All I can say is, wow...

Seen in the Washington Post:

"She was always my hero when I was growing up. . . . I feel like I have to be the mother now." -- Brooke Hogan, daughter of former pro wrestler Hulk Hogan and sister to the incarcerated Nick Hogan, speaking to "Access Hollywood" on her strained relationship with her mother, Linda, 48, who is dating a 19-year-old former classmate of Brooke's.

Learning to juggle

From Dr. Joyce Brothers' column:

DEAR DR. BROTHERS: I'm 16 years old, and I play three sports and am an editor on the school paper in addition to volunteering at the local hospital and our homeless shelter. I've been dreaming of going to a top Ivy League school my whole life, and I'm doing everything I can to get in. I'm terrified that I won't get in, and I'm totally stressed out. On top of all this, my parents are getting a divorce. It's really hard to be at home, and I don't know what to do. How can I keep my schoolwork up, keep doing all my extracurricular stuff and keep my home life together? -- D.H.

80 years, still hurting

From a column in the Toledo Blade:

Father's Day was never a favorite holiday for me as a child. When I saw it coming on the calendar I was uneasy. Would it be my Sunday to be with my dad? If it weren't, I would have to wish him a Happy Father's Day on the Sunday before or after.

As a child of divorce, who as a senior citizen still feels the pain, I share these personal experiences for divorced single parents. It is not a request for sympathy, but a message that I hope will sink in to single mothers and fathers.

We all hear the staggering numbers of today's divorce rates. Back in the early '30s, on the brink of the Great Depression, it was quite uncommon. I was 3 years old. All I remember is that one day my dad didn't come home from the post office, and from that day on I saw him every other Sunday, according to a court order, and two weeks in summer.

The other dads

From an op-ed piece in the Baltimore Sun:

...the United States has a proud past of notable stepfathers. George Washington, the "father of our country," was a stepfather to Martha's children. Dr. Seuss was a stepfather, as was the famous baby doctor Benjamin Spock. So too were authors C.S. Lewis and E.B. White, actors Ashton Kutcher and Brad Pitt, Sen. John
Kerry and singer Johnny Cash.

Former Presidents Bill Clinton and Gerald Ford had stepfathers who adopted them. Meriwether Lewis, the great explorer, had a stepfather, as did Booker T. Washington, Charlton Heston, jazz artist George Benson, country singer Shania Twain, authors Anne Perry and Truman Capote, and presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Dads in church

Brad Wilcox had a nice piece in the Wall Street Journal last week about the influence of church communities on fatherhood.

...religious fathers are more likely to devote time, attention and affection to their children than their secular peers. For example, compared with dads who indicate no religious affiliation, fathers who attend religious services regularly devote at least two more hours per week to youth-related activities, such as coaching soccer or leading a Boy Scout troop. Churchgoing fathers are also significantly more likely to keep tabs on their children, monitoring their activities and friends. Finally, religious fathers are about 65% more likely than unaffiliated fathers to report praising and hugging their school-age children "very often."

Travel tip

You know you've stopped for lunch in a high crime neighborhood when they have to padlock the toilet paper.





Seen at an Arby's near Fredericksburg, Virginia.

Crash helmet for divorce

From a review of A Nation of Wimps in the Wall Street Journal:

...even as parents obsessively strap bike helmets on their kids' heads and squirt antiseptic gels on their hands, the adults themselves cavalierly break up families with divorce and tolerate the rampant sexualization of prepubescent girls. In short, we're focusing on the wrong risks.

Splitting pennies

Financial planner Linda Leitz has a new book out to help divorced parents talk with their kids about money. Called "We Need to Talk: Money & Kids After Divorce," Leitz's book is designed to help parents understand how the financial strains of divorce affect children and how they can help children feel able to do their part to make things easier financially without feeling the adult-sized burden of financial worries.

Amy-able wedding advice

Dear Amy: My daughter is getting married this summer. She is 22. Her biological father left us in 1994 for his secretary and has since married her. He pays child support and calls once in a while, but he was distant through her "terrible teens." I remarried in 1996. Our combined kids were 5, 6, 7, 8 and 10 at the time we married. My husband and kids have been close, and now that there is a wedding, the secretary/second wife has contacted our daughter and asked about the ceremony. She wants to make sure my daughter's biological dad walks her down the aisle. She says only the biological dad should do so. The kids and I believe the stepdad should be involved because he has chosen to be a part of the kids' lives for more than 12 years, dealing with cuts, scrapes, car crashes, boys, school, etc.I would not dream of excluding the stepdad or the new step-secretary-wife of the biological dad. This must be a common problem. What do you suggest? How can both dads be involved?—Wondering Mom

Click here to read Amy's sound advice.

BreakPoint weighs in on divorce

Today's BreakPoint radio commentary features the post I did on "Redeeming Divorce."

...as Kristine Steakley, author of the forthcoming book Child of Divorce, Child of God and a blogger at The Point, wrote recently, “God offers us a better comfort. He doesn’t give us acceptance; He gives us redemption. . . . His comfort does not say, ‘Well, that’s just the way things are; better get used to it.’ Rather, His comfort says that our world is essentially broken and that our only hope is the redemption that He himself offers.”

And that is the message the Church must send to the Divorce Generation. The brokenness caused by divorce is palpable. The pain is real. There is a reason God says, “I hate divorce.” But He is also the God who makes all things new, Who binds up the broken-hearted.

Not the reality you wanted

Glenn Sacks, on why a reality TV show aimed at humiliating deadbeat dads is a bad idea:

"The worst part about Bad Dads is the way it publicly humiliates children of divorce by depicting their fathers as not loving or caring for them. These children did not volunteer to be humiliated on national television."

Beyond the headline

This headline keeps popping up in my inbox:

Study: Impact of divorce on kids less damaging

For years, social scientists have believed that children of divorce have had more behavior problems than kids growing up in two-parent homes.

But the impact may not be as damaging as previously believed, according to new research to be released Friday.

Instead of comparing these youngsters to those with intact families - the usual methodology - a more accurate assessment would be to evaluate them before and after the marital dissolution, argues Alan Li of the RAND Corp.

or not:

Robert E. Emery, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, takes issue with the conclusion. While Li may not have found increased negative behavior, less quantifiable is the hurt that can reverberate across a lifespan, he explained.

"For example, graduation and weddings can be turned into anxiety-ridden events for children whose parents are divorced . . ." Emery wrote in a response to Li's findings.

Redeeming divorce

Check out my post on "Redeeming Divorce" on The Point blog.

The dog ate my homework

So, there I was on a sunny Saturday, sitting indoors and proofreading the typeset copy of my book manuscript, when a knock came at the door. It was my neighbor Kim, dropping off the hedge trimmer that I was borrowing. She borrows my weed whacker and I borrow her hedge trimmer. "Why delay?" thought I. "I'll just trim the overgrown shrubbery right now and get it over with." So out I went and trimmed and shaped until the shrubbery looked more like delicate garden landscape than wild untamed wilderness. I returned the hedge trimmer to Kim's front steps and walked back to the house with a sense of healthy satisfaction.

Then I opened the front door.

Only then did I remember that I had left my typeset manuscript sitting on the sofa in the same room as a certain furniture jumping dog. Said dog was happily shredding and eating page 27.

Luckily, that was the only page the aspiring book-destroyer had gotten to. I sent a sheepish email to my editor asking if he could scan page 27 and email it to me. And for the rest of the day, I remembered to put my manuscript on top of the TV armoire whenever I needed to get up from the sofa.

Penn divorce called off

It seems the Princess Bride will get to keep her prince after all.

Charlton Heston, child of divorce

From an article on the late actor's life in the Washington Post:

John Carter [the name Heston was born with] was born in Evanston, Ill., on Oct. 4, 1923. He spent his early childhood in St. Helen, Mich., where his father was a deputy sheriff.

In a memoir, he wrote that his parents' divorce when he was 9 was a wrenching surprise. He soon took his stepfather's surname, Heston, to hide what he considered the shame of the divorce. His professional name was a combination of that and his mother's maiden name, Lila Charlton.

Pre-orders available

My book, Child of Divorce, Child of God: A Journey of Hope and Healing, is now available for pre-ordering on Amazon.

The release date is September 1, but if delayed gratification doesn't bother you, go ahead and order now and you'll have your copy when it's hot off the presses.

One teen's question

From the Detroit News:

(I haven't visited the site mentioned below yet, so I can't vouch for it.)

Bill Sears endured a childhood trauma that has been, and will be, faced by millions. He survived the death of his parents' marriage. He had to pick sides, counsel his parents, and learn how to interpret his feelings. Pretty heavy stuff for a little kid.

Now, nine years later, Bill is as close to an expert on these kinds of things as a 16-year-old can be. And he's willing to help anyone -- parent or kid -- he can.

A voracious reader and researcher, Bill studied divorce law to learn what rights children have. Just as important, he listened -- to friends at first, then to friends of friends, and now to just about anyone. He started billsarena.com, the self-described "Internet's Best Divorce Site for Kids by a Kid." It's a blog, a forum, and a news portal for information on parenting.

"I saw what I had gone through, and I didn't think it was right. No kid should go through this," Bill said. "It took a brutal emotional toll on me. I was 7 or 8 and they split. It was a metaphorical tug of war and I just want to say: Are you aware, parents?"

Mission Possible

Simon Baker (not the actor) on his book, How To Be A Great Divorced Dad:

"In the press all you hear about divorced dads is the sad man in the fast-food restaurant with his kids or the bloke trying to avoid maintenance payments but I think there is a huge number of men out there who have fantastic relationships with their children after divorce," he says. "I thought it was very important that men understood that that was possible." But the key here for Baker is the word "possible" - not "easy".

..."It shouldn't be a case of 'I'm free from my wife now so I'm going to go out and buy a guitar and the biggest stereo ever because now I can kick back'," he says. "What you should really be doing is buying a washing machine so your kids have got clean clothes for school."

Hillary's mom, child of divorce

From the Los Angeles Times:

She was only 8 years old.

Her mother had lost custody of her in a divorce. And her father was putting her and her 3-year-old sister on a train from Chicago to Los Angeles -- by themselves, without adult supervision. It took three days to reach their grandparents' home in the San Gabriel Valley. Once there, they would not be made to feel welcome.

The older girl, Dorothy Howell, now 88, is best known as Dorothy Rodham -- the mother of Hillary Rodham Clinton, the New York senator and Democratic presidential candidate.

(Photo from The Washington Post)