything worrying you? “Is there anything you want to tell me? It’s okay. I’ll help you.”
9 – As they enter the teen years, ask often: “How’s your thought life?” Don’t ask for details, but pray with them and encourage them to keep fighting.
10 – THIS ONE IS CRITICAL: Get some kind of protection on every Internet-capable device in your home. Internet porn is a game-changer. () This means phones, tablets, game consoles, even e-book readers. No longer do bad kids have to go looking under Uncle Wildguy’s bed; now the bad stuff comes looking for the good kids. Honestly, when parents tell us their heart-breaking stories, they nearly always say, “We’d been meaning to get some protection, but we hadn’t gotten around to it.” Get around to it today. You’ve got to know what’s going on. Here’s the program we use.
Resources to Help
Internet accountability – We recommend (affiliate) Covenant Eyes – we’ve used it for many years. Click here to read how it works. Now it’s only $14.99 a month for unlimited accounts for your family – all customizable! Sign up here. (It supports our ministry when you click through us.)
Be sure to lock down game consoles, too. Some allow kids to access live porn. Honestly.
Talking to your kids about sexuality and what to do if you find they’ve been exposed to porn- Our workshop mp3, Shining Armor: Your Son’s Battle for Purity teaches about these things. You can download this popular workshop free by signing up for our newsletter:
Practical ways to fight temptation – For more on this for younger kids, grab our book, Raising Real Men. The chapter Love and War shares several ways to fight off temptation. For older ones, get them our new book, Love, Honor, and Virtue: Gaining or Regaining a Biblical Attitude Toward Sexuality!
More of our posts on this and similar subjects like gaming and internet addiction.
Father, please help us all to teach our children to be “as wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” Give us the courage to talk to our kids, and the wisdom to know what to say. Please protect our children! In Christ’s name, amen.
Yours in the battle,
Hal & Melanie
May 22, 2018
Announcing Our New Book!
We hear it all the time! That’s certainly how we’ve felt, Every. Single. Time (remember, we’re guiding our eighth through these years now). Compliant kids turn combative. Diligent students disappear into a fog. Faithful children fill up with doubts.
Everyone said, “Just wait till they’re teenagers,” but nobody warned us that sometime between 8 and 14, even terrific kids can become a challenge.
They ride an emotional rollercoaster … and invite you to climb aboard!
And sadly, we’ve learned that many families’ troubles with their teens started with strained and broken relationships with their pre-teens.
But there’s hope!
We’ve also learned that the critical aspect of relationship may be the key to what happens when they hit high school. And that’s something we can work on!
That’s why we’re pleased to announce
Our New Book!
Don’t get a ticket for the emotional rollercoaster!
Instead, find help to…
understand what’s going on physically, mentally, and spiritually.
learn how discipline needs to change to stay effective.
find out how to help them get the schoolwork done.
get practical strategies for dealing with emotional meltdowns.
protect the parent-child relationship and
lay a foundation to make the teen years GREAT!
NO LONGER LITTLE
Parenting Tweens with Grace and Hope
From the authors of the award-winning Raising Real Men and My Beloved and My Friend
Practical help to navigate the turbulent waters
of the pre-teen years!
Order now for this special pre-publication deal
$13.99 with Free Shipping!
Use coupon code subscriberprepub
Advance printing ships in June – Don’t delay!
(Regular price $15.99 plus shipping)
April 30, 2018
Boys Bummed by Math
Our initiation into homeschooling middle school – and the pangs of early adolescence – happened in math.
Our oldest son was an early reader and just rocketed along with elementary math. We were delighted! And we encouraged him to keep working ahead … soon he was two years ahead of his age group in math.
And then the wheels came off his train. Math took three hours. Whatever happened to our precocious student?
We didn’t learn until later that there’s a threshold then. Until their brains go through a developmental step in the middle school years, they really can’t move forward into things like algebra and geometry. And for a time, even elementary math becomes a chore.
So what can you do to get your resistant young mathematician through the day? We found two things that helped —
Competition is a fast and easy way to motivate boys. Our guys found out on their own that it takes about the same amount of time to do a 4th grade Saxon math lesson as to do a 6th grade one, or a 7th grade one, for that matter. To make the time pass more quickly, they began racing to see who could finish first. At first, Melanie was concerned they’d do shoddy work or not learn it as well, but she found that they really did just as well doing it quickly as they did dragging it out. So, why drag it out? We’ve found out they even like to compete against themselves. It’s a long-standing rule in our house that if you beat a personal best time that year on a math lesson or fact sheet, you can have a prize. They will work awfully hard to win a… gummy bear! Yes, a gummy bear. It’s not the prize, you see, it’s the winning of it!
Boys are also really motivated by knowing why they are doing a task. Boys hate “jiiust because,” and quickly lose interest in something that seems pointless. Boys need purpose. They need to know their work matters. Want to see a boy put his heart into his math? Find out what he wants to do with his life (no matter how silly) and show him how math will help him do it.
“Son, what do you want to be when you grow up?”
“I want to design airplanes and missiles!”
Ah, an easy one! “Well, son to do that, you’re going to have to get a degree in engineering. Let’s look at what kind of math you have to learn to do that.” So, you head off to your state university’s website and discover he’s going to need math all right, a lot of it, and first, he’ll need to get fractions down pat.
It’s different when he knows math matters. And it’ll get better as he gets older, too. Boys really come into their own in high school … if you both live that long!
Part of this article appeared in “The Homeschool Minute,” a free email newsletter from The Old Schoolhouse.
April 25, 2018
Board Games: From Candyland to Dominion, Classic to Modern
Welcome to our newest recommendation post, today we get to break down all sorts of awesome board games new and old alike. These are all games that we have played, often times for years, and they usually have many memories attached to them. So without further ado, here we go in no particular order, a list of games with some form of personal impression attached.
Full disclosure, the links below are affiliate links. If you use them to buy, we receive a small commission at no additional cost to you.
A classic army strategy game, but will ALWAYS take much longer to play than you think. Imagine playing out the invasion of Normandy, or the war in the Pacific, with dozens or hundreds of units. All the dice rolls, all the time.
I used to play the D-Day expansion regularly after church with one of the older guys, and it was quite often that it would a month to finish a game or more. Still a happy memory.
Settlers of Catan
One of the classic games, Catan battles
Risk
The original world strategy game. A leisurely trip to world domination with hoards of units. Maybe.
Carrom!
This is a game that we have played for literally decades. I have so many happy memories of playing Carrom with my Granny (Dad’s Mom). She had an old board that she would bring out and we would play with this collection of old plastic rings that were stored in a little wooden box.
Monopoly
Monopoly, for when you want to have no friends, and sit in opposite corners of the house frowning at your siblings all evening. Still a classic for good reason.
Dixit
Can you imagine what the lead player is thinking, and come up with a better example for his clue to reference? Beautiful art, and deceptively simple but deep.
Dominion
NEEDS INPUT FROM SOMEONE WHO HAS PLAYED IT
Diplomacy
The Game that breaks the world, ends friendships, and is harder than you could ever imagine. Role play as the major powers of Europe approaching WW1, and revel in the intrigues and treaties.
Ticket to Ride
Let the railroad barons compete, build your empire across the world. Comes with expansion packs for everywhere. Nearly literally anywhere. No moon expansion yet.
Pandemic
Can you save the world from the rapidly approaching plague apocalypse, or will everyone die? Probably the latter, but feel free to try!
Candyland
Famous for being an easy game for the kids to learn, since there is absolutely no skill required. Also, you really need to give your kids a better introduction to board games.
Clue
Buy the game for Christmas, from Mr. Amazon in the Interwebs with the credit card!
Parcheesi
Roll your dice, bump your opponents back to the start, and race to the end.
Sorry
It is like parcheesi, but less historical trappings. And bright colors.
Life
This one of the earliest games we had at my Granny’s lake place. Spin the wheel, drive your tiny little car in circles on the board and see how your life turns out. Girls love being able to get married and have kids in the game.
Battleship
Everyone has played this at some point right? I once had a tiny dollar store electronic version, and used to see how many dots on the board I could fill up with missiles before the game ended.
Checkers
Is it Luck? Or is it Strategy? Anyhow I just jumped six checkers and its time for you to King ME!
Chess
A game for the intellectual, and for the smart. I don’t have the attention span to play, but my younger brother can play chess with his friends without a board. Oooooh, SQUIRREL.
Scrabble
My dearest companions, now is the time to let your grandiloquence luminesce. EXCELSIOR!
Upwords
Like Scrabble, but now you can fix those annoying words that your companion nearly got right.
Bananagrams
Competitive scrabble, but you can change the order and placement anytime you want. Also, solo boards. You are welcome
Chutes and Ladders
Connect Four?
Snake Oil
Apples to Apples
Pit
Mille Bornes
April 23, 2018
The Homeschool Fitting-It-All-In Summit
We are so happy to be featured speakers with Homeschool Summits for the Homeschool Fitting-It-All-In Summit, a free event hosted online this April 30-May 5. You can watch our interview on May 4th at 9am. We’ll be talking about how to keep your marriage strong while you’re homeschooling. We hope you’ll join us! You can register FREE now by clicking here.
If you ever feel like you’re desperately trying to juggle all the different responsibilities and opportunities in your life and just keep all the balls in the air, than this is for you! It’s a week dedicated to helping you decide what matters to your family, create a workable homeschool plan, and keep your path Christ-centered – even when life happens.
Most importantly, each video from this event will focus on the truth found in God’s Word and the hope that lies in trusting in Jesus Christ for today and for the future.
All of the video interviews with speakers (like us!) bring a Christ-centered focus to these important steps on your way to learning how to fit it all in:
Charting Your Course: Learn how to change your perspective to match God’s view as revealed in His Word.
The Homeschool Gameplan: Get insight into academic necessities and how to make sure they can realistically work out in your homeschool.
Home Management Strategies: Find out how to keep household duties running smoothly in the midst of schooling, and come away with specific action items to make changes beginning tomorrow.
Building Your Team: Discover the beauty of a family working together to build God’s kingdom and how to keep relationships healthy for maximum joy from parents down to little ones.
Eternal Priorities: Reorient yourself to stick to the mission of following Christ, leading your children to Him, and influencing others for the Gospel
The entire event is free if you sign up by April 30th, and in addition to the video content, you’ll also get access to an easy-to-search online vendor hall (with exclusive discounts and freebies) and a private Facebook group to connect with speakers and other attendees.
We encourage you to sign up today for the Homeschool Fitting-It-All Summit for a week of valuable wisdom and Christ-centered hope so you can conquer your own personal homeschool overwhelm.
Learn more and register for FREE (for a limited time only)!
Your friends,
Hal & Melanie
April 9, 2018
Review: The Vanishing American Adult
The Vanishing American Adult by Ben Sasse (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017) – 306 pp
I rarely read a book that leaves me thinking, “I agreed with every single point he raised.” This one comes awfully close.
Before he was elected to the U.S. Senate, Ben Sasse was president of Midland University, a small liberal arts college in Fremont, Nebraska. The lackadaisical attitude of the students surprised him; there was little work ethic, little vision, and lots of dependency among students who ought to be functional adults. What was missing?
I was noticing that students’ limited experience with hard work seemed to make them bizarrely fuzzy-headed when actual, real-life problems needed to be solved. They were regularly and troublingly flat-footed about situations in which smart, lively 18- to 22-year-olds should have had no difficulty leaning in and righting the world.
Sasse talks about the sort of diligence, persistence, and responsibility that his grandparents embraced as young adults. On the ranches and farms of Nebraska, it was expected. That was just what grownups did, and young people learned it at home. But so much of our culture has moved away from that standard, and fewer and fewer kids grow up with the work-hard-the-family-needs-you mindset, society has lost its grip on some critical areas of growth and maturity.
Sasse proposes that we be intentional about challenging our children and encouraging them to grow strong. He’s a proponent of hard work, early on, that challenges young people to stretch more and accomplish more than they expect. They need opportunities to reach, grow, and risk failure, and they need parents willing to let them try and maybe fall short sometimes. They need to learn and embrace the fact that most of the world is outside their bubble and beyond the curated feeds of social media.
Finally, he points out that America is a “creedal nation … built not on ethnicity but on a set of shared ideas about freedom.” It is vitally important that our young people grapple with experiences and ideas to prepare for success as adults and citizens. They need some hard work and some hard thinking to reach that goal.
And yes, that’s a challenge to all of us as parents!
Your Mileage Will Vary
I admit, when Sasse described how he sent his oldest daughter for a term of hard work on a friend’s ranch – as a 14-year-old girl – I asked myself, “Should I be looking for character-building agricultural work for my kids, too?”
But I realized that “farming” was not the issue, but the experience of demanding work and high expectations at a young age. In Sasse’s childhood, these happened in the agricultural context. As a college president and then a newly-elected senator, Sasse found he had to look outside his immediate surroundings for meaningful opportunities for his children. In our case, we have a family-owned business and an active ministry. Our teenagers are an integral part of both – they share the driving (and they’re expected to handle a 35-foot vehicle and back up with a trailer as needed). They muscle in the boxes and crates and furniture for convention booths, and they spend long days dealing with the public – learning to overcome shyness, keep their temper, and maintain their poise hour after hour. And they do it well!
Your own family’s opportunities will be unique. Maybe you have a farm, maybe you own a business, and maybe you don’t. You can still look for ways to expand your young person’s horizons, to expect them to do remarkable things, and most importantly, to take on a measure of adult responsibility before they leave home – even temporarily.
Senator Sasse was kind enough to send me a copy of his book, and this is my candid response to it: I like it. If you are concerned about the state of adulthood in the rising generation – and every parent is, right? – you should look into what Ben Sasse has to say about it.
If you’d like to read it for yourself, order it through our affiliate link and you’ll be helping support this ministry too!
We talked about this book and the larger issue of inspiring your teenagers to step up and become adults in
“Making Biblical Family Life Practical” episode 197 – click here to listen!
April 2, 2018
Welcome to Teach Them Diligently – Atlanta!
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Come to One of Our Workshops!
FRIDAY
10:20 am
Homeschooling from The Beginning
Are your kids brilliant? Precocious? Eager? Or maybe it’s you … so here’s how to start teaching your young homeschooler, with gentleness, love, and enjoyment for both of you!
Ballroom II
2:20 pm
Raising Real Men – Surviving and Appreciating Boys
How to understand your boys and really enjoy raising them (We have six of them!)
Ballroom II
5:40 pm
Parenting Preteens
Forget toddlers, forget teens – we think middle-schoolers are the scariest age! But if you get through these years with a strong relationship, the teens years get better and better.
Ballroom I
SATURDAY
1:00 pm
Romance for The Exhausted
That’s what we all have in common, right? Fatigue. How do you keep the romantic relationship going amid the challenge of parenting, homeschooling, career, and ministry!
Ballroom IV
4:00 pm
Shining Armor: Your Son’s Battle for Purity
As the culture grows darker, it casts a shadow on our kids – especially our boys. This session will help you know why, when, and how to start The Conversation and train your sons to be warriors for their own sexual purity.
Ballroom II
Find Us In The Book Fair!
Booth 124-126 – GREAT WATERS PRESS
NEW SINCE OUR LAST VISIT!
Love, Honor, and Virtue – in book and audiobook formats!
Five Little Peppers, Men of Iron, Captains Courageous, The Sky Pilot – great literature audiobooks!
Celebrating Christ in History: Reformation Day – unit study, songbook, and cookbook, too!
And Lots of New Craft and Skill Kits!
March 20, 2018
March 18, 2018
Welcome to Teach Them Diligently – Northwest Arkansas!
Thursday
2:00 pm
What About MY Family?
Leadership Summit
(free but registration required)
3:20 pm
Parenting Preteens
Ambassador CDE
Friday
9:00 am
Raising Real Men – Surviving and Appreciating Boys
Grand Ballroom 8
Saturday
10:00 am
Romance for The Exhausted
Grand Ballroom 8
1:00 pm
Homeschooling from The Beginning
Grand Ballroom 8
4:30 pm
Shining Armor: Your Son’s Battle for Purity
Ambassador AB
Find Us In The Book Fair!
Booth 520 – GREAT WATERS PRESS
NEW THIS YEAR!
Love, Honor, and Virtue – Audiobook Edition
The Sky Pilot – Audiobook
Celebrating Christ in History: Reformation Day – unit study, songbook, and cookbook, too!
New Craft and Skill Kits!
March 5, 2018
When a Child is Talking about Death
My six year old is constantly talking about death and how he’ll die soon and it worries me. He doesn’t seem afraid of death; he says he’s going to heaven. I’m concerned, though. What do I do?
I would sit down with him and try to figure out what’s on his mind.
You never know what’s going on in those heads of theirs. Someone once told me that somehow he hadn’t gotten the picture that he’d lose his baby molars a few years after this front baby teeth, so when they started getting loose, he thought he was going to lose all his teeth and be toothless for the rest of his life. He didn’t tell his parents about his fears, either. Poor kid.
It’s best to find a time to talk alone. Driving in the car together at night is an easy time for kids to talk about things they’re embarrassed about. Perhaps you could run an evening errand with him?
“Hey, buddy, is there anything you want to tell me? Is there anything you are worrying about? It’s okay. If there is anything wrong, I’ll help you get through it.”
Then listen. Take whatever he says seriously. Often kids will raise a trial balloon – share something minor to see how you’ll react before they share what’s really on their minds. Respond kindly and with concern. Don’t either freak out, but don’t blow it off, either, even if it seems silly.
What if he doesn’t talk? If he’s not spontaneously sharing, then you need to ask more questions. You’ve got to be sure, though, that it doesn’t sound like an interrogation.
“Well, honey, I was just concerned. You’ve been talking a lot about death recently and how you’re going to die soon. I was wondering made you think that? Are you feeling all right?”
Sometimes a minor health symptom (like the teeth) can make them think something is seriously wrong.
“Has someone been ugly to you? Has someone threatened you – or threaten someone you love? Mommy and Daddy can take care of you. We can take care of the rest of us, too, but we need you to tell us what’s going on?”
Kids can be frighteningly heroic. We’ve heard of kids who’ve endured awful abuse because they thought they had to in order to protect threatened family members. May sure no one is threatening them.
“I’m glad no one has been mean to you! I’m still wondering why you are thinking about this so much, though. Most people leave to be in their seventies or eighties. You said you thought you might die soon, but really, that’s almost certainly not going to happen. Did you hear or see something that made you think you might die?”
It’s normal for kids that age to suddenly realize there is an unseen spiritual world out there with God and Satan and angels and demons in it. Some are pretty frightened by that. It’s a great time to reassure them that God is sovereign and that God is not just powerful, He is omnipotent – He is the most powerful being of all. That means we don’t have to be afraid of evil. God is more powerful than any evil and He is love.
If there’s been a recent death in the family, among his friend’s families, or even the loss of a pet, it may just be that he’s really noticing death for the first time and needs to talk through it with you.
Share with him the best comfort of all, that God loved us so much, even while we were sinners, to send His Son to die in our place. When we repent of our sins and trust in Jesus, we’re forgiven and we have eternal life. That’s good news indeed.
“Son, if you are trusting Jesus as your Savior, you’ll go to heaven when you die. You need to remember, though, that we love you! We don’t want you to go to heaven for years and years and years.
This is would be more serious if it were a teen or preteen. Although it is very unlikely in a six year old, if you are reading this and your child is a teen or preteen, you need to ask yourself if this is a suicide threat. If you get any sense at all that it is or if your child is on a medication that can cause suicidal thoughts like some anti-depressants, you need to get help. Suicide talk is an emergency. It’s a cry for help. Get him help. Don’t leave him unsupervised. Talk to your doctor. Whatever you do, don’t ignore it.
With a little guy, though, you’ve just got to figure out what’s on his mind and help him to work through it. That’s what parents are for. May the Lord give you wisdom to know how to help him out.
Your friends,
Hal & Melanie
