Regardless of whether your child entered kindergarten or college this year, they need you to show up. If you are the father of an adult child, they need you to be interested and understand what their lives are about. Age will never change the power of the message your interest sends and the value it adds to your child.

Many times dads have left the school arena up to mom. Open Houses and school conferences are typically attended by mothers.

Five Love Languages of Children by Gary Chapman and Ross Campbell, M.D.

Do your children feel loved? Can you be sure? Chapman & Campbell’s book, “The Five Love Languages of Children” wants to help you uncover the truth.

A follow up to their best-seller, “The Five Love Languages”, the kids’ version includes all the same insightful research to help you understand each of the love languages while going a step further to include practical tools and assessments to discover your child’s individual love language. Even more, they look at how love language impacts every stage of child-development, from infants through teenagers.

Many of you are in the midst of taking your teens to college or watching them move on to a new stage of life.  You have anticipated this day for many years, sometimes dreading it and other times impatiently waiting for it to arrive. Launching your child brings a mixture of emotions and takes you to places you have never been.

I’d like to share a few thoughts with you because this is an important moment for you and your child. You want to do this well because it will set the tone for the next several years:

Why do moms feel like they have to do everything on their own? It’s true, moms are care-givers, teachers, nurses, play-mates, cooks, chauffeurs and so much more, but God-knows we can’t do it all on our own! Yet so many moms take on their duties as a badge of honor, putting their pride above their emotional health.

If you’ve been following Intentional Moms for any length of time, you know we warn against the epidemic of “Present Absence” – the trend where parents may be physically present with their children, but they’ve emotionally checked out. You can witness this unhealthy tendency everyday across America at Little League games, school performances, playgrounds and yes, even church. Moms are spending more time looking at their phone and computer monitor than they are gazing at their own children.