Pay Me Now or Pay Me Later

her classmate. Now you’re trying to find the “why” behind those awful things, because you taught them better, so there must be a reason.

And oh, when the reason is just sheer, willful disobedience that flies in the face of all you believe, you’re faced with a hard truth. The only person who can deal with this is you. The parent.

Sure, extended family, teachers and youth ministers will support you along the way. They’ll brainstorm strategies, reinforce your expectations and cheer you on. But you, the parent, must do the hard work of enforcing whatever rules you have set that reflect the values you’re attempting to instill.

Disciplining our children is never fun. It’s never easy. It feels terrible.

But a major mistake parents make is laying down rules they’re not prepared to enforce. This teaches children not to respect authority, that rules are only rules when convenient or during certain moods. If parents are tired or busy, the rules are subject to debate.

what they want. This is a dangerous lesson in the long run. The child who screams to get her way becomes a disrespectful teen and potentially an emotionally abusive adult; the toddler who’s allowed to hit others when he’s mad, a physically abusive adult. Homes without rules based in shared values, and homes where rules aren’t enforced can create monstrous adults.

Insisting your child has a consistent bedtime is taxing, but do it anyway. Children who are allowed to ignore parents calling their name become teens who ignore those parents’ curfews. Instilling the value “we don’t use our hands to hurt, we use our hands to help” can be exhausting for parents of preschoolers, but it’s the first step to curbing future bullies. And even when you’ve done all these, your preteen or teen may continue slamming up against those guardrails. Hold fast. Continue to set and maintain boundaries. Because in the moment your child wants them the least, they need them the most.

BY ELISABETH GAY

“You can pay me now, or you can pay me later.”

This 1972 Fram oil filter commercial claims that, concerning vehicles, you have a choice: you can pay a little now—to replace the filter and maintain the health of the engine—or a lot more when it breaks, to fix the damage.

Kids are like that, too. There’s so much hourly, daily and weekly “maintenance” in parenting. Setting sleep schedules, promoting good nutrition, teaching hygiene, enforcing rules . . . none of these are parents’ favorite moments. And while these daily grind tasks are what we signed up for, they can feel depressingly like the sum total of life when kids are young.

The word maintenance comes from the Latin words “manu + tenere” which literally means “hold in the hand.” When we need to examine something, we pick it up for a closer look. We “take in hand” that which we value. You can’t ignore something you’re holding. You notice everything about it: how it looks, how it feels, anything that’s off.

Maintaining anything is costly and requires energy. Usually, it’s effort that doesn’t have an instant or obvious result. Changing an oil filter makes little, observable shortterm difference. But it’s the long game that matters. It takes a lot of blood, sweat and tears to care for another human, too. And there’s not much instant gratification from pushing veggies or enforcing rules. Investing the emotional, mental and spiritual en- ergy into guiding another human life along a path worth traveling can be exhausting.

When our daughter was born, our minister visited us in the hospital. He congratulated and encouraged us, and then offered to pray for us.

“Lord, please watch over this precious, eternal soul that you have chosen to bring into your creation and place in the hands of these parents . . .”

His words still knock the breath out of me.

Parenting is a holy calling, a commitment to the long game of navigating the stormy seas of ever-changing culture and guiding your child safely to the other shore.

That takes stamina, because the hardest work of parenting isn’t only when they’re young.

Sure, your 17-month-old may keep you up all night fussing, sick, or refusing to sleep. But your 17-year-old will keep you up all night for entirely different reasons.

While you won’t face the same challenges at ages 2, 12 and 22, they will stem from the same human tendencies: selfishness, disobedience, laziness. Two-year-old tantrums morph into teen drama. Whether it’s toys or lunch tables, somebody isn’t sharing. And no matter how good your Mama Bear act is, you can’t make them. Suddenly that precious, eternal soul in your care, is wounded.

And sometimes, it’s your precious child doing the wounding. Yours is the kid who said the cuss word at school, punched a kid on the playground or purposefully excluded

To some it seems easier to let them have their way. Let them eat junk instead of healthy food, watch TV or play video games whenever. But giving in to toddler tantrums teaches children that screaming (or worse, violence) gets them

Children who test limits are asking the most important questions: Do I matter to you? How much do you love me? Will you go through hell and high-water to save me from myself?

Yes, my precious child. Yes.

Let our answer always be yes.

COLUMN BY “Z-TRAIN”

Titans Bring in Ran Carthon to Fill GM Job Chiefs and Eagles Set for Super Bowl LVII

THE TRAIN DADDY IS BACK with sports news, life lessons and politically incorrect talk. All aboard!

So, what do I have for you this issue? The Titans have a new GM. Super Bowl LVII is just around the corner and will be held in Glendale, Arizona on Feb. 12. Rihanna, the pop icon best known for her role in the blockbuster Battleship, possibly the greatest movie ever made, is set to perform the halftime show. We Americans eat and drink so much junk on Super Bowl Sunday it’s glorious, with nearly 17 million Americans calling out of work the next day.

ALRIGHT, LET’S GET IT!

The Tennessee Titans ended their 2022 season on a sour note of losing! After the Titans beat the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau in November and Titans offensive coordinator Todd Downing decided it would be a good idea to get hammered drunk and go flying down the interstate in the middle of the night following the game, the Titans ended the season losing seven straight games since that night DUI Todd struck!

It is what it is. Two straight seasons of leading the league in injuries, as the Titans experienced, will make winning difficult.

Congrats To Ran

Since that AFC South-deciding game against the Jags in the final week of the regular season, the Titans have fired a lot of people and we finally have our new GM, Mr. Ran Carthon, coming from the San Francisco 49ers. Ran brings 15 years of experience as a scout and has been with the 49ers since 2017 as their director of pro personnel. The 49ers have had much success of late and hopefully Ran can bring some of that energy here.

Congrats to Ran, sincerely. I stand with him 100 percent as a fan of this team and I wish him nothing but success. I am happy Titans owner Amy Adams Strunk decided to hire out-of-house, and by all accounts Ran is a man to be respected. He doesn’t have an easy job by any means.

Say what you will about former GM Jon Robinson, the fact is he had six consecutive winning seasons under his belt before this year and if times get tough under Ran the fanbase will easily remember the not-so-distant time of winning a lot of regular season games. Only the Chiefs had more consecutive winning seasons than Tennessee when J-Rob was fired.

I remember the early 2010s well enough and I dread thinking about consecutive years of sucking. With that said, I understand why they fired him. This team had the feel of underachieving for years, J-Rob missed on putting together a solid offensive line this season and, fact is, the Eagles just rode A.J. Brown to the Super Bowl—and that makes me angry!

Some of my closest Titans family and I were thinking about what Ran Carthon’s nickname should be? We all called Jon Robinson “J-Rob.” We boiled it down to three final options: Ran the Man, or we could simply call him Cart, or should we make him more of a superhero and call him The Black Ranther. I voted for Cart, “in Cart we trust” has a nice ring to it.

Cart has little room for error. This Titans team needs to be shaken up and, call it fair or not, fans of this team should demand results immediately. His first big test will be hitting on the upcoming NFL Draft. Just don’t miss on those first few rounds, please! In all seriousness, congrats to Carthon and welcome to the Titans, a team I passionately have been giving my heart to season after season for over two decades now. I just want the feeling of one championship before I die and they put me six feet under.

Now don’t get it twisted, I love Tennessee Volunteer athletics passionately. From football to basketball to baseball I am always invested. I love my Nashville Predators. I love going to Nashville Soccer Club games and I have always had a soft spot for the Atlanta Braves since I was a wee little lad. With all that said, nothing would mean more to me than the Titans winning a Super Bowl. I guess since Super Bowl XXXIV, played on Jan. 30, 2000, I’ve been hooked. I was a freshman in high school watching it with people that to this day, 23 years later, I am still rocking with.

I understand I live in the South where SEC football is king, and I love everything about Vol athletics. But for whatever reason this Tennessee Titans team is my ultimate passion in the world of sports. I feel like I just laid my heart out for you all. Daggum!

Super Bowl History

The New England Patriots have played in an NFL-leading 11 Super Bowls with the Steelers next up, having played in 8 of those. The Steelers and Pats both are tied with six championships. There are only four teams in the NFL that have never played in the big game: the Lions, Browns, Jags and Texans

The highest-scoring Super Bowl had a combined score of 75 points. The 49ers, led by Steve Young and the greatest receiver to ever play the game, Jerry Rice, beat the Chargers by a score of 49–26.

The lowest-scoring Super Bowl happened just a few years ago when the Patriots beat the Rams 13–3, Brady’s last Super Bowl as a Patriot.

Since the first Super Bowl in 1967, and the Packers defeating the Chiefs, there has never been a year without a Super Bowl. And it has become the biggest single sporting event in America.

The Lombardi trophy, named after legendary Packers coach Vince Lombardi, is made by Tiffany & Co. and weighs in at 7 pounds.

We Americans eat billions of chicken wings (enough to circle the circumference of Earth three times, reportedly), and millions of pounds of chips with over 100 million pounds of avocados purchased to make that delicious dip. It’s insane, as over 100 million Americans spend billions of dollars and eat billions of calories in just a few hours. It’s amazing and beautifully patriotic. You know it was a good day when antacid sales spike 20% the following day.

Over 700 million chickens die as we feast on their wings! Over 12 million pounds of bacon will be eaten, 14 billion total hamburgers, 10 million pounds of ribs. What about cheese? Over 88 million pounds of cheese is consumed for the big game. Everyone loves pizza and about 13 million pies are purchased for this game alone. To wash all that down, 50 million cases of beer.

It’s a beautiful tradition. God bless America, and God bless the Super Bowl.

I guess I should give you my prediction for the Eagles vs. Chiefs Super Bowl (the Kelce Bowl). I dislike both teams, unfortunately. I don’t want the Eagles to win it and hear the never-ending trolling from A.J. Brown, and I don’t want Chiefs Kingdom to get any louder. Someone must win, and I can handle the Chiefs winning more than Philadelphia. Something about that Eagles fanbase just screams obnoxious.

I feel like the Eagles are better all-around, but I took the Chiefs over the Bengals for one reason: the best quarterback in the NFL leads them, Patty cakes Mahomes, and that’s the reason I take them in the Super Bowl.

Mahomes now has an extra week to rest that high ankle sprain and the Chiefs still have that taste in their mouth from the beating that the Bucs defense gave them in the Super Bowl two years ago.

So, give me Kansas City to beat the Eagles in a very entertaining game, 27–24.

Alright, it’s time for the Train to roll into the station! Much love to all my readers. It’s crazy to think the NFL season is almost over, which is always followed by a hot Tennessee summer. But time seems to be moving at an incredible pace these days, so don’t fret. Before we know it, the 2023 season will be kicking off. Choo-choo!