Went to see the showing of Christian Smith's film, Soul Searching, at Notre Dame last night. It made me wonder if at times if we make this more difficult than it needs to be. It seems to me that if we support families as they try and raise their kids, and we do that in community, the research shows that we are usually pretty successful in acheiving our desired outcomes. Not to make this sound too critical, but it seems, at least from his research, to be true. The more parents are engaged in the lives of their students, the more stable the student is.

Nothing new, but the responsibility falls on the adults. The onus is not on the students to teach, it's on the adults/parents. One of the points Chris made last night, is that too often, while trying not to push them away, we leave our students with nothing to push back on. We don't pass anything on to them in thinking they need to discover things on their own. In the end, we're all worse off.


The giraffes in these pictures were taken on our safari to Kruger National Park over Christmas break. If you look close, you can see the one above is torn up pretty badly, we were guessing by some cats the night before. What you can't see in that picture is the reason. The little one in the picture below was following closely behind mama, maybe 10 paces. It became obvious to us that this mother was in a battle for the very life of her little one. At times they understand some basic things better than me.

So, today, I'm going to try and be a better adult for those I influence. That is what I'm hearing they need.