I catch myself saying this a lot to my girls… especially #4—affectionately referred to in our house as “Shiva”… as they battle for attention and jockey for position. But through some random experiences and varying reading, I’m questioning the wisdom of that phrase more & more. (more…)

I had the privilege of having lunch with Dr. Kevin Leman last week (Best selling author of books like The Birth Order Book, Have a new Kid by Friday, Making kids mind, without loosing yours) as we filmed a promo for Central Christian Church’s February marriage conference… (more…)

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“Daddy – All the basketball players are from Kenya,” remarks my oldest during this year’s NCAA basketball tournament.

Obviously. For all who are ‘in the know,’ Kenya is a perennial powerhouse for the production of world-class basketball players. Forget marathon running, think of all the amazing basketball players that have come from Kenya. There’s that one guy…and…then…and oh yeah….that other guy…as she says this I literally can’t think of a single player that I’ve ever heard of coming from Kenya. I’m sure there is one or even maybe a few, but taking a second glance back at the screen I reckon that the players seem to be from Los Angeles, not Nairobi.

I glance over at my wife and politely ask, “Why does she think the basketball players are from Kenya?” and as the words come off my tongue – it dawns on me. The guys playing all look like the people we saw every day when we lived in Kenya for a few months one year ago. Then Trevor chimes in and says that he is from Kenya, too. This is not true either (he was born in Ethiopia) but he seemed proud so we just went with it.

I’ve been reflecting on this little dialogue for a few weeks now and want to share some semblance of a conclusion. First, our kids think that people with dark skin are all from Kenya because they spent every day with dark skinned people in Kenya. Because we now live in a predominately light skinned community in the United States I fear that they may have thought these dark skinned people were from mars if we hadn’t been in Kenya. The simple truth here is this: circumstances that we expose our kids to greatly impacts their worldview. Just like us, our kids need a broad worldview to better understand our role and place in the world. A narrow worldview has the tendency to shrink your reality and a shrunken reality is dangerous because we tend to think that everyone should be like us. (more…)