Around the Web:
Touchscreens, Apps, and Your Kids Heart

Christina Fox at Today's Christian Woman writes about the challenge of constant touch screen exposure and how to shepherd your children.

• "Mom, I'm bored. Can I play on your phone?" My son said this to me as we stood in line, waiting for the doors to open to a sporting event.
  I looked at him incredulously, "No. We will only be here a few minutes. You do not need to play a game every time you have a few minutes to spare."
  Perhaps it's the story of our times. Our world is increasingly dependent upon and consumed by technology. From the moment we awaken, our time is spent checking emails, sending texts, updating social media, purchasing goods, working, attending school—all on a computer or some technological device. Not only are our lives consumed by technology, but our children's are as well.

A very welcome post. Guiding our kids is a big challenge. Read More.

How to Say No Without Ruining Relationships

Crystal Paine, A.K.A. Money Saving Mom, has some advice for those times you have to say no.

• Life is full of opportunities and choices. And as I talk about in my book, Say Goodbye to Survival Mode, if you want to have margin and breathing room in your life and not feel constantly exhausted and overwhelmed, you’ve got to learn to say no.

  This doesn’t mean that you say no to everything and everyone all the time, but that you carefully evaluate each opportunity in light of your long-term priorities and goals and your current responsibilities — and say “no” when something is not a good fit.

You won't survive saying yes to everything. Read more.

The Saddest — And Classiest — Sports Fan

Jason Morehead at Christ and Pop Culture has a look at a certain World Cup fan. 

• am by no means an impassioned sports fan, and yet even a neophyte such as myself could hardly miss the hubbub surrounding the recent World Cup. Certainly, the rarity of an event that only occurs once every few years had something to do with that, much like the Olympics. And having co-workers and friends on social media–especially some who definitely prefer American football to Association football–constantly singing the praises of Team USA piqued my curiosity. So I guess you could say that I became an “incidental” follower of the beautiful game. I certainly had nothing at stake one way or the other, though I wanted “my” team to do as well as possible.

  I say that lightly, and with no snark or silliness whatsoever, lest I anger any of the game’s more passionate fans. And soccer is well-known for its passionate fans, including their intense, passionate loyalty and behavior (some of it good, some of it not so good). Soccer is in the blood for many, and as is the case with any sports, it’s a bitter pill to swallow when the home team loses.
  Bible.

A sweet story. Read more.
 

Toddler Chore List

Trying to find some things for the little guys to do around the house? This is helpful! Read more.

Around the Warren:

The Virtue of Unread Books

Guest poster Scott James started our week with a reflection on unread books. Super great!

• My oldest son stood spellbound in front of shelves that must have seemed endlessly high and wide from his small vantage. The Study was a familiar room to him, one he often requisitioned for all manner of creative projects and mischief. The surrounding mass of books had been nothing more than background scenery. I’m not sure what triggered it, but today he took them all in spine by spine.

  I watched inconspicuously from my desk as he fingered past the precious and brittle volumes inherited from my grandfather, the preacher. He stared happily at the colorful set of Calvin & Hobbes compendiums, then glassed over a bit when he got to the dense rows of muted color that marked the theology section. Pausing for a moment, he took note of interesting molecular shapes and anatomical poses on the spines of the medical textbooks. He lingered longest in the fiction section, excitedly recognizing a few titles that we’ve read aloud as a family. Just when I began to self-indulge in the sentiment of the moment, he posed the question that had been brewing in his head.

  “Dad, have you actually read all these?” There was no effort whatsoever to hide his incredulity.

Read more!

It Is Easier to Build Strong Children…

Quote from Frederick Douglas, imagery by Paul Boekell. Great stuff:

See it closer.

Guilt Piling Up On the Nightstand

Staying on theme, Liz Cottrill writes about being conflicted by unread books and some strategies she uses to manage that.

• If you enjoy reading, or would like to, you might find yourself pulling books off your shelf, checking them out from the library, or borrowing them from friends and setting them on the bedside table with the best intentions of reading them. If your life is even a little like mine, your days are packed and by the time you get to that relaxing few moments before sleep, more often than not you drift off before you’ve read a page, or simply crash and think, “tomorrow night.”

  Week after week they sit there, silently reproaching you, and sometimes multiplying till you have a tower of great books you want or need to read. You dust them and apologize wordlessly for your neglect, making resolutions to do better. In my case, I have actually had books linger untouched so long that the guilt begins to weigh me down.

This post was really helpful. Read more.

Awaiting the Beautiful

Hannah Hubin writes and Gigi Cowherd illustrates this beautiful story.

• Once upon a time, in a land not too far away (that is, depending upon where you are standing at the moment), an old, faded house sat at the very edge of an old and rather faded town. Can you see it? I will help you. It was the sort of house that was sided in a dusty yellow and adorned with blue shutters and small window boxes – you know, the sort of house that makes you love the people who live there before you have even met them. The front porch of the house faced the village and the back porch faced a set of rusty, abandoned railroad tracks. Can you see it better now? The tracks hadn’t been used in decades and half the townsfolk didn’t even know they existed.  The other half simply didn’t care…that is, with one exception: the young girl who lived in the little yellow house.

Beautiful. Read more.
 

Something to Do with Your Kids:

Over at Family Education, they've got various marble games — break out a bag of marbles, and get playing! Check it out!
 

And Something Interesting to Watch

Tying into the activity above, here's how marbles are made:

Thank you for reading. We're on your side.