…My faith informs me that God’s promises are true, that parenting is a divine appointment and that He never gives us more than we can handle. God doesn’t make mistakes. Whatever was happening with my son I knew would be used to the good.

So in my mind, I heaped the mountains of fear and anxiety crowding my heart aching for my son’s suffering into a wheel barrow and walked it to the foot of the Cross. I thanked God for my son in all of his suffering, I prayed for revelation about what was wrong and what could be done to restore his health. I declared God’s grace over his entire situation.

And then my son’s heart opened to hear God’s promises from me. And it was revealed to me that the root of my son’s condition was an alignment issue.

Yes. Alignment. What a powerful, healing concept.

God bless MSNBC news anchor, Melissa Harris-Perry, for speaking her mind declaring children as belonging, not parents and families, but to the collective who should also educate them. I do respect her point of view, and I am grateful that she put her belief out there so that what she really meant cannot be mistaken.

This statement and her attempts to recast it can serve as a rally point for truth and healing the American parenting culture which suffers from surrendering our inherent God-given authority to be the parent.

In this “it is all about me” world of texting and social media, children can know way too much for their own good. More importantly, they are easily conditioned to keep the parent out of the equation when they are searching for answers and they risk becoming lost in the faulty-thinking of peer communities that frankly do not respect the individual.

As an American mother raised in the 1960′s and 1970′s I have observed that the role of the father in our culture has been minimized as Mom took on central prominence. Remember the Virgina Slims cigarette commercials, and the campaigns that women can have it all and do it all?

If you can do it all, who needs a partner?

Return to Table of Contents: 2013 Winter Edition of Family Business Quarterly

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The past few months, the topic of manhood and fatherhood has surfaced in my fieldwork – especially in the wake of the school shootings, and the questions raised in the headlines about the mental health of the young men full of murderous rage.

The absent father in American life is evidenced by an unraveling …

According to Lessin, traditional treatment for drug addiction ignores the parents and family, and if the family is not engaged in the recovery process, and the parents do not understand their role, the child will not stay in recovery.

As a youth substance abuse prevention activist, over the past ten years, I have come to appreciate that the confusion and fear over the nature of drug and alcohol addiction – especially with minors – has created a code of silence among adults, and driven youth drug and alcohol abuse to levels so extreme it creates a new norm for addiction. In June 2011, the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse declared youth substance abuse the number one public health problem in America.

Return to Table of Contents: 2013 Winter Edition of Family Business Quarterly

Bill Ryland, and his wife Camilla, have spent over 30 years providing a family life for foster youth. Today their own children are grown, and they operate the Koinonia Home for Teens in Loomis, California.

A Level 12 dual diagnosis residential treatment program, Koinonia accommodates 12 girls and 18 boys in separate single family homes. The foster youth in addition to coming from …

…Kids need to know that in the long run, adversity is not permanent, pervasive or personal. It is a matter of what you believe. “What we believe is more powerful that fear,” Katz said. “And there is nothing more liberating than people around you seeing you as resilient.” He gave the example of WII veterans who view themselves as heroes, and Vietnam veterans who did not, which was largely a matter of how society viewed them.

It is easy to be honest when the truth suits us, but when we want to avoid the truth (like a poor choice bringing shame, or a person’s reaction to the truth), or a desire to manipulate others to submit to our own agenda, then we are all tempted to lie.