I’m Lance, and this site is something my wife Tina and I built together — a place to share what we’ve actually learned raising four kids from diapers to adulthood.
Our oldest three are boys — now 24, 22, and 19. Our youngest is a daughter, 17. Between the four of them we’ve navigated every stage of parenting that the books describe and a few they don’t. Toddler meltdowns, teenage silence, college decisions, the first job, the first heartbreak, the ongoing negotiation of screen time at every age, and the slow work of teaching kids to manage money, handle conflict, and get back up when things go wrong. We’re still in it with our youngest, and the oldest three are showing us what the work adds up to.
Tina and I don’t have degrees in child development. What we have is 25+ years of marriage, four genuinely different children who required genuinely different approaches, and the habit of paying attention to the research when it exists and being honest when it doesn’t.
Professionally I work in cybersecurity — which has shaped how I think about some of the parenting topics we cover here: online safety, how to talk to kids about risk without creating fear, and what it actually means to raise a kid who can evaluate information critically rather than just accept what they’re told.
What you’ll find here isn’t parenting advice from a perfect family. It’s what we tried, what worked, what didn’t, what the research says, and where those things agree and disagree. If something worked brilliantly for three of our kids and failed completely with the fourth, we’ll tell you that too — because that’s usually where the most useful information is.
If you’re somewhere in the middle of this — figuring it out one kid at a time — you’re in the right place.
— Lance & Tina Grover