How This Project Works

Chad and I (Jessica) have two kids (ages two and four) and more in the plan. Like any other parents, we want the best for our kids. We want them to be happy and to grow up to lead happy and contributing lives. Although we know that the lives our adult children will choose to lead in the future are ultimately up to them, we want to learn how we can best prepare them to be able to do things that we feel will help them be successful. There are many ways to be successful and not all are measurable, but some of the things that have helped Chad and I most are things we feel would also be helpful to our children. What we hope for our kids is this:

1) That each will gain a testimony of truth and will live a life committed to their faith (we’re members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or LDS Church),

2) That each will get married and create a healthy long-term relationship, and that they will raise children and teach them well,

3) That each will complete at least four years of college. Based on our experiences we believe college provides a great opportunity to be stretched by doing hard things, to set and reach goals, and to gain more understanding.

4) We’d also love for them to have the experience of serving an LDS mission or other long-term service opportunity, because we believe this can help them learn to overcome fear and will bring them a lot of joy and perspective.

These are the things we want for them, but we don’t exactly know how to go about preparing and inspiring them for it. We want more information to help us do this. And so, in this project we’ve sought out families who have succeeded in helping a high percentage of their kids achieve these things for themselves. We want to know what has made these families tick and what the ingredients are that were proven to work for them. If you’re also interested in this, we invite you to learn along with us. We are super excited for the journey and think it’s going to be a great benefit to us as parents.

These seasoned parents answer one question about a specific aspect of parenting each week, and these answers are posted here to help us younger ones. The project is divided into parenting pieces (mainly based on the phases of kids' lives). Links to posts about each parenting piece are available on the left and the site is also searchable via Google on the right. We’ve also included brief biographical information for each contributor (though many names are changed for privacy and to encourage the honest sharing of their experiences and opinions).

We want to thank those who have kindly agreed to volunteer their time to contribute to this project as well as those who read and comment.