Dynamic Dads

2012-01-21T21:26:00.002-06:00

Special Event in Rockwall, Texas

see: A Special Father & Daughter Family Event

2011-11-10T08:48:00.001-06:00

The Man of Character Men's Conference 2012 Featuring Chad Hennings

Friday, January 20, 2012 at 6:00 PM - Saturday, January 21, 2012 at 3:00 PM (CT)

Royse City, TX

Businessman Air Force Fighter Pilot

Dallas Cowboys Defensive Lineman

Boys to join Girl Scouts?

2011-10-31T14:50:00.003-05:00

Bobby Montoya, 7, is allowed to dress like his sister and play with dolls. Now, he wants to join the Girl Scouts, do you believe he should be able to join?
A boy in Colorado wants to join the Girl Scouts
What does it take for an anatomical boy to be enough of a girl to join the Girl Scouts?
The question came up recently when 7-year-old Bobby Montoya -- a long-haired, Bratz-loving, biological boy -- asked his mother to sign him up for a Girl Scout troop near his Colorado home.
The troop leader said no. So Bobby's mom, Felisha Archuleta, went to the media -- telling a local television station that her son has loved "girl stuff" since he was 2, and that the troop leader's decision to reject him had left him devastated.
"I said, 'What's the big deal?' and she says, 'It doesn't matter how he looks, he has boy parts; he can't be a Girl Scout,' "Archuleta told Colorado's 9 News.
But in fact, Girl Scouts of Colorado does allow people with boy parts to join its troops, as long as the child is truly transgendered -- meaning the child identifies as a girl, and the family identifies the child as a girl.
"We feel it is important to include all girls, so when a family says, 'This is my daughter and she wants to be a Girl Scout,' we are not going to question that," Rachelle Trujillo, vice president of communications for Girl Scouts of Colorado told The Times.
"The troop leader in this case was confused because the mom was confused," Trujillo said. "She did not say, 'This is my daughter.' She said, 'This is my son and he wants to be in Girl Scouts,' and we don't accept boys in Girl Scouts."
Trujillo said the Girl Scouts of Colorado has only started encountering transgendered children asking to join Girl Scouts in the last three or four years. Since then, she said, her office hears about one or two such cases a year.
"It's still a very small population," she said. Girl Scouts of Colorado has more than 30,000 girls.
As of Friday morning, Trujillo said the troop leader was still waiting to hear back from Archuleta about whether she wants to sign Bobby up.
"If she does want Bobby to join, they need to make a decision, that as a family, that we are going to entirely have her live her life as a girl," Trujillo said. "If they do so, we are happy to have her as a member." Source: LA Times
**********************
Dynamic Dads believes it is best for girls to join the Girl Scouts and boys to join the Boy Scouts. What do you believe?

2011-10-17T15:40:00.001-05:00

Go see Courageous the movie......

www.courageousthemovie.com

2011-09-09T10:32:00.002-05:00

Grab Your 'Murse,' Pack a 'Mankini' And Don't Forget the 'Mewelry'

Men's Fashion, Lingo Take a Feminine Turn; Mixed Reviews for Obama's 'Mandals'

Is this a trend or a fad?

Click here to see article from the Wall Street Journal:
http://tinyurl.com/3zrdp6f

Lack of fathering leads to anarchy?

2011-08-22T13:06:00.000-05:00

London Violence Shows Need for Fathering: Christian Leaders

Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2011 Hat Tip: Christian Post

A shoe hangs in the smashed window of the Nike store in Manchester, northern England. Violence flared in English cities and towns on Tuesday night but London, where thousands of extra police had been deployed, was largely peaceful after three turbulent nights in which youths rampaged across the capital virtually unchecked. August 10, 2011. (Photo: Reuters / Phil Noble)

Christian leaders in the U.S. say Britain's mob violence should teach the West that strengthening families and fostering morals are not just a matter of tradition, but of social safety.

Glenn Stanton, director of family formation studies at Focus on the Family, says the destruction unleashed by UK youngsters reveals a moral breakdown that is rooted in the home.

"The London situation wasn't fueled and flamed by fatherlessness, but fatherlessness creates the kind of situation where ... things like this can happen," explained Stanton.

Fathers teach their children responsibility and boundaries said Stanton, who is the author of the parenting guide Secure Daughters, Confident Sons. For boys, in particular, fathers teach sons how to redirect their aggression.

"If fathers can't help young boys and young men move their aggression, their violence, if you will, their power in pro-social directions, it comes out in very anti-social, and actually very dangerous directions," described Stanton.

Young aggression has taken a very a dangerous turn in London. Teens and young adults took to the streets earlier this month, breaking into shops, looting and setting fires.

Dozens of young adults described by SkyNews network as mostly poor, products of single-parent homes and lacking direction have been arrested.

An 11-year-old was arrested in connection to looting. Chelsea Ives, 18, was arrested for throwing a brick at a police car. Ives was slated to be an ambassador for the Olympics next year. A 22-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of murder after a 68-year-old man attacked during a riot died.

Some blame social networking sites such as Twitter for the flash mobs that inflicted about US$200 million worth of structural damage and resulted in the deaths of five people. As a result, some believe social networking sites should be blocked in times or rioting or other national emergencies.

However, Prime Minister David Cameron pinned the blame on the youth involved in the attacks and their parents during a television interview.

"The problem of that (the youth-led riots) is a complete lack of [responsibility], a lack of proper parenting, a lack of proper upbringing, a lack of proper ethics, a lack of proper morals," he told reporters. "That is what we have to change."

Christian Institute communications head Mike Judge agrees that families must be the focus of change.

"It is in the family that these values are passed down from one generation to another. It is in the family that these lessons [of respect for fellow human beings, authority and possessions] are instilled in people from an early age," Judge wrote in an August 9 editorial.

He defines family as a mother and a father who are committed to each other and to the raising of their children.

Stanton recognised that single mothers do their best to give their children these same lessons.

However, he noted, "When a parent is having to do the job of two parents, things fall to the wayside."

Mothers cannot do it all, Stanton said.

Freddie Scott II, assistant pastor of Word of Faith Christian Center in Nashville, Tenn., and author of The Dad I Wish I Had, said children have an innate desire to look to their fathers and seek their advice and example. When the father is missing, he says, children feel a void that can lead to unresolved emotions.

"If you have young people, who don't have a dad in the home, and you have this anger built up, this frustration built up, this rage built up; almost anything can possibly trigger someone wanting to act out on it," he describes.

When asked if similar flash mobs could occur in the United States, Stanton said they already have.

"We saw it in Los Angeles 10 years ago ... when the LA riots occurred; we saw it in Katrina," he said.

However, it's not too late to stop future violence, Scott said. He encourages men to step up in their marriages, families and in their communities to be a father to the fatherless.

Stephanie Samuel
Christian Post Reporter

"Please check on my son up there..."

2011-07-08T10:49:00.000-05:00

A fan reaching to catch a ball died after he fell over the left-field wall at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington during the second inning of Thursday night’s game.

The man had been reaching over the rail for a foul ball tossed into the stands by Rangers left fielder Josh Hamilton during the game against the Oakland A’s.

The city manager of Brownwood confirmed that the man, Shannon Stone, was a firefighter there, the Brownwood News reported late Thursday.

Stone, who was sitting in the left-field lower-level reserved seats, fell about 20 feet in the area behind a wall supporting a scoreboard.

“We are deeply saddened to learn that the man who fell has passed away as a result of this tragic accident. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family,” said Nolan Ryan, Rangers CEO and president.

It is routine for players to throw balls that are out of play into the stands.

“As anyone would be, Josh is very distraught about this, as the whole team is,” Ryan said.

Stone was treated by Rangers medical personnel before being taken to John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth.

Ronnie Hargis was sitting next to Stone, who was at the game with his young son. The men had been talking to each other before the accident.

“He went straight down. I tried to grab him, but I couldn’t. I tried to slow him down a little bit,” Hargis said.

Witnesses said the victim’s head was bleeding badly.

David Dodson was at the game with his daughter and saw the fall.

“Just as the ball hit his hand, it kind of threw him off balance and he just went head-first,” Dodson said. “It looked awful because you knew there was no way he was going to land on his feet. … The way he fell, it looked like it was just straight on his head.”

Oakland relief pitcher Brad Ziegler said he thought Stone was going to be OK after the fall because he was telling medical personnel to “please check on my son up there.”

Her.meneutics: Beyonce Is Wrong: Girls Don't Run the World

2011-06-29T13:31:00.001-05:00

Her.meneutics: Beyonce Is Wrong: Girls Don't Run the World

Teens dying at rave party called EDC....

2011-06-21T09:43:00.005-05:00

A company called Insomniac holds raves (all night techno dance parties) across the US. So far two teenagers have died at these events. Here is the story from Dallas, TX:

Local teen dies at rave party

Parents: Please be cautious regarding this show called "Electric Daisy Carnival" During the Dallas event one 19 year old died and more than 30 were hospitalized.

Here is a story from the Orlando show where more than 120 were hospitalized:

Drug use and hospitilization at Orlando rave

And here is the story from the LA Times regarding the girl who died at this same rave in Los Angeles:

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/30/local/la-me-rave-death-20100630

How many more teenagers will have to die at one of these unsafe shows?

Parent's keep baby's gender a "secret"

2011-05-26T16:33:00.000-05:00

When many couples have a baby, they often send out an announcement to family and friends that fills them in on the key details: name, gender, birth weight, that sort of thing. (You know the drill: “Both Mom and our new son Kevin are doing great!”)

But the email sent recently by Kathy Witterick and David Stocker of Toronto, Canada to announce the birth of their baby, Storm, was missing one important piece of information. “We’ve decided not to share Storm’s sex for now–a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm’s lifetime (a more progressive place? …),” it said.

That’s right. They’re not saying whether Storm is a boy or a girl.

There’s nothing ambiguous about the baby’s genitals. But as Stocker puts it: “If you really want to get to know someone, you don’t ask what’s between their legs.” So only the parents, their two other children (both boys), a close friend, and the two midwives who helped deliver the now 4-month-old baby know its gender. Even the grandparents have been left in the dark.

Stocker and Witterick say the decision gives Storm the freedom to choose who he or she wants to be. “What we noticed is that parents make so many choices for their children. It’s obnoxious,” adds Stocker, a teacher at an alternative school.

They say that kids receive messages from society that encourage them to fit into existing boxes, including with regard to gender. “We thought that if we delayed sharing that information, in this case hopefully, we might knock off a couple million of those messages by the time that Storm decides Storm would like to share,” says Witterick.

“In fact, in not telling the gender of my precious baby, I am saying to the world, ‘Please can you just let Storm discover for him/herself what s (he) wants to be?!.” she wrote in an email.

How did Stocker and Witterick decide to keep Storm’s gender under wraps? During Witterick’s pregnancy, her son Jazz was having “intense” experiences with his own gender. “I was feeling like I needed some good parenting skills to support him through that,” Witterick said.

Stocker came across a book from 1978, titled X: A Fabulous Child’s Story by Lois Gould. X is raised as neither a boy or girl, and grows up to be a happy and well-adjusted child.

“It became so compelling it was almost like, How could we not?” Witterick said.

The couple’s other two children, Jazz and Kio, haven’t escaped their parents’ unconventional approach to parenting. Though they’re only 5 and 2, they’re allowed to pick out their own clothes in the boys and girls sections of stores and decide whether to cut their hair or let it grow.

Both boys are “unschooled,” a version of homeschooling, which promotes putting a child’s curiosity at the center of his or her education. As Witterick puts it, it’s “not something that happens by rote from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays in a building with a group of same-age people, planned, implemented and assessed by someone else.”

Because Jazz and Kio wear pink and have long hair, they’re frequently assumed to be girls, according to Stocker. He said he and Witterick don’t correct people–they leave it to the kids to do it if they want to.

But Stocker and Witterick’s choices haven’t always made life easy for their kids. Though Jazz likes dressing as a girl, he doesn’t seem to want to be mistaken for one. He recently asked his mother to let the leaders of a nature center know that he’s a boy. And he chose not to attend a conventional school because of the questions about his gender. Asked whether that upsets him, Jazz nodded.

As for his mother, she’s not giving up the crusade against the tyranny of assigned gender roles. “Everyone keeps asking us, ‘When will this end?’” she said. “And we always turn the question back. Yeah, when will this end? When will we live in a world where people can make choices to be whoever they are?”

These parents are competing with the radical experimentation that the mother of “Princess Boy” was doing with her son. The interesting thing about the parents view on this is that they seem to think that it is in fact a “choice” one makes about which gender a person ultimately lives out. Do you agree with what these parents are doing? Is gender assigned by the Creator? Will we see more of this in the future?

Dynamic Dads believes it is healthy and natural for parents to celebrate the God-given gender of their newborn.

Source: Yahoo news

Book Review of "Love Wins" by: Rob Bell

2011-03-22T16:08:00.001-05:00

Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person who Ever Lived. By Rob Bell. New York: Harper Collins, 2011. 202pp. $22.99.
Book Reviewed by: Jace Cloud

Rob Bell is a Christian author, speaker, and the founding pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is a graduate of Wheaton College and Fuller Theological Seminary. Since his increase in popularity through books such as Velvet Elvis, Bell has been pushing the envelope in areas such as the emerging church and redefining what it means to be “Christian.” In his most recent book, Love Wins, Bell attempts to reexamine the traditional understanding of “heaven, hell, and the fate of every person who ever lived.”
In chapter one, Bell poses honest, long-debated questions that set the stage for the rest of his book. He questions how a loving God could create millions of people who are going to spend eternity in anguish (p. 2). Next he questions, hypothetically, how a person could escape this eternal anguish (p. 5). Lastly, he questions whether or not heaven ought to be viewed as our “ticket” out of this world and into the next (p. 6).
In chapter two, Bell reexamines the concept of heaven. He argues that although heaven is a future reality, Jesus constantly urged His followers to bring heaven into their present experiences (p. 40, 46). Bell argues that among other things, heaven is “our present eternal, intense, real experiences of joy, peace, and love in this life…” (p. 58-59).
In chapter three, Bell reexamines the concept of hell. He theorizes that hell can be an earthly reality (the presence of rape, murder, etc. confirms this experience) just as heaven can be an earthly reality (p. 71). He then proceeds to support the future reality of hell but with a redefinition of it. By arguing from Ezekiel 16 and Matthew 10 that Sodom and Gomorrah have hopeful futures despite their past judgment, Bell theorizes that God’s ultimate purpose for hell is to move “from judgment to restoration, from punishment to new life” (p. 85). He then adds, “failure, we see again and again, isn’t final, judgment has a point, and consequences are for correction” (p. 85). To support this claim, Bell redefines the meaning of “eternal punishment” in Matthew 25 to be “a period of pruning” or “an intense experience of correction” (p. 91). In other words, Bell believes hell to be a temporary time of correction, not eternal separation from God.
In chapter four, Bell upholds the sovereignty of God in connection with God’s desire for all men to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4). He then poses the rhetorical question, “So does God get what God wants?” (p. 97). At this point, Bell tries to balance the claims that God will reconcile all things to Himself (p. 109) and yet God’s love demands that humans have ultimate freedom to choose (p. 113).
In chapter five, Bell walks through different biblical metaphors describing terms such as freedom, reconciliation, and redemption (p. 128).
In chapter six, Bell argues that Jesus is bigger than Christianity. Through this claim, Bell argues for “exclusivity on the other side of inclusivity” (p. 155). In other words, the doors of heaven were opened by Christ, but a person does not necessarily enter only through Christianity. By referring to Paul’s interpretation of the “rock” of Exodus 17 (1 Corinthians 10:4), Bell argues that Jesus is found in many other “rocks,” and “sometimes people use his name; other times they don’t” (p. 159).
In chapter seven, Bell reaffirms his belief that God cannot be both a loving God and a “vicious tormenter” (p. 173, 177). Bell then argues that people ought to allow God to retell their story, one that ends in reconciliation. For Bell, “hell is our refusal to trust God’s retelling of our story…. What the gospel does is confront our version of our story with God’s version of our story” (p. 170-71). In the end, it is the “story” that makes all the difference. In fact, the story of an all-inclusive God is better than a God who allows people to go to hell (p. 174-175).
In chapter eight, Bell argues that Jesus invites us to say yes to God’s love, however one wants to describe this act (p. 194).
The book’s strength lies in its honest questions about God’s love, mercy, and justice. These are difficult issues that have been debated throughout the history of the Church. Furthermore, Bell rightly argues that Christians ought to live out the heavenly characteristics of joy, peace, and love. However, Bell’s work is far more detrimental than beneficial to the Christian and non-Christian community. From an evangelical vantage, Bell leaves much unanswered and unsupported. His rhetoric is loaded with rhetorical questions that offer no definite answers. Furthermore, by arguing from a postmodern worldview and reader-based hermeneutic, Bell’s use of scripture and argumentation is unsatisfying for audiences who do not share his philosophy and hermeneutic. Reasoning through Bell’s use of Scripture leaves one scratching his head in confusion. More troubling, however, is Bell’s defense of a temporary hell and its mere corrective purpose. For Bell, hell is a temporary reality in which people will be pruned and made ready for heaven, much like purgatory. While arguing that God will eventually reconcile all things to Himself, Bell adamantly argues for complete human freedom to choose. Furthermore, Bell’s view of the inclusive nature of salvation moves outside the realm of evangelicalism. Bell’s god demands the full reconciliation of humanity, regardless of their knowledge of or position on Jesus Christ. Through these conclusions, Bell offers a false hope to millions of people who reject Jesus Christ. Because of these conclusions, one can only hope that Bell’s readers will search the Scripture for themselves and realize the urgency for faith in Christ during this lifetime (Acts 4:11-12; Hebrews 9:27-28).
Book review by: Jace Cloud

Manning Up

2011-02-23T14:23:00.004-06:00

Not so long ago, the average American man in his 20s had achieved most of the milestones of adulthood: a high-school diploma, financial independence, marriage and children. Today, most men in their 20s hang out in a novel sort of limbo, a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. This "pre-adulthood" has much to recommend it, especially for the college-educated. But it's time to state what has become obvious to legions of frustrated young women: It doesn't bring out the best in men.

Between his lack of responsibilities and an entertainment media devoted to his every pleasure, today's young man has no reason to grow up, says author Kay Hymowitz. She discusses her book, "Manning Up" We are sick of hooking up with guys," writes the comedian Julie Klausner, author of a touchingly funny 2010 book, "I Don't Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux-Sensitive Hipsters and Other Guys I've Dated." What Ms. Klausner means by "guys" is males who are not boys or men but something in between. "Guys talk about 'Star Wars' like it's not a movie made for people half their age; a guy's idea of a perfect night is a hang around the PlayStation with his bandmates, or a trip to Vegas with his college friends.... They are more like the kids we babysat than the dads who drove us home." One female reviewer of Ms. Kausner's book wrote, "I had to stop several times while reading and think: Wait, did I date this same guy?"

For most of us, the cultural habitat of pre-adulthood no longer seems noteworthy. After all, popular culture has been crowded with pre-adults for almost two decades. Hollywood started the affair in the early 1990s with movies like "Singles," "Reality Bites," "Single White Female" and "Swingers." Television soon deepened the relationship, giving us the agreeable company of Monica, Joey, Rachel and Ross; Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer; Carrie, Miranda, et al. But for all its familiarity, pre-adulthood represents a momentous sociological development. It's no exaggeration to say that having large numbers of single young men and women living independently, while also having enough disposable income to avoid ever messing up their kitchens, is something entirely new in human experience. Yes, at other points in Western history young people have waited well into their 20s to marry, and yes, office girls and bachelor lawyers have been working and finding amusement in cities for more than a century. But their numbers and their money supply were always relatively small. Today's pre-adults are a different matter. They are a major demographic event.

What also makes pre-adulthood something new is its radical reversal of the sexual hierarchy. Among pre-adults, women are the first sex. They graduate from college in greater numbers (among Americans ages 25 to 34, 34% of women now have a bachelor's degree but just 27% of men), and they have higher GPAs. As most professors tell it, they also have more confidence and drive. These strengths carry women through their 20s, when they are more likely than men to be in grad school and making strides in the workplace. In a number of cities, they are even out-earning their brothers and boyfriends.

WHY GROW UP? Men in their 20s now have an array of toys and distractions at their disposal, from videogames and sports bars to 'lad' magazines like Maxim. Still, for these women, one key question won't go away: Where have the good men gone? Their male peers often come across as aging frat boys, maladroit geeks or grubby slackers—a gender gap neatly crystallized by the director Judd Apatow in his hit 2007 movie "Knocked Up." The story's hero is 23-year-old Ben Stone (Seth Rogen), who has a drunken fling with Allison Scott (Katherine Heigl) and gets her pregnant. Ben lives in a Los Angeles crash pad with a group of grubby friends who spend their days playing videogames, smoking pot and unsuccessfully planning to launch a porn website. Allison, by contrast, is on her way up as a television reporter and lives in a neatly kept apartment with what appear to be clean sheets and towels. Once she decides to have the baby, she figures out what needs to be done and does it. Ben can only stumble his way toward being a responsible grownup.

So where did these pre-adults come from? You might assume that their appearance is a result of spoiled 24-year-olds trying to prolong the campus drinking and hook-up scene while exploiting the largesse of mom and dad. But the causes run deeper than that. Beginning in the 1980s, the economic advantage of higher education—the "college premium"—began to increase dramatically. Between 1960 and 2000, the percentage of younger adults enrolled in college or graduate school more than doubled. In the "knowledge economy," good jobs go to those with degrees. And degrees take years.
Another factor in the lengthening of the road to adulthood is our increasingly labyrinthine labor market. The past decades' economic expansion and the digital revolution have transformed the high-end labor market into a fierce competition for the most stimulating, creative and glamorous jobs. Fields that attract ambitious young men and women often require years of moving between school and internships, between internships and jobs, laterally and horizontally between jobs, and between cities in the U.S. and abroad. The knowledge economy gives the educated young an unprecedented opportunity to think about work in personal terms. They are looking not just for jobs but for "careers," work in which they can exercise their talents and express their deepest passions. They expect their careers to give shape to their identity. For today's pre-adults, "what you do" is almost synonymous with "who you are," and starting a family is seldom part of the picture.

Pre-adulthood can be compared to adolescence, an idea invented in the mid-20th century as American teenagers were herded away from the fields and the workplace and into that new institution, the high school. For a long time, the poor and recent immigrants were not part of adolescent life; they went straight to work, since their families couldn't afford the lost labor and income. But the country had grown rich enough to carve out space and time to create a more highly educated citizenry and work force. Teenagers quickly became a marketing and cultural phenomenon. They also earned their own psychological profile. One of the most influential of the psychologists of adolescence was Erik Erikson, who described the stage as a "moratorium," a limbo between childhood and adulthood characterized by role confusion, emotional turmoil and identity conflict.
Like adolescents in the 20th century, today's pre-adults have been wait-listed for adulthood. Marketers and culture creators help to promote pre-adulthood as a lifestyle. And like adolescence, pre-adulthood is a class-based social phenomenon, reserved for the relatively well-to-do. Those who don't get a four-year college degree are not in a position to compete for the more satisfying jobs of the knowledge economy.

But pre-adults differ in one major respect from adolescents. They write their own biographies, and they do it from scratch. Sociologists use the term "life script" to describe a particular society's ordering of life's large events and stages. Though such scripts vary across cultures, the archetypal plot is deeply rooted in our biological nature. The invention of adolescence did not change the large Roman numerals of the American script. Adults continued to be those who took over the primary tasks of the economy and culture. For women, the central task usually involved the day-to-day rearing of the next generation; for men, it involved protecting and providing for their wives and children. If you followed the script, you became an adult, a temporary custodian of the social order until your own old age and demise.

Unlike adolescents, however, pre-adults don't know what is supposed to come next. For them, marriage and parenthood come in many forms, or can be skipped altogether. In 1970, just 16% of Americans ages 25 to 29 had never been married; today that's true of an astonishing 55% of the age group. In the U.S., the mean age at first marriage has been climbing toward 30 (a point past which it has already gone in much of Europe). It is no wonder that so many young Americans suffer through a "quarter-life crisis," a period of depression and worry over their future.

Given the rigors of contemporary career-building, pre-adults who do marry and start families do so later than ever before in human history. Husbands, wives and children are a drag on the footloose life required for the early career track and identity search. Pre-adulthood has also confounded the primordial search for a mate. It has delayed a stable sense of identity, dramatically expanded the pool of possible spouses, mystified courtship routines and helped to throw into doubt the very meaning of marriage. In 1970, to cite just one of many numbers proving the point, nearly seven in 10 25-year-olds were married; by 2000, only one-third had reached that milestone.

American men have been struggling with finding an acceptable adult identity since at least the mid-19th century. We often hear about the miseries of women confined to the domestic sphere once men began to work in offices and factories away from home. But it seems that men didn't much like the arrangement either. They balked at the stuffy propriety of the bourgeois parlor, as they did later at the banal activities of the suburban living room. They turned to hobbies and adventures, like hunting and fishing. At midcentury, fathers who at first had refused to put down the money to buy those newfangled televisions changed their minds when the networks began broadcasting boxing matches and baseball games. The arrival of Playboy in the 1950s seemed like the ultimate protest against male domestication; think of the refusal implied by the magazine's title alone.

In his disregard for domestic life, the playboy was prologue for today's pre-adult male. Unlike the playboy with his jazz and art-filled pad, however, our boy rebel is a creature of the animal house. In the 1990s, Maxim, the rude, lewd and hugely popular "lad" magazine arrived from England. Its philosophy and tone were so juvenile, so entirely undomesticated, that it made Playboy look like Camus.

At the same time, young men were tuning in to cable channels like Comedy Central, the Cartoon Network and Spike, whose shows reflected the adolescent male preferences of its targeted male audiences. They watched movies with overgrown boy actors like Steve Carell, Luke and Owen Wilson, Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Will Farrell and Seth Rogen, cheering their awesome car crashes, fart jokes, breast and crotch shots, beer pong competitions and other frat-boy pranks. Americans had always struck foreigners as youthful, even childlike, in their energy and optimism. But this was too much.

What explains this puerile shallowness? I see it as an expression of our cultural uncertainty about the social role of men. It's been an almost universal rule of civilization that girls became women simply by reaching physical maturity, but boys had to pass a test. They needed to demonstrate courage, physical prowess or mastery of the necessary skills. The goal was to prove their competence as protectors and providers. Today, however, with women moving ahead in our advanced economy, husbands and fathers are now optional, and the qualities of character men once needed to play their roles—fortitude, stoicism, courage, fidelity—are obsolete, even a little embarrassing.

Today's pre-adult male is like an actor in a drama in which he only knows what he shouldn't say. He has to compete in a fierce job market, but he can't act too bossy or self-confident. He should be sensitive but not paternalistic, smart but not cocky. To deepen his predicament, because he is single, his advisers and confidants are generally undomesticated guys just like him.

Single men have never been civilization's most responsible actors; they continue to be more troubled and less successful than men who deliberately choose to become husbands and fathers. So we can be disgusted if some of them continue to live in rooms decorated with "Star Wars" posters and crushed beer cans and to treat women like disposable estrogen toys, but we shouldn't be surprised.

Relatively affluent, free of family responsibilities, and entertained by an array of media devoted to his every pleasure, the single young man can live in pig heaven—and often does. Women put up with him for a while, but then in fear and disgust either give up on any idea of a husband and kids or just go to a sperm bank and get the DNA without the troublesome man. But these rational choices on the part of women only serve to legitimize men's attachment to the sand box. Why should they grow up? No one needs them anyway. There's nothing they have to do.

They might as well just have another beer.

—Adapted from "Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men Into Boys" by Kay S. Hymowitz, to be published by Basic Books on March 1. Copyright © by Kay S. Hymowitz.

2011-01-31T12:50:00.002-06:00

Pro-life speaker asks, 'What about dads?'
Hat Tip: Jesse Chaney
Brush News-Tribune

As a licensed counselor, Mark Bradley Morrow sees a number of women who are emotionally distraught due to abortions they regret.
“Tonight, I want you to consider, ‘What about the fathers?’” he said during A Caring Pregnancy Resource Center of Northeast Colorado’s 2011 banquet in Brush Thursday evening.
The pro-life Christian organization brought Morrow from Pennsylvania to Brush to share his perspective on the affects of abortion on fathers.
Morrow said he has been a licensed counselor for a quarter of a century, so he could professionally attest that abortion can have negative consequences for men.
He said the possible symptoms of post-abortion grief include excessive anger, anxiety, panic attacks, mood swings, and feelings of helplessness, confusion, guilt and depression.
Morrow said he is also responsible for multiple pregnancies that were aborted, so he could personally attest to the suffering it can cause.
“I can personally attest to the fact that abortion hurts fathers, and that men can suffer emotionally from the loss of their child,” he said.
Morrow noted that he was probably in good company at the banquet, as statistics show that 25 percent of all women have had an abortion by age 45 and one in six evangelical Christian women have done the same. Since there is a man involved in every pregnancy, he suggested that the same number of men is affected by abortion as well.
Morrow describes himself as a father of eight, though five of his children were never born.
While in his late 20s, he said, he was responsible for four pregnancies in less than two years. Each of the pregnancies was terminated, and he didn’t even know about two of them until the abortions were finished.
“I take full responsibility for my past sins and the horrible consequences, and there really is no one else to blame but me,” he said.
Morrow said he did not talk about the abortions for 18 years, fearing that his life would fall apart if he revealed his secret.
He eventually married a single mother on the condition that he would first have a vasectomy, vowing to never have his own biological children.
After fathering his new adopted daughter for several years, however, Morrow decided to have the procedure reversed. He said his wife became pregnant shortly thereafter, only to lose the pregnancy to miscarriage.
“What I never wanted in the past, now I wanted it, and I lost it,” he said. “And little did my wife know that that was the fifth child that I lost.”
Morrow said he was relieved that he and his wife have since had two healthy children, though he can’t shake the memory of the five that weren’t born. He said he often imagines where they would be now if the pregnancies weren’t terminated.
Morrow said his marriage nearly unraveled when he revealed his secret to his wife, though he now challenges post-abortive men and women to “make their own bold move and begin their journey toward healing.”
In 2010, the local pregnancy center worked with three clients who were originally seeking abortions, said Director Jan Loesch. After being counseled at the center, she said, all three clients went on to have healthy babies.
Loesch said the three clients were among the 111 females and 10 males the pregnancy center served in 2010.
She said the center offers a variety of services and resources, including assistance for pregnant women and girls, along with their partners.
Through a letter read by the director, a young client named Mayra explained how Loesch helped her through a high-risk pregnancy that threatened the lives of her and her son. Due in part to the pregnancy center, she said, the baby was born and both are doing well.
“I had no support from my parents,” she said in the letter. “Thanks to Jan at the center, I was able to get the prenatal care that I needed.”
The pregnancy center also teaches an abstinence class for local students, which has recently expanded from Fort Morgan and Yuma to Wiggins and Holyoke. The class was also recently introduced in area middle schools, she said.
Since she went to work at the pregnancy center nine years ago, Loesch said, Morgan County has dropped from No. 1 to No. 7 in the rankings for the highest teen pregnancy rates in Colorado.
“My goal is to put the center out of business because there’s no teen pregnancy,” she said.

A good movie? Soul Surfer...

2010-12-30T10:02:00.004-06:00

SOUL SURFER is the inspiring true story of Bethany Hamilton, who lost her arm in a shark attack and courageously overcame all odds to become a champion surfer through the love of her family, sheer determination, and unwavering faith.
Dynamic Dads is always on the lookout for family-friendly movies. Check this one out in Spring of 2011...

UAE Condones Wife Beating

2010-10-20T08:55:00.009-05:00

UAE Condones Wife and Child Beating So Long as Marks Aren't Left

October 19, 2010 11:51 PM EDT

In the United Arab Emirates' (UAE) highest judicial body, it has been deemed just fine for men to beat their wives and children. The only stipulation is that such beatings shouldn't leave marks.

Ruling Shows Strong Deference to Islamic Law

According to CBSNews, the ruling clearly shows a strong deference to Islamic law. The ruling was made based on a case that was heard earlier in the month, in which a man had beaten both his wife and adult daughter. He was said by the court to have crossed the law's line, because his wife had visible injuries in the beating.

"The beating left the wife with injuries to her lip and teeth and the 23-year-old daughter suffered bruises on her knees and hand. In ruling against the defendant in that case, Chief Justice Falah as Hajeri stated that there were conditions when domestic violence was acceptable."

Translation of Law Questionable

The laws translates like this. If a man hits his wife and/or minor children, it is condoned. However it is only considered acceptable if no marks are left. It doesn't specify if those marks need to be left where they could plainly be seen. For example, what if the marks were not visible? Is this considered acceptable by Islamic law?

Once a child reaches puberty, it is considered inappropriate for the father or husband to beat them. However children under that age may be beaten. The law, however, prefers to call it discipline.

It is beyond disgusting that laws like this one exist in this world in this day and age. It is devastating to think that women and children can be physically harmed by a husband or father for any reason whatsoever. Dynamic Dads strongly condemns these recent rulings.

Kindness in Marriage

2010-09-10T10:47:00.001-05:00

The first command God gave mankind was to be fruitful and multiply (see Gen. 1:28). But fruitfulness involves more than merely growing physical fruit.

As a Christian, the Spirit of God has already been planted within you, now it's your job to cultivate the seed of His nature. And it is not going to be an easy thing to do all the time.

The farmer's seeds must push through a layer of dirt in order to reach the sunlight. That dirt outweighs that little seed, and it will have to struggle hard to break through. In the same manner, God's Spirit has to push through the dirt we call our flesh.

Our flesh may be innately selfish, rude and indulgent. The Spirit of God inside of us is none of those things. Thus, there is resistance; there is conflict. And in marriage, these can pose numerous problems in the way we communicate with our spouse.

Take the case of James, who comes home after a rough workday. The computer program he'd worked on around the clock for weeks wasn't running. After a tense meeting with his concerned boss, James headed home exhausted.

When he opened the door to greet his pregnant wife, he was confronted with the words, "I hope you won't work all hours of the day when the baby is born!" Without saying a word, James watched his wife set out the meal she had prepared hours earlier. He knew he was desperately in need of something, but couldn't put his finger on it.

Then there is Charlotte, a homeschooling mother of four, who also had a tough day. Shortly after her husband left for work, one child developed a fever combined with nausea.

After a stressful day of serving as both impromptu nurse and schoolteacher, Charlotte was preparing dinner when her husband entered and said with a smile, "This house looks like a disaster area. What did you do today?" Not returning the smile, Charlotte became defensive as she set the table. She also needed something, but felt too overwhelmed to express it.

What James and Charlotte needed was an act of kindness. James needed a hug and a "Boy, I'm glad to see you, you hard-working man." Charlotte needed her husband to notice her overwhelmed state and come to her aid.

Every spouse needs kindness daily. Many of us feel that life is like an overworked, fast-moving engine. In mechanical terms, an engine receives a constant supply of motor oil to prevent friction and overheating. Likewise, random and intentional acts of kindness lubricate marriage relationships, easing life's friction.

Hat tip: From Doug Weiss, Charisma Magazine

Twilight teeth for teen in Texas

2010-07-12T19:59:00.002-05:00

Hey, Dad, would you allow your teenage daughter to get her teeth made into "fangs" because of the hit movie about Vampires? Click here to see the story:

Fathers Day -- 2010

2010-06-11T13:11:00.009-05:00

Happy Fathers Day---2010!!

Dynamic Dad's wishes all dads Happy Fathers Day!

Why not order a fathering book for your dad or a dad you care about...today!

Order books by clicking here:
http://www.amazon.com/Paul-Pettit/e/B001JS61TQ/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1276280389&sr=8-1

Daughters kill mother over cell phone?

2010-05-26T14:16:00.002-05:00

Very sad story out of Atlanta, GA. Apparently, twin daughters killed their mother, after she tried to enforce discipline in their home. The girls might have even killed their mother because she took up their cell phones.

Friends not surprised twins charged in mom's death
By Christian Boone

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

3:50 p.m. Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Just days after Jarmecca "Nikki" Whitehead was killed, many of her friends had already fingered a suspect, or suspects.

Their suspicions were confirmed Friday when the Conyers beautician's twin daughters, Tasmiyah and Jasmiyah, were arrested and charged with murder in their mother's Jan. 14 death. Whitehead was found in a pool of blood, beaten and stabbed repeatedly. The twins will be tried as adults.

"I never thought they were capable of murder before she died," said Whitehead's friend and former boss, Michelle Temple. "Who would think that? But after she was murdered, I knew it was them."

By all accounts, the 16-year-old girls had become difficult for their mother to handle. Once honor students and Girl Scouts, "Tas" and "Jas," as they were known, continually pushed boundaries, breaking rules and acting out whenever discipline was imposed.

"The girls wanted to do what they wanted to do," said Yucca Harris, Whitehead's best friend.

Tas and Jas had moved back home just eight days before their mother's death. They had been living with their elderly great-grandmother for about a year and a half following an incident in which they physically assaulted Whitehead, requiring police intervention, said Petrina Sims, owner of Simply Unique, a salon where Whitehead worked until her death.

Their great-grandmother had trouble reining the girls in, Whitehead's friends say.

"She's an 80-year-old woman," Harris said of Whitehead's grandmother. "[Tas and Jas] could get away with just about anything."

Temple told the AJC that the girls stole $200 from her and they'd also stolen money from their great-grandmother.

"The [great-grandmother] eventually had to get a dead-bolt for her bedroom," Temple said.

But friends say Whitehead, who raised the girls alone, was determined to start over with her daughters.

"The last night I saw her, she told me she was going to fight for those girls," said Harris, who was invited to a welcome home dinner Whitehead had for Tas and Jas five days before her death.

"They agreed to start over, to forgive and forget," Harris told the AJC. Harris said she had a long conversation with her friend's daughters that night, encouraging them to call her whenever they needed to talk.

"I thought I got through to them," Harris said.

Conyers Police Chief Gene Wilson said evidence processed in the GBI crime lab links the girls to their mother's slaying. E ven Jasmiyah's attorney, Rockdale public defender Owen Humphries, acknowledged, "I've got my work cut out for me."

Both girls have denied killing their mother, Humphries said. A grand jury is expected to hear their case June 7.

The twins had claimed they came home from school and discovered their mother's body. One of them flagged down a Rockdale County Sheriff's deputy who was in the neighborhood serving a warrant on an unrelated matter.

With no sign of forced entry, police suspected Whitehead knew her killer.

"There was a point soon after the murder when a lot of people became suspicious of the two girls," Chief Wilson told the AJC.

The girls have been separated "to keep them from comparing notes," Humphries said. One is in the Rockdale Youth Detention Center while the other was sent to Gwinnett's YDC. They're being held without bond.

Humphries told the AJC he's working to secure legal representation for Tasmiyah.

"They were just defiant," salon owner Sims said of the twins. "They had grown so wild in just a couple of years, like they were two different people. They weren't those sweet little girls anymore."

Bullying...revisited

2010-04-01T08:13:00.004-05:00

Another series of sad stories out of the Dallas, Texas area after a 13-year old boy hung himself after being bullied. Please discuss the problem of bullying and being bullied with your sons and daughters.

Suicides open eyes to bullying after 13-year-old Joshua boy's death

By JESSICA MEYERS / The Dallas Morning News
jmeyers@dallasnews.com

A 13-year-old hangs himself in a Johnson County barn. An 8-year-old jumps out of a two-story school building in Houston. Nine Massachusetts teenagers face jail time after allegedly harassing a girl so mercilessly that she killed herself. These incidents, all of which took place in the past week, reframe the age-old phenomenon of the schoolyard bully.

Students are turning to suicide, experts say, as an escape from taunts that now continue beyond the school day through cyberspace. Such drastic responses, they say, reveal how an action once considered a rite of passage has turned into a public health issue.

"You used to get a reprieve every time you went home," said Beaux Wellborn, who helps lead the Bully Suicide Project, a Dallas effort started in November to address the surge in suicides. "Kids today don't get a reprieve. It's a constant cycle. Imagine waking up and getting a text message that someone hates you, then dealing with it at school and getting home to face it on Facebook and Instant Messenger."

Notions of suicide are also morphing, according to Wellborn, who dealt with routine catcalls and books thrown at his head in high school a decade ago. Suicide, he said, has become almost vogue. One bullied kid he worked with had made a suicide pact with another through an online chat room. "It's very honorable," Wellborn said.

Data does not exist to link suicides with bullying, although Wellborn's organization has counted four in the Dallas area this year. The most recent one occurred this weekend, when the Johnson County boy hanged himself in a barn.

There are others. A 15-year-old freshman at Cleburne High School killed himself last year after classmates teased him about his facial scars. They'd come from a car accident when he was toddler. Also last year, an 11-year-old Massachusetts boy hanged himself after enduring daily taunts of being gay. This year, a 15-year-old Irish high school student in Massachusetts, who had been tormented by peers, was found hanging in her stairwell. Nine teenagers were indicted on charges relating to her death this week.

Staying home in fear

News reports have drawn increased attention to the problem. But the National Education Association estimates that more than 160,000 children miss school every day because of fear of attack or intimidation by other students.

Technology and societal pressures may have changed, but mentalities haven't, said Marlene Snyder, the director of development for the Olweus Bully Prevention Program at Clemson University's Institute on Family and Neighborhood Life. Hence the imbalance.

"When I was a kid, I knew what I was doing would be reported back to mom," she said. "It's a different world out there now. Look at the more violent programming kids are watching, see how parents are stretched. And we're still saying, 'Sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never harm you.' That's baloney."

Much of the blame, she said, lies with school officials who maintain a "kids will be kids" attitude. "You need a comprehensive, long-term program, stuff that is done year after year. You need policies that say if you choose to bully here, these are the consequences."

Most states, including Texas, have anti-bullying laws. But they range from comprehensive mandates that require school lessons to vague recommendations for district policy. Spurred by the recent suicides, the Massachusetts legislature is considering a law that would demand that schools report suspected incidents, that principals investigate and that classes be taught on bullying dangers.

Texas requires districts to establish a code of conduct prohibiting bullying and allows students to transfer schools for this reason.

Brenda High says that's not enough. Her 13-year-old son shot himself to death after relentless taunting from his classmates.

"I realized school districts really had no clue what to do," she said about the incident 12 years ago in Washington state. "Really there were no rules at all that would solve that problem." Since then, she's started Bully Police USA, which argues for heightened laws and school policies against bullying.

"Those schools where principals and leaders take responsibility to do something, the problem is solved," she said. "There are easy ways to fix it and take a proactive behavior."

Preventive push

Some North Texas districts are reflecting that newer preventive push.

James Caldwell, who has spent the past 10 years focusing on bullying prevention, was hired this year as Frisco ISD's student assistance coordinator. He meets with administrators and counselors to discuss effective strategies for combating the abuse, including emphasizing the role of the bystander. Signs on classroom walls detail rules relating to bullying. Starting at the kindergarten level, counselors are entering classrooms regularly to explain the difference between reporting trouble and tattling. And starting next year, students will sign contracts that say they understand the consequences of bullying

"You just see that if you're talking about bullying, kids listen," Caldwell said. "If you're talking about drugs, they don't listen. They want to know this information, because they are facing it."
WARNING SIGNS

SIGNS OF BEING BULLIED

Be concerned if a child: • Comes home with torn, damaged or missing pieces of clothing, books or other belongings.

•Has unexplained cuts, bruises and scratches.

•Has few, if any, friends with whom he or she spends time.

•Seems afraid of going to school, walking to and from school, riding the school bus, or taking part in activities with peers such as clubs or sports.

•Loses interest in school work or suddenly begins to do poorly in school.

•Appears sad, moody, teary or depressed; loses appetite.

•Complains frequently of headaches, stomachaches or other physical problems and has trouble sleeping.

WHAT TO DO

•Don't tell the child to ignore the bully.

•Don't blame the child for the bullying.

•Empathize with the child, saying the bully is wrong and it's not the child's fault. Don't criticize.

•Don't encourage physical retaliation.

•Contact a school administrator and share concerns about the bullying.

Can a "real man" be artistic?

2010-02-26T09:05:00.004-06:00

Fascinating article by Ricky Chelette, from Living Hope Ministries.

Real men: rough and tumble males who are interested in full contact sports with wounds that are still visible when they are forty. But where do we get such a narrow view of what it means to be a man? Can artistic men be real men? Ask a boy in grammar or middle school and the answer is a resounding NO! In our modern American culture, young boys are rarely encouraged to pursue the arts and are expected to be what our world calls "real men."

Granted, throughout history there are always more men needed to build the walls, the castles, the homes and the cathedrals than men to decorate them. But what would any of those structures be if not for the artistic men who designed them, captured the beauty and grandeur of God's created splendor, and transferred that splendor onto walls and ceilings and sculptures grand and small? And what would life be like without the melodies, the dancing and acting of those whose movements and melodies can soothe the savage heart or help lift the soul to the very presence of the Father? Real men are tough, but they are also artistic, gifted, and sensitive!

Can you imagine a world without beauty? Can you imagine a world without music, art, or dance? Before the foundations of the world the Lord designed into the hearts of man the gifts that allow men and women to be artisans. Some would hear the sounds in a meadow and form them into a beautiful melody. Some would see the setting of the sun or flowers blooming in a field and capture the beauty and majesty of those colors in a painting. Others would watch the wind-tossed trees and plants bending to and fro to the rhythm of an incoming storm and mimic those movements in effortless dance. In each instance, they would capture something of the beauty and mystery of our created world and express them in creative ways that echoed and amplified the magnificence of our Creator.

Artistic men = real men. Our world often looks at them with a great amount of contempt, especially when they are young. But where would our world be without them?

In His infinite wisdom, God gifted some men with particular gifts to express his beauty, melody, order and movement in the world. In Exodus 35:30-35 we read,

30 Then Moses said to the Israelites, "See, the LORD has chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, 31 and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts- 32 to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, 33 to cut and set stones, to work in wood and to engage in all kinds of artistic craftsmanship. 34 And he has given both him and Oholiab son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan, the ability to teach others. 35 He has filled them with skill to do all kinds of work as craftsmen, designers, embroiderers in blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen, and weavers--all of them master craftsmen and designers.

And we also see David, one who could be considered a "man's man" in one camp -- killing giants (1 Sam. 17) and having many women (2 Sam. 5), -- yet musical (1 Sam. 16:23) and so expressive that he would dance before the Lord (2 Sam. 6:14).

The truth is that men are created in the image of God and an obvious part of that image is the creative aspect our Father imparted to us. I am convinced we are most manly when we are most creative; when we have an opportunity to express ourselves or create something that seemingly wasn't there before.

The problem artistic men face in our culture and in the church is that we have allowed the definition of a real man to be fashioned by some Hollywood caricature of invincible strength, stoic emotions and rampant hedonism. Such a definition is far removed from the creative Heavenly Fathers reflection and Biblical revelation.

In Genesis 2:19 we see the first man created by the Father and placed in the Garden of Eden. His first assignment is to go and name the animals God has created. The Word tells us that [God] brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.

Real men are not defined by their ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound, be the last man standing at the fight club, or experience grave heartache without ever shedding a tear. Real men, according to Gen. 2:19, reflect the beauty and glory of the Father by speaking truth into the chaos of life and giving it form and direction. Adam did just that for the creatures of the earth and that is what artistic men do when they see the beauty of God's creation and gather from it the colors, sounds, movements and images to recreate something that reflects the glory of the Father. It is a shame we have believed a lie from the devil about real men and relegated these gifted men to some lesser category, or some kind of less-than status. No wonder so many of these gifted and talented men, searching for a place to belong and be celebrated, are drawn to some alternative lifestyle. How sad. We are all living but one life -- the one given to us by the Father. There is no alternative. How sad that we would miss the beauty and contributions of our brothers who might not fit some narrow and distorted view of real men. We are the lesser for their exclusion and we are missing the beauty, the expression, the mystery that each of them was created to express within the body of Christ -- that gifting, designed by the Father, to cause all men and women not to praise the creature, but the Creator!

Instead of labeling these young men as different, special, sweet, precious, or gay, and solidifying their "other-than-ness," let us embrace them for the God-gifted and talented men they are. The Body of Christ needs these men to help us express and see the fullness of God. When they are missing among us, we are missing something of the Father.

Real men: They are masculine, truth speakers, emotional, problem solvers, artistic, courageous, expressive, dancers, fighters, lovers, warriors, musicians, hunters, artists, leaders, actors; strong, sensitive, and designed to beautifully and mysteriously reflect the glory of God in our broken and fallen world. Real men are not simply measured by their posing, but by their humble posture before the Father who they seek to reflect to all the world.

So when you see a young man who is expressive, sensitive, emotive, musical, artistic, etc., walk over to him and thank him for helping you see the glory of God in the beauty of creative expression. By affirming his giftedness you will bless a young soul and assure a bit more of God's beauty expressed through a real man!

Thin Places by Mary DeMuth

2010-01-29T09:40:00.001-06:00

I have a friend, Patrick DeMuth, who's wife Mary has written a powerful new memoir. Dynamic Dads recommends this new book.

9 year old boy commits suicide due to bullying

2010-01-22T09:26:00.003-06:00

What a sad story from Dallas. Apparently, a 9 year-old boy has committed suicide and reports are emerging that he took his own life because he was being bullied. All Dynamic Dads need to warn their children about both the effects of bullying and being bullied. Schools should have a zero-tolerance regarding bullying. - Dr. Paul Pettit
******************************
By JANA MARTIN and ABIGAIL THATCHER ALLEN / The Dallas Morning News

Counselors will be on hand today at a Colony elementary school where a 9-year-old student died after apparently hanging himself in a bathroom.

A staff member at the school found Montana Lance of the Colony unconscious about 1 p.m. Thursday in the nurse's bathroom at Stewart’s Creek Elementary. No students saw the boy, school district spokeswoman Karen Permetti said.

Montana was taken to Baylor Medical Center at Carrollton, where he was pronounced dead, police said.

This morning, many parents dropping their children off at the school, in the 4400 block of Augusta Drive near North Colony Boulevard and Main Street, were unaware of the death.

Stephanie Rodriguez said a PTA meeting was canceled last night without explanation. She said the fourth-grader's death was hard to fathom.

"It's very sad," she said. "I just can't imagine why this happened."

Rodriguez, the PTA treasurer, said her 9-year-old son was so troubled by the incident that he had to sleep with her last night.

Permetti said a letter would be sent to parents today informing them of the death.

"This family is in our thoughts and prayers at this time with their grief," she said.

Students, parents and staff members at the school will have the chance to speak to grief counselors today and throughout next week.

Permetti said she was unaware whether Montana was a victim of bullying.

"Our district is extremely proactive in any bullying activity," she said. "We just don't tolerate that."

A life lesson for Sen. Scott Brown

2010-01-20T15:00:00.003-06:00

Scott Brown is the new Senator from Massachusetts. His father and his grandfather were active Republicans. His father has said that young Scott became interested in running for political office in the mid 1960s while accompanying him on a campaign for state office; Scott Brown recalls holding campaign signs for his father.

Brown has said that he "didn't grow up with all the advantages in life" and that his working mother needed welfare benefits for a short time. During various periods of his childhood, Brown also lived with his grandparents and his aunt. Brown has stated that at the age of twelve he was brought before Judge Samuel Zoll in Salem, Massachusetts for shoplifting record albums.

Zoll asked Brown if his siblings would like seeing him play basketball in jail, and required him to write a 1500 word essay on the topic as his punishment. Brown said, "That was the last time I ever stole, the last time I ever thought about stealing... The other day I was at Staples, and something was in my cart that I didn’t pay for. I had to bring it back because.... I thought of Judge Zoll."

'Tweens book now in Spanish

2009-12-15T10:17:00.003-06:00

Our book on Tweens (children 8 - 12) has now been published in Spanish.

Here is the link:

http://www.panoramaed.com.mx/libros/libro_final.php?bkid=1302

Shouldn't we all be using Tummy Tubs?

2009-12-07T15:36:00.005-06:00

Wouldn't life be easier if we all used Tummy Tubs? The tagline for these ads is, "Nearly as nice as mommies tummy!"
Order yours today here:
www.tummytubusa.com

Sad, sad story from Indiana

2009-11-25T21:05:00.000-06:00

Police: Dad leaves boy and goes into strip club

Tue Nov 24, 9:24 PM EST

A man was arrested after police said he left his 5-year-old son in a tractor-trailer while he ducked into an Indianapolis strip club to drink. The 39-year-old was arrested at 1:15 a.m. Tuesday on child neglect and public intoxication charges after calling police to report his truck stolen and his child missing. Police said the man was too drunk to remember where he had parked.

They found the boy inside watching cartoons on a television inside the cab. The keys were in the ignition, and the doors were unlocked.

Police said the suspect put his son in jeopardy by leaving him exposed in a high crime area.

The man was taken to the Marion County jail, where his wife picked up him and the child.

GPS tracking device for your kids

2009-10-27T16:04:00.003-05:00

'Little Buddy' GPS device keeps tabs on your child

See:
http://tiny.cc/56VJe

Best Buy is selling a transmitting device that lets parents keep track of their children. Parents can place the device in a child's backpack or lunch box, for example.
The "Little Buddy Child Tracker" retails for $100 (far less than other devices that sell for $200 to $500). It combines global satellite positioning and cellular technology to signal the child's whereabouts to a computer or smartphone.
Parents can program the device to set up specific times and locations where the child is supposed to be -- in school or at home, for example -- and the device sends a text message if the child leaves the site in that time.
The device immediately drew angry writeups from some techies, who called it a reason for children to run away from home.

Hat tip: Sandra Guy

Inspiration for the Audio Drama Screwtape

2009-10-14T09:29:00.000-05:00

I encourage all fathers to listen to this amazing audio drama on Halloween night with their children or family.

See here for more info:

Inspiration for the Audio Drama

The British author/theologian C.S. Lewis was a brilliant thinker and writer, your family will love it!

A forgiving dad

2009-09-18T10:04:00.004-05:00

Everyone's talking about Phillies fan Steve Monforto who was patient and kind with his little daughter, Emily. Watch the video by clicking on the link below to see how this Dynamic Dad reacts to his young daughter's impulsive act...that's one forgiving father!
http://tinyurl.com/ral7jr

Here's how the AP wrote up the story:

Dad could not believe his good luck. Steve Monforto made a great grab, catching his first foul ball after years of going to Phillies games. He fist-bumped his buddies, high-fived his 3-year-old daughter and then handed her the prize. Big mistake. Little Emily threw the ball over the railing.
Stunned by his toddler's toss this week, all Pop could do was hug her.
"I didn't want her to think she did anything wrong," Monforto said on WIP-AM radio.
Philly crowds are known for being a tough bunch, but everyone at Citizens Bank Park cheered - first his catch, then his cuddle.
"This was the true reflection of what Philly fans are like," Bonnie Clark, the team's vice president of communications, said.
Cameras captured the scene of Monforto reaching over the railing and snagging Jayson Werth's foul in the fifth inning against Washington.
The video was displayed at the top of the Yahoo! Web page and made the NBC national news. The entire family is scheduled to appear on the "Today" show tomorrow.
Monforto and his daughter still went home with a baseball. A few of them, actually.
Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. and three team employees saw what happened and each grabbed a ball and went up to the stands.
"He was very appreciative," Phillies executive Mike Stiles said.

Fathers who are also inmates

2009-08-25T15:24:00.001-05:00

Program helps inmates be fathers inside and out
BY JoANNE YOUNG / Lincoln Journal Star |

The trainers got their own chance in February to talk to each other about their fathers.

The men and women who would guide Nebraska inmates through classes in becoming better fathers twisted pipe cleaners to illustrate their father-son, father-daughter relationships.

They described fathers who hid their emotions in beer cans, who did the best they could but often failed, who worked dawn to dusk and met their children on their own terms.

One described his dad as a looming presence, and very unpredictable.

"He loved me, but often it was hard to tell," the man said. "It was always hard to tell which dad I was going to see."

A woman said her dad was a leaning post, who would listen to her concerns and embrace her issues without judgment.

Another man showed with his pipe cleaners how his relationship with his dad was tightly woven in his early years, but came unraveled when the child turned 13, after his mother died.

One by one, they pulled their words from bottomless places.

"This is stuff that goes deep," said Greg Austen, director of corrections programming with the National Fatherhood Initiative.

Austen was in Lincoln in February to lead training on the InsideOut Dad program for fathers in prison. Having trainers share their own stories was part of that.

"God doesn't waste pain," Austen said.

There is redemption in these stories.

Christian Heritage worked with the Nebraska Department of Corrections to offer the InsideOut Dad programs. Classes have been held now at five prisons in Lincoln, Omaha and Tecumseh. Another is scheduled for the Work Ethic Camp in McCook.

"It's been really exciting to have so many classes going," said Gregg Nicklas, co-CEO at Christian Heritage, "and to be able to attend some of the graduations and hear men talk about reconnecting with their families and the successes they're having, and how InsideOut Dad has helped."

InsideOut Dad, developed by the National Fatherhood Initiative, connects inmates to their families and prepares them for release. With that, they are more likely to embrace freedom and not return to prison, program officials say.

The program is open to any inmate, said Mary Alley, parenting program coordinator, but priority is given to fathers who have the potential to reunite with their families. Most will get out; the average length of time served in Nebraska prisons is two to three years.

InsideOut Dad helps inmates deal with their own father-son past. The 12-class program also covers fatherhood roles, masculinity, physical and mental health, spirituality, emotions, relationships, discipline and child development.

Inmates create a plan on fathering from inside prison and to reestablish ties to their children.

About half of the more than 4,000 males in the prison system are dads, Alley said. The hope is to offer the program this year to about 840 inmates, with connections to around 2,000 children.

Lester Wagner is father to two of those kids.

Wagner, 38, has been in prison 10 years and has another five to serve for manslaughter and use of a weapon to commit a felony.

He took the classes at the Nebraska State Penitentiary.

His two girls were 6 and 2 when he came to prison. Both live out of state now. He talks to the oldest, a teenager, regularly on the phone, but has had only the briefest of contact with the youngest.

The oldest has told her father she wants to visit him at the pen. He tells her to put that money toward her education instead.

Wagner learned from the class how powerful a father is in a child's life - good or bad. It taught him to open up to his daughter, to let her know he wanted her in his life. He talks to her a lot about school, he said.

Robert Brown has two sons and a daughter, is 26, and has been at the penitentiary two years for possessing a stolen gun. He is scheduled to get out in 2012.

One son is in Nebraska; the other two children live out of state.

Brown remembers being in and out of jail since he was 11 or 12. No one seemed to be around much to provide discipline when he was young, he said, and he did pretty much whatever he wanted.

It's hard now, he said, not to be around his own kids, to teach them not to make the mistakes he did, to show them he loves them.

"The hardest thing for me is to express my feelings," he said.

Recent statistics show 24 million children are growing up without their biological fathers. That's up from 8 million in 1960.

The absence of fathers shows up starkly in prisons.

Seven of 10 inmates grew up with abusive fathers, or didn't know their fathers.

A lot of single moms do an admirable job, Austen said, but there's no mistaking the positive influence of a good father.

A child needs to feel cared about, even by a dad who is locked away, he said.

"By and large," Austen said, "we want to send the message to dads about their irreplaceable role."

They often think a mother, a grandparent or a stepparent can replace them. But kids who grow up without their biological dads grow up with significant baggage, he said.

"There's a hole in their heart in the shape of dad."

North Texas Kids Radio Show

2009-06-23T11:30:00.000-05:00

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