12 Taskers
Here you can find some testimonials and ideas from others who have done or are doing the 12 Tasks.
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Fresh Starts for Young Hearts
As I write this blog, we are days from the New Year. While January first is an artificial and arbitrary moment of time on a calendar designated by western humanity, we each look forward to that date as a chance to start fresh. All over the world, societies love to...
Technology and time for Today’s Teens
When my wife, Gayle and I flew to Kenya for our first time in 1981, our son Richard turned one. We let people know we had arrived by sending a telegram and by writing out our experience on a blue air form. The air form took two weeks to get to Canada and arrived...
Celebrating Completion of 12 Tasks in Nairobi
At the end of November 2021 my wife Kym and I were invited to a 12 Tasks celebration in Nairobi. Abigail Johnson had just completed 12 challenges during her 12th year and it was now her 13th birthday. Abigail’s parents, Lew and Brandy Johnson, had invited their...
Parenting with Boundaries
Most of us want our children to become responsible and honest persons but struggle with what keeps them from being that. Some people point to our sinful natures, some to poor parenting and some to the pressures and influences of the media and our society in general....
The Culture of You
Somedays I feel like I’m still determining my identity. I was born in Canada, grew up in Ecuador, Texas and then Canada before heading to Kenya over a period of 18 years. The culture of each place was different and I learned to change my sense of who I am on the plane...
Fear of Failure
Sociologist, Brene Brown says we are all wounded young. Because of that we tend to put on armor to protect ourselves from further wounding. We need to develop self-awareness or our undefined and unexplored emotion and cognition will control and drive every decision in...
A Different Kind of Smart
In the 1990’s, about the time Shel and I were developing the 12 Tasks for our oldest sons, two university professors began to question whether IQ was enough to assess the true intelligence of people. They saw that, in terms of relational success, people with a high IQ...
Thirty Miles in Thirty Days
My parents didn’t give me 12 Tasks. I had to forge my own way into adulthood when I was growing up in Kenya in the 1960s. Sports became my rite of passage, my quest. I grew up big and tall. In my grade school class photos, I stand head and shoulders over the other...