Is there a better way to raise kids who think for themselves, work hard, and know what matters?
I have five kids — each one different, each one teaching me something new about patience, intentionality, and the long game of raising humans. Parenting is the ultimate ITABWODI lab — because the stakes are the highest and the feedback loop is the longest.
My grandfather didn't sit me down and teach me ITABWODI. He lived it — and I watched. That's the thing about parenting: your kids aren't listening to your lectures. They're watching your life. When one of my kids started leading a Bible study on his own, nobody assigned that. He watched it modeled and decided it mattered. That's the real curriculum.
When one of my kids started leading a Bible study on his own, nobody assigned that. He watched it modeled and decided it mattered. That's the real curriculum.
The most powerful parenting tool is your own example. How you work, how you treat your spouse, how you handle failure, how you show up when it's hard — they see all of it.
Five kids, five completely different humans. But the principle is constant: be present, be intentional, set expectations, follow through with love, and give them room to become who they're meant to be.
Don't protect your kids from hard work. Give them responsibility early. Let them fail in small ways so they can succeed in big ones. Work ethic isn't inherited — it's modeled and practiced.
Parenting is the ultimate delayed-gratification exercise. The seeds you plant at 5 don't bloom at 6. They bloom at 25. Keep planting. Keep watering. Trust the process.
Your kids need to see that you don't have it all figured out. They need to see you apologize, learn, and get back up. Perfection creates pressure. Recovery creates resilience.
Ground them in values, faith, work ethic, and love. Then give them the freedom to fly — even if they fly in a direction you wouldn't choose. Your job is to prepare the child for the path, not the path for the child.
How ITABWODI Applies to Parenting
Each kid is different. Tate is finding his way. Finlay is making college decisions. Parlyn hates attention but God could use her. The question stays the same: is there a better way?
What 'Don't Make Me Count to Three' Taught Us About Parenting — and Why It's the Same Fight at Work
Jen and I were in our first year as parents — Tate was our first — when we found Ginger Plowman's Don't Make Me Count to Three. We both dove in. Read it, marked it up, talked about it constantly. The more we talked, the more we realized the book wasn't really about parenting. It was about authority, consistency, and whether the home you build will say the same thing tomorrow that it said yesterday.
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