Growing Into Your Parenting Role

  "Most parents have no idea of the power their words have in the lives of their  children. I learned that lesson in my early years as a parent." Dancing Rain Renée and I were taking a road trip from Atlanta to Chicago. I was driving, and our three-year-old daughter was in the back seat behind me. The forecast was for rain, and unfortunately, it was very accurate. As the rain fell harder, I turned the windshield wipers up higher and higher. Trying to break the monotony, I took notice of the wiper blades washing the rain off my front window. It was nicely cascading down the window on my door. It looked like it was dancing down my window. I called back to my three-year-old and said, “Look, Dionne, I have dancing rain.” I smiled and chuckled and turned my attention back to driving in the rain. About five minutes passed and Renée (in the passenger seat up front) noticed she had not heard any stirring from our daughter in the back. She turned and noticed Dionne silently crying. ...

One of my favorite, most versatile, and most effective communication tool is one my wife and I created called Hearts . For many years when friends of ours got married, we gave them two gifts: one from their gift registry, and the second was a deck of cards. We always gave the cards to them personally, along with an explanation of how to use them. Renée introduced this communication tool to us to manage the differences in how we dealt with conflict. I liked debating and was very comfortable with conflict. Renée, on the other hand, came into our marriage with a conflict-avoidance style but an understanding of the importance of dealing with conflict when it arose. The Hearts card game allowed her to manage her discomfort with conflict without avoiding it. The game is very simple. It works like this: whoever has an issue to discuss finds a mutually convenient time to play. The rules are as follows: The person who suggested we play shuffles and deals the card.   The dealer states the to...