David B. Hagen's Blog
March 16, 2021
Our 1st blog post!
Welcome to our parenting blog!
We are excited to share parenting ideas and answer your questions. We sincerely hope that it creates value for you and your family. Simply put, our goal is to help bring out the best in you as a parent so you empower your children to bring out the best in themselves. At the end of the day, that’s all that really matters for them.
Our typical blog format will be as follows:
1) share a parenting principle
2) share a story that illustrates that principle
3) ask you a question to consider.
1-2-3 each week.
Here we go!
PARENTING PRINCIPLE
Your family culture will trump anything else you ever do as a parent.
STORY
Here is a story of how a single mother changed the future trajectory of her family by implementing one intentional change into their family culture.
One of her sons, Ben, said of himself, “I was the worst student in my whole fifth-grade class.” One day he took a math test consisting of thirty problems. The student behind him corrected it and handed it back to Ben. The teacher, Mrs. Williamson, called each student’s name; each was to report his or her own score. Finally, she got to Ben. Out of embarrassment, he mumbled the answer. Mrs. Williamson thinking that he had said, “nine,” replied that for Ben to score nine out of thirty was a wonderful improvement.
The student behind Ben then yelled out, “Not nine! He got none right.” Ben wanted to drop through the floor. At the same time, Ben’s mother, Sonya, faced obstacles of her own. One of twenty-four children in her family, she had only a third-grade education and could not read.
She had married at the young age of thirteen, was now divorced, and had two sons she was raising in the ghettos of Detroit. Nonetheless, she was fiercely self-reliant and had a firm belief that God would help her and her sons if they did their part.
One day a turning point came in Sonya’s life and that of her sons. It dawned on her that the successful people for whom she cleaned houses had libraries-they read. After work that day, she went home and turned off the television Ben and his brother were watching and said, “You boys are watching too much television.
From now on you can watch three programs a week. In your free time you will go to the library. You will read two books a week and give me a report.” Shocked, the boys protested, complained, and argued, but to no avail. Ben had never read a book in his entire life except when required to do so at school. He reflects, “She laid down the law. I didn’t like it, but her determination to see us improve changed the course of my life.”
And what a change it made. By seventh grade, Ben was at the top of his class. He went on to attend Yale University on a scholarship, and Johns Hopkins Medical School, where at age thirty-three he became Chief of Pediatric Surgery and a world-renowned surgeon.
In fact, Ben Carson was the first surgeon to separate twins joined at birth at the head. In 2008, he was given the Presidential Medal of Honor. In 2016, he ran for President of the United States, and was later named the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. How was all this possible given his difficult circumstances? “Between the covers of those books,” he said, “I could go anywhere, I could be anybody, I could do anything.”
This mother intentionally made reading, learning, and education an integral component of their family culture-a simple change that led to dramatic results in the lives of her two sons. We invite you to consider taking the same approach as this mother. You can create an intentional family culture in your home that can change your children’s lives.
First, decide what family principles are most important to you and your family. And then second, begin to SLOWLY intentionally implement them into your family culture. Be patient and keep it simple. Simple is sustainable.
QUESTION FOR YOU
What family principles are currently being learned by your kids in your family culture?
Do you have a question that you would like us to address? Feel free to reach out to us, we would love to hear from you. See you next week!
We are excited to share parenting ideas and answer your questions. We sincerely hope that it creates value for you and your family. Simply put, our goal is to help bring out the best in you as a parent so you empower your children to bring out the best in themselves. At the end of the day, that’s all that really matters for them.
Our typical blog format will be as follows:
1) share a parenting principle
2) share a story that illustrates that principle
3) ask you a question to consider.
1-2-3 each week.
Here we go!
PARENTING PRINCIPLE
Your family culture will trump anything else you ever do as a parent.
STORY
Here is a story of how a single mother changed the future trajectory of her family by implementing one intentional change into their family culture.
One of her sons, Ben, said of himself, “I was the worst student in my whole fifth-grade class.” One day he took a math test consisting of thirty problems. The student behind him corrected it and handed it back to Ben. The teacher, Mrs. Williamson, called each student’s name; each was to report his or her own score. Finally, she got to Ben. Out of embarrassment, he mumbled the answer. Mrs. Williamson thinking that he had said, “nine,” replied that for Ben to score nine out of thirty was a wonderful improvement.
The student behind Ben then yelled out, “Not nine! He got none right.” Ben wanted to drop through the floor. At the same time, Ben’s mother, Sonya, faced obstacles of her own. One of twenty-four children in her family, she had only a third-grade education and could not read.
She had married at the young age of thirteen, was now divorced, and had two sons she was raising in the ghettos of Detroit. Nonetheless, she was fiercely self-reliant and had a firm belief that God would help her and her sons if they did their part.
One day a turning point came in Sonya’s life and that of her sons. It dawned on her that the successful people for whom she cleaned houses had libraries-they read. After work that day, she went home and turned off the television Ben and his brother were watching and said, “You boys are watching too much television.
From now on you can watch three programs a week. In your free time you will go to the library. You will read two books a week and give me a report.” Shocked, the boys protested, complained, and argued, but to no avail. Ben had never read a book in his entire life except when required to do so at school. He reflects, “She laid down the law. I didn’t like it, but her determination to see us improve changed the course of my life.”
And what a change it made. By seventh grade, Ben was at the top of his class. He went on to attend Yale University on a scholarship, and Johns Hopkins Medical School, where at age thirty-three he became Chief of Pediatric Surgery and a world-renowned surgeon.
In fact, Ben Carson was the first surgeon to separate twins joined at birth at the head. In 2008, he was given the Presidential Medal of Honor. In 2016, he ran for President of the United States, and was later named the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. How was all this possible given his difficult circumstances? “Between the covers of those books,” he said, “I could go anywhere, I could be anybody, I could do anything.”
This mother intentionally made reading, learning, and education an integral component of their family culture-a simple change that led to dramatic results in the lives of her two sons. We invite you to consider taking the same approach as this mother. You can create an intentional family culture in your home that can change your children’s lives.
First, decide what family principles are most important to you and your family. And then second, begin to SLOWLY intentionally implement them into your family culture. Be patient and keep it simple. Simple is sustainable.
QUESTION FOR YOU
What family principles are currently being learned by your kids in your family culture?
Do you have a question that you would like us to address? Feel free to reach out to us, we would love to hear from you. See you next week!
