Protecting your family in cyberspace

In our house we just about have one computer per person. Our homeschooling approach requires this. In order to protect my family while they are surfing in cyberspace, I researched a number of programs. The best one, IMHO, is Safe Eyes. It is installed on our machines and it has been doing a spectacular job. It has received all kinds of accolades and recommendations from many sources. Pay a flat fee per year and install it on three machines. If you think that your teen aged son will not look at porn on the net, wake up and install this software so he can't.

A Disclaimer...

I probably don't need to say this, but... when I recommend a book or an article or a website from my blog, I am not necessarily endorsing everything in said book, article or website. Case in point: I really like much of what I have been reading on the Art of Manliness blog, but he's got a post up right now about 'real men go green'... I believe that the earth was given to men to subdue and rule over, not to live in submission to. While I do not advocate the rape and destruction of our planet and its resources, I also believe that people are far more important than conservation and when there is a conflict between the two, people always win. That means we don't starve Haitians, Mexicans and Egyptians just so we can feel better about the fuel we put in our SUVs. A great website to start with, if you are interested in balancing all the chicken little hysteria over climate change is globalwarming.org. Start with their piece on global warming 101. If you read through all of that info and need more, drop me a note and I will point you forward.

Summer reading...

For books on parenting I generally recommend two: Standing on the Promises, by Doug Wilson and Shepherding a Child's Heart, by Tedd Tripp. You can purchase both of them together at Amazon for about 20 bucks. Both offer solid, biblical advice on how to raise children who fear the Lord. These are not pyscho-babble books only concerned with behavior modification. One small caveat lector, both authors take seriously the biblical admontion to spank disobedient children. If you don't like what the Bible has to say about spanking, do yourself a favor and read these books so you can be corrected. Your kids will thank you for it; later rather than sooner, probably, but they will thank you for it.

OK, Here is the First

Check out this great blog post on how not to coddle your kids from one of my favorite blogs, the art of manliness.

A Place for Thoughts

In recent days I have been thinking about finding a place to share ideas and resources with other dads and men in our church specifically and Christendom in general. So, here goes!