How to Build a Strong Family Culture

My friend leads a successful company, and he’s a big fan of Peter Drucker, the management guru who once said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” In the corporate world, strategy means goals, outcomes, plans. Culture is how things actually get done: how people relate, what feels important, what gets rewarded (and what gets tolerated). My friend insists…

Being Married to Julie, I am the Luckiest Man Alive.

It was twenty years ago today. With my back to the cold, roaring Atlantic, she walked the beach pathway towards me. “Fields of Barley” played amidst the squawking seagulls. (The word “barley” had special meaning for us—we were about to honeymoon in Bali.) I wept as she approached, vividly aware that of all the men…

Tag: marriage, mothers

Being a Parent is Really, Really Hard

My favourite person in the world, Julie Williams and I parent five kids between 9 and 15. We both work full-time, so it’s full on. Often enough, a woman grabs a coffee with her to get advice. They may be struggling with their one or two children, and assume that she, with so many in…

4 Ways to Teach Your Kids or Teens a Passion for Learning

Mostly, my kids are exceptional learners. People ask Julie and I what we as parents have done to help them achieve like they have. Honestly, we haven’t done much. Except this—we have passed onto them a hunger for learning and a confidence that they can. Here’s four tips to help you do the same for…

Tag: a–passion–for–learning, brain-development, kids-and-books, motivation-in-kids

Help Your Child Find Their Motivation

Yesterday evening I was on a boat with a friend who told me that when he was 12 his father asked him why, though he was as smart as his brother, he didn’t apply himself as much at school. He answered his dad: “I could do as well as my older brother, but I would…

Tag: motivation-in-kids

How To Help Your Teen Boy Become A Young Man

How To Help Your Teen Boy Become A Young Man One recent afternoon, I took my teen boy up a mountain for a rite of passage, then descended the next morning with a young man. If you’re curious what I did and said, or have a preteen son and you want to do something similar,…

Tag: rite-of-passage, teen-son

Happy Father’s Day—Here’s Sage Advice For Parents On Groundhog Day

Happy Father’s Day—here’s sage advice for parents on Groundhog Day. The parenting task on any given day can be so repetitive and mundane—like the tedious day in the movie Groundhog Day—that we lose our wonder and alertness in it all. (Relief! You may have thought I was going to compare a father to a groundhog.)…

Tag: family-habits, mundanity-of-parenting

Men We Need To Talk

An open letter to our brothers, fathers, and sons. (As I gear up to be a panelist on the “Expresso Morning Show” on Monday 20 June on the subject of mental health in fathers, I thought I’d repost this article, which I recently wrote for www.manbox.co.za.) Whilst our world is facing immense challenges on every…

Tag: acknowledge-feelings

Happy Mother’s Day, Julie—Enjoy The Next Weeks In A French Mt. Chalet On Your Own

Happy Mother’s Day, Julie—Enjoy the next weeks in a French Mt. chalet on your own. Talk about the 11th hour! Julie managed to get her Visa at 1:50pm yesterday. An hour later she was at Cape Town International—in fulfillment of a dream born a decade before, when she’d said to me, “When I turn 40,…

Tag: mothers

Unmasking Big Emotions in Little (and Grown-up) People

This article is by my co-blogger Julie, with whom I have at least five things (humans, actually) in common. While the global pandemic isn’t officially over yet, most of us (and our kids) have had to launch out of lockdown and hit the ground running again – this time, with masks on. While these masks…

Tag: acknowledge-feelings, listening