Parenting
Passing Down the 4 Promises: Siblings Brodie & Reagan Croyle Take the Lead at Big Oak Ranch
Special Feature Growing up on the Big Oak Ranch in North Alabama, Brodie Croyle and Reagan Croyle Phillips were trained in compassion from a young age. They helped their parents—former University of Alabama football defensive end John Croyle and his wife Tee—welcome in abandoned and abused children with the following four promises: We love you. …
Bringing Out the Winner
Be at the Finish Line I watched a video recently about a young girl who was a successful long-distance runner. As a high school freshman, she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, a horribly crippling disease. The video shows her grit and determination to not let this disease stop her. In her senior year, she won …
Parenting Points
4 Tips to Leading Your Child toward Good Decision Making Good decision making is not a skill with which we are born. We can look back at examples from our past when we made very poor decisions that were not properly thought out and the unfortunate consequences that accompanied those decisions. There are two very …
Bringing Out the Winner In Your Child
Cultivating Common Sense Recently, a young man from the Boys’ Ranch helped me with a couple of projects in our yard. As we were working in the garage, we passed by a stack of manuals that were sitting on my workbench. He asked, “What are those?” Piled about six inches high were manuals, parts lists …
The Joys & Financial Challenges of Parenthood
As our children travel the long and never-dull road from infancy to adulthood, we nurture them, worry about them, scold them, and love them. Most of all, we try to protect them. We want them to grow up in a stable world, one in which they are physically safe, emotionally nurtured, and financially secure. Still, …
Why Christmas Needs Advent
Some of the common ways people describe the Christmas season are: Busy, Hectic, Stressful, even Chaotic. We hustle through the season shopping for gifts, looking for deals, going from one Christmas party to the next, not to mention the family dinners and get-togethers. Before we know it, New Year’s Day has come and gone and we …
