All posts by Mike Slater

“I know, daddy! He needs a wallet and a cell phone!”

January 28, 2018
by Mike Slater

A man asked his 6-year-old son, “Noah, what do you think a man needs in this world to succeed and be a really good man?”

He responded, “I know daddy! He needs a wallet and a cell phone.”

This answer sent dad on a journey on what it means to be a man and father.
If a kid thinks a wallet and cell phone are critical, it tells us that something is amiss.

In Episode 1 of the Christian Parenting podcast, I asked Buz Mayo if he had any regrets as a dad (~12:00):

I carried a lot of anger inside of me, I was a nice angry man for a couple of decades…I was not a yeller at the kids, but I’m sure that my anger came out in ways – either facially or they could feel it – so that’s a regret. I didn’t know what to do with that [anger], I haven’t known what to do with that for the last 15-20 years of my life. As a 60-year-old man, I continue to grow and learn who God is and who I am in relation to Him.

I’ve never heard of a nice angry man before. What is that?

I thought my purpose in life for a long time as to be the world’s nicest guy…Just be tame, be good, behave well, and be nice. And I would say now that I see that very differently. Trying to be nice – and you run into people who are evil or annoying at best – being nice becomes a facade. So I lived a great many years with a mask as a not very genuine person.

Kids feel this. Kids are perceptive. They can feel when things are out of balance.

I think of this scene from The Family Man where the little girl could just tell that this man wasn’t really her dad:

But don’t despair! I also believe our kids – like the little girl in the movie – are resilient and forgiving. She was willing to help and be patient with her “dad” until he found his true self.
What regret as a dad do you have?

Mine is my cell phone addiction. This is something we’ve talked about with nearly every guest on the Podcast, so we’re going to build a compilation of advice and insight, but this is a great start from Buz [~17:00]:

When [parents] are on their cell phone and addicted – like almost every human who has a smartphone – the kids FEEL it; whatever is on that cell phone is more important than they are. Parents need to become aware of the impact they’re having by telling Johnny or Suzie, “Be quiet, because I’m on the phone.” Yes, kids need to obey. Yes kids to be respectful, but if they’re always second fiddle to an electronic device, that does something to the inner part of their soul that they don’t even know.

Foolish things on my phone distract me away from my boy and our precious time together. I will NEVER look back in 50 years and wish I checked my text messages more often or responded to an E-mail right away. But I will want to relive every flash of eye contact and every smile and every roll-around-on-the-floor that God blesses me to have with baby Jack.

When you ask your kids what a man needs in this world to be a really good man, what do you want them to say?

CLICK HERE to listen to the entire podcast. The section we talked about in this post starts around 15:00

Making Your Home A Haven

January 27, 2018
by Mike Slater

I’ve decided to go back and listen to each Christian Parenting podcast episode we have done so far. Each episode is about 40 minutes and full of insightful information from amazing mentors and parents. I feel like it would be a shame to just hear it once without pausing, reflecting and diving deeper into each point. If I hear something once, it stays on the surface. If I go over it a few times, it becomes more ingrained in my heart.

I started with Buz Mayo, my best friend’s dad. Father of two, amazing man of God and man I admire. He is a man of depth. I live too much in my head and struggle to dig into my hart. Buz lives there and it shows how much he loves.

Check out this line, “We wanted our home to be a haven. We wanted their relationship with God to be something that wasn’t only in a church building or only a Christian school. If the home wasn’t a place where they could come home and cry or brag or relax, then we knew something was out of place.”

How did they do this? How did they make Jesus more than something that we put in a box for a few hours on Sundays?

One example, every time they heard an ambulance, they would pray for the people who the ambulance was going to help. Devvie (Buz’s wife) would pray. The kids would follow her model.
Why did this work so well? Because it was spontaneous.

“The thing many parents feel shame about is they don’t do regular daily devotions very well. And we didn’t either. We tried, but instead, we would often stop in the middle of activities or dinner and just say, ‘We need to pray about the Joneses, or Michael’s new adventure or Katie’s new school friends.’ We would do it purposefully and spontaneously, so they would get the idea that this isn’t’ tied to a church building.”

In Philippians 2:11, Paul says that “Jesus Christ is Lord.” He did not say that Jesus is Lord of Sundays from 9:30-11. The great missionary S.M. Zwemer said, “Unless Jesus is Lord of all, He is not Lord at all.”

I love the Mayo’s effort to make Jesus the culture of the home.
How do you do this? What intentional efforts have you made to do this?

CLICK HERE to listen to the entire podcast. The section we talked about in this post starts around 7:00.

Letting Our Kids Adventure

September 2, 2015
by Mike Slater

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I went to the park the other day. It couldn’t be a safer place in a Purell-dipped little suburban bubble. I let my 15-month-old son Jack walk across the grass all the way to the other side, maybe 25 yards away. The guy I was with asked why I’m letting him walk so far away. Wasn’t I concerned something bad could happen.

No. I wasn’t.

I mean, I didn’t LEAVE HIM ALONE at the park. I could see him, but I guess parents have to always be an arm’s length away? I reject that.

I want him to be able to exist with out me standing right behind him. I want him to be able to look up, look behind him or around him and not see me, and still know it’s okay. Because it is okay.

Remember “The World’s Worst Mom”? She let her 9-year-old ride the NYC subway alone.
A few years ago, CPS threatened to take away a 10 and 6-year-old because the parents dare let their kids walk home from the park.

A South Carolina mom who sent her 9-year-old to play in a popular park was arrested for not supervising her child. She was held overnight in jail, and her daughter spent 17 days as a ward of the state.

In the fall, an Austin, Tex., mom who let her 6-year-old play outside within view of the house was also visited by the cops and then child protective services. CPS interviewed her kids individually and even asked her 8-year-old daughter “if she had ever seen movies with people’s private parts,” the mom told me. “So my daughter, who didn’t know that things like that exist, does now. Thank you, CPS.

You get the idea.

“But Slater, there are way more abductions now than back in the day!”

No. Not really. We just hear about child abductions more because each abduction is national news. And for every 1,000 children abducted, only about 1 or 2 are abducted by strangers.
I’d rather risk it and let my kid learn FREEDOM with a good run in the grass.

Have you heard of the Abernathy boys? Thye lived in Oklahoma 100 years ago. They begged their dad to let them ride on horseback from Oklahoma to Santa Fe, New Mexico. His dad finally let them. The older brother was 9. Th youngest was 5.

They encountered sandstorms, hail, wolves, they got sick along the way but made it back alive and happy. The next year, they asked dad to ride from Oklahoma to meet Teddy Roosevelt’s ship that was landing in NYC harbor. 2.5 months and 1,000 miles later, the boys arrived and greeted the former President.

Then, the boys decided to kick it up a notch and ride a car. They dove, at the age of 14 and 9, New York to San Francisco by car. 62 days. In 1913.

Check out eh lessons they learned,

We learned to look a man in the eye and judge him by the grasp of his hand. Wealth and education aren’t as important as the way a man approaches life, and we came to appreciate a willingness to help. …

Geography came alive for us. Each trip was an expedition of discovery. I learned all the states, the cities, and the capitals. We saw everything from lead mines in operation, to oil wells being drilled. …

Through Teddy’s influence and our tours of Washington, we came to admire those who strive for good government. Bud later became a lawyer and served his community as both district attorney and county judge, a leaning surely traced in part to those early lessons.

We learned to endure hardship with patience, especially in those heartbreaking days toward the end of our coast-to-coast trip, when Sam Bass’ death and our trials in the desert seemed to test us more than we could bear.

I’m not ready to throw Jack on the back of a horse and let him ride to Denver, but we can let him run to the other side of the park. Bravery and independence; If our kids don’t learn this, if we crush their desire to be free, we’re robbing them of what they need to change the world.