At this time of year, it is easy to focus on the material gifts our children want.  We can get caught up on buying the newest toy or latest video game, but I think what our children want from us is good parenting.  I learned one of the most fundamental lessons about parenting from my first boss.  My first job was as an assistant coach working for Denese Skinner. When I went to work for Denese, she was the head coach of a girl’s basketball program in one of the toughest areas in the state of Texas.  She was hired to develop the girls basketball program because the school was transitioning from being aK-8 school to being a K-12 school.  The first year I worked for Denese, our oldest players were sophomores and many of them didn’t have much experience playing basketball.

From the beginning of pre-season, Denese was precise and demanding in practice.  Every practice was outlined and ran on a timed schedule.  She repeatedly stressed fundamentals.  She was pushing the girls from early morning to late in the evening to try to get them ready for the season.  When the season started, it was gruesome (and that is putting it mildly).  The varsity team was getting beat by large point margins, but while we sat on the bench during the games, Denese’s intensity never let down.  If we were behind 40 points with two minutes to go and one of the girls didn’t execute a fundamental skill, Denese was on her.

Finally after several games where we were getting whipped, I was frustrated and asked Denese why she didn’t back off the girls some during the games.  She turned and shook a finger in my face and said, “Kids want discipline.  They want to know that we expect the same thing every time.  I won’t allow them to learn to do things wrong.  I’m coaching for next year and the year after, not this year.”  Kids want discipline??

When one of our best players on the team cut practice on a Saturday to go shopping with her mom, Denese refused to play her in the next game and required make up conditioning from her.  The young lady was furious.  She refused to do the make up conditioning and didn’t suit up for the game she couldn’t play in.  Denese had established team rules and if the best or the worst player violated the rules, the consequences were the same.  Ultimately, the young lady checked out of school and she enrolled at another high school. We finished the season without her. However, the next year, she came back and asked Denese to rejoin the team, which she did with a clear understanding of the rules and expectations.

Several years later, I saw that young lady at a wedding. She thanked me for expecting a lot from her and making her follow the rules.  She told me that her experience on the basketball team was the first time in her life that she had experienced consequences.   She thanked me for teaching her how to parent her young son.  She said she was using what we had taught her in basketball to raise her son because she wanted to be a good parent.

A basketball coach teaching parenting??  Denese and I never set out to do that, but I do believe that Denese was right.  Kids want discipline.  They want to know that someone will provide rules and consequences because they care.  They want to know that there are boundaries that control our actions.   While we each could make a long list of things our children want from us for Christmas, let’s not forget the most important things they want from us.  They want us to provide Godly guidance through consistent rules and expectations.

All I want for Christmas . . . is parents who care enough to say no.

All of the NBC Dateline coverage of sexual predators using the internet and chat rooms to contact children and adolescents has made parents much more aware of the dangers of the internet. What parents may not realize is that many gaming consoles allow children to access the internet. Even if parents are aware that children can access the internet through gaming consoles, savvy children can bypass parental controls.

Police officers are now going undercover to to catch predators playing interactive games and they are making arrests. For example, a man in Utah was arrested after he enticed a 12-year-old boy into having sex through an online game. A similar situation occurred in Michigan and involved a 12-year-old girl.

Xbox, Playstation, and Wii all allow children to access the internet directly, but all of the have ways for parents to turn off the access to the internet or to track the content. We can’t cut off all the contact our children have with others, but we need to monitor internet contact as vigilantly as we monitor personal contact.

As a parent, it is important to recognize that any way children can communicate with others becomes a way that sexual predators can target your children. Technology invites sexual predators into the lives of our children. We have to be sure that we are keeping the door closed to cyberspace solicitations aimed at our children.

A recent movie starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman tells the story of two men who have been diagnosed with cancer and been given a year or less to live. They create a list of things they want to do before they “kick the bucket.”

For the premise of the movie to work, the cancer patients have to have a doctor who is willing to be honest and tell his patients that they have a terminal illness and a limited time to live. Interestingly, research shows that most cancer doctors avoid telling their patients that the end is near. Only one third of doctors discussed end-of-life care with their patients, while two-thirds avoided the discussion.

The patients who knew they were nearing the end of their lives spent less time in the hospital during their final days and their loved ones were more at peace after they died.

Doctors seem to mistakenly believe that talking about death will make you die quicker. Yet patients crave these conversations because they want to know what they are up against. Without honest conversations about the end-of-life, patients feel abandoned because they have to face death alone because no one will discuss it.

Based on this research, it is apparent that talking about death has benefits for patients with cancer. There may be benefits for the rest of us as well. None of us know how long we are going to live. We all of the gift of only today. If we all acknowledged today is the only day we know we have, how would it change our day . . . our hours . . . our minutes?

We might all need to pay a little more attention to our “bucket list”.