There’s an article that has made its round on the web for the past few years, entitled Five Friends Every Woman Should Have. It’s written by Michelle Burford, of O, The Oprah Magazine, and begins with this commentary:

“Friends are the family we choose for ourselves,” writer Edna Buchanan once said. I consider the “family” I’ve gathered — with five kinds of pals I count on for completely different things — among the wisest choices I’ve made. If you can find even one who embodies any of the characteristics that follow, you can consider yourself fortunate.

In case you haven’t read it, I’ve included the a link to the original article.

Burford lists the five categories of friends as: The Uplifter, The Travel Buddy, The Truth Teller, The Girl Who Just Wants to Have Fun, and The Unlikely Friend. I’d like to expand on her thoughts a bit…

1. The Uplifter
This friend is more likely to say “yes” than “no” regardless of the situation. She’s willing to watch your kids when you need a break, and sends you notes of encouragement when you’re feeling down. She is a perpetual source of positive feedback.

2. The Travel Active Buddy
I’m guessing there are not a lot of 30- and 40-something moms who jet-set off to St. Lucia with pals (as the original author suggested). Instead, I think this friend is the woman who joins you for a late-night chick-flick when you need a few laughs, or the one who cycles beside you regularly at the gym. There may not be a ton of deep conversation with this buddy, but that’s OK because the silence (while you’re being active together) is comfortable. You enjoy that this woman is just there with you when you need to get out of the house.

3. The Truth Teller
Burford wrote, “Intent is what separates the constructive from the abusive. Once you’ve established that the hard news is spoken in love (not in jealousy or malice), you’d be smart to seek out this woman’s perspective.” I agree. In addition, for Christian women, this friend is the one you can count on to give you sound advice from a Biblical perspective. And when you’re finished talking, she prays with you about the situation. We all can benefit from a few Truth Tellers in our lives.

4. The Girl Who Just Wants to Have Fun Who Has Been There
This friend is the one you turn to when your husband loses his job and you don’t know how to handle it, or when the school wants to set up an IEP for your child but you don’t even know what those three little letters stand for. You may have met her through your kids’ activities, church, or some other family event. In any case, she has a family like yours, and can offer suggestions when some aspect of your family is cause for concern. Why? Because she’s been there. This mentor is a great person to help guide you through a new experience.

5. The Unlikely Friend
We all have unlikely friends. You know, those who are quite a bit older or younger, of a different race or religion, richer, poorer, or just part of a completely different social circle. As Burford wrote, the friends “have added richness to my life that only variety can bring.” Amen to that.

As a good (yet unlikely) friend once told me, every now and then you need to take stock of your friends. You should always surround yourself with a few in each of these categories. But perhaps more importantly, we need to make sure we are acting as these types of friends for the other women in our lives. So while you might have a couple of great girlfriends who are the mentors in your life (The Girls Who Have Been There), who are you mentoring? And while you might have several women who uplift and encourage you, who are you uplifting?

About two years ago my mom’s group worked through Lisa Welchel’s Creative Correction. Throughout the book, Lisa provides scripture for parents to use in training kids. For example, have a drama-loving daughter who frequently rolls her eyes at you? There’s a verse for that. Frustrated by a son who bullies the neighborhood kids? There are verses for that. Have a tween feeling the effects of peer pressure? There are verses for that.

I took Lisa’s suggestions, as well as those of others in my mom’s group. Then, I added a few that pertained to stuff my kids are dealing with right now. Finally, I “made it pretty” (because I certainly couldn’t leave it as plain text – it’s the curse of being a designer). The result is shown to the right, and can be downloaded here. Note that it’s set up with two toolboxes per page and is intended to be printed on an 8.5 x 11″ sheet of paper. My printer has a setting to print borderless, which allows the color to run all the way to the edges. If your printer doesn’t have that setting, you can “shrink to fit.” Cut down the middle to separate the two copies.

Wondering how it works? Sometimes I ask my kids to find and read the verses that apply to their particular situation. Other times, they might need to really *ponder* a verse, in which case they might find themselves writing it several times (maybe four or five times their age depending on the offense). I find this works really well because it comes from the Creator, and not mom or dad. In other words, these are God’s rules, not ours (and He’s the one who made us all!). When we explain it to our kids this way, they are less likely to argue about it. Of course, you can use it however you’d like.

Keep in mind these are not the only verses that apply to each situation. Thankfully, there are usually dozens of verses for each item listed. Those included are simply meant to help your child see what God says about things like sibling rivalry and modesty. If a particular situation warrants additional study on a subject, check out an online topic Bible search like Open Bible’s Topical Bible or Nave’s Topical Bible.

I’ve received a lot of comments (in person and on Facebook) about my 10-year-old’s escapades with Facebook.  One of the biggest points of debate seems to be whether it is appropriate for kids to have a Facebook account at all.

Facebook’s rules state users must be at least 13 years old in order to obtain an account. However, they do nothing to actually verify a user’s age. As such, my daughter was able to change her birthday to make it seem she was 16 years old. When I logged into her account, I found at least ten other girls in her class who also had accounts. Obviously, these girls also changed their birthdates, with or without parental permission.

After I wrote my initial post, I’ve encountered a fair number of parents who have given permission for their kids to “fudge their age” in order to sign up for Facebook. I don’t know whether it is out of desperation (because these kids can certainly be persistent in their demands) or just for lack of understanding (maybe they don’t know about the icky 40-year-old men friending their 10-year-old daughters). In either case, I disagree. Here’s why:

1) Rules are rules, regardless of whether we agree. A good friend said it best when she commented, “if we let our kids break the rules to obtain a Facebook account at age 10, what’s next? How about when they are 15 and decide to take the car out for a joy ride, or 17 and get drunk?” If we teach our kids it’s OK to break some rules now, when the consequences aren’t that harmful, we’re just setting them up to break rules later, when the consequences can be fatal.

2) The risks are real. In just three days of having a Facebook account, multiple older men attempted to friend my 10-year-old. Her profile was not visible to non-friends, but her photo was. Apparently that was enough to cause them to friend her. They didn’t know her, or me, so I have no other choice but to consider them to be predators searching for naive young girls online. Unfortunately, this type of thing will continue to happen (even when she is old enough to actually have a Facebook account) so we, as parents, must teach our kids about the risks and how to deal with them.

3) It exposes them to mature content. Consider a 10-year-old girl who friends the 16-year-old brother of her best friend. She is then exposed to the conversations, photos, and thoughts of a whole slew of kids who are six, seven, maybe eight years older. Would you let your 10-year-old daughter go to an unsupervised party with a bunch of high school juniors and seniors? I suggest allowing them to be friends with those kids on Facebook is much the same.

So… what’s a parent of a tween to do? When your kids outgrow Webkinz, but are too young for Facebook, where do you turn? Thankfully, a safe alternative is about to be unveiled (according to my sources). Stay tuned for the launching of a “Facebook for tweens” next week… (no, I’m not launching a business – it’s just one that I’ve heard is on the horizon).

In the wake of all the email and Facebook hoopla at our house, I have gotten a lot of feedback (both online and offline). One person asked if I was embarrassed to admit that we, being self-proclaimed tech junkies, had a daughter who out-witted us (technically speaking). My answer is simple: I hope our mishap helps other parents learn to *really* pay attention to what their kids are doing online. If we can be duped, so can you!

Our 10-year-old daughter knew we monitored the email on the laptop, so she signed up for a new Gmail account using her iPod Touch over our wireless broadband access. (I must admit I was amazed at just how smart she was to accomplish all this! I see a bright future for her technologically, as long as she uses it for the right purposes.) As I speak to more and more parents about this, I am realizing how many kids trying these types of sneaky tactics… and how many are getting away with it!

Another girl who goes to school with my 5th grader frequently sends us email at 11:30pm… on school nights. When asked, she says she isn’t tired, so she plays on the computer… late at night… in her bedroom. I checked out her Facebook profile. She lied and said she was 16 to get the account. Her picture is cute. Her info says she’s “looking for men.” Her parents have no idea. They don’t have Facebook accounts. They don’t use the Internet much. They don’t realize what their child is doing online, or who she is talking to.

Do you?

I found a “Family Internet Contract” (courtesy of iMom.com) that certainly isn’t going to prevent kids from doing this stuff, but it could help parents have an informed conversation with their kids, hopefully before email and MySpace/Facebook accounts are obtained “on the sly.” Or if you’re like us, and this whole “growing up” thing sort of snuck up on you (i.e., our kids are already heavily online), this contract can be a great way to make sure we’re all on the same page.

We’ve been accustomed to cooking dairy-free for over 10 years, because my oldest daughter (who is 10) turned up with a dairy allergy pretty much as soon as she came into this world. So we’ve become good at knowing which brand of cake mix or granola bar, for example, typically doesn’t include dairy. We’ve also been adventurous in trying to make our own dairy-free cakes and granola bars (some good, some not-so-much), among other things, thanks to web sites like The Food Allergy Mama and Go Dairy Free.

Then we met a family that just moved here from the left side of the country, whose daughter is not only allergic to dairy, but also soy. Yikes!  I did not realize how lucky we were until I tried cooking without dairy or soy! We typically replace dairy with soy products, like dairy-free margarine (which is soy-based) and soy milk. Did you know even many canned spaghetti sauces contain soy products? (I found that out when I considered preparing spaghetti the first night we had our new friends over.)

Tonight we were invited to our new friends’ home, and asked to bring a dessert. Great! I love making desserts. I decided to make a chocolate cake because, well, who doesn’t like chocolate cake? I’ve frequently made dairy-free chocolate cakes, which are yummy, so I figured it wouldn’t be that hard, right? Hmmm. There are a few dairy- and soy-free chocolate cake recipes, but not very many with good reviews, except this one. It’s called the “Easiest Chocolate Cake Recipe” and it really is easy. I had all the ingredients on-hand, which was a bonus.

After I got the cake into the oven, I started searching for a frosting recipe. Here’s where things really got sticky (pardon the pun ). Virtually *all* the frosting recipes I found included some form or dairy or margarine. And lest you think I could use shortening, no! That is soy-based! So I went out on a limb and tried a powdered sugar/water combination, plus a tad bit of oil, some cocoa powder, and a little raspberry flavoring for good measure.

You can see the result in the photo. Now I don’t normally cut into cakes before taking them to someone’s home, but I was really nervous about this one (and maybe a little hungry), so I had to do it. The frosting was really really sweet, so I was afraid it would ruin the cake. But… (insert drum roll here)… it was good! The frosting *is* sweet, but the cake is moist, rich, and melt-in-my-mouth-yummy. Overall, it’s something I’m pleased to take to a friend’s house. I hope the girls all love it too! (I might need to admit to our hostess why I’m not so hungry for dinner now…)

As far as what I’d do differently next time, I think this cake would go well with a home-made whipped cream (of course I would use soy creamer, but that wouldn’t work for our soy-free friend). The whipped cream might be served on the side, so those who couldn’t eat the cream would still be able to enjoy the cake (which really is delicious enough to stand on its own, without any frosting at all).

P.S. A few people have asked why I didn’t just make two desserts – one for the girls with allergies, and one for everyone else. To those people I say: you obviously have never lived with someone affected by food allergies! Unfortunately, when eating out, at parties or with guests, those with food allergies are forced to eat separate meals *most* of their lives. Whenever possible, I try to prepare meals everyone in the family can enjoy, regardless of their food allergies. Of course this is not always feasible, but I like to at least try. And hey, it makes for some interesting experiments sometimes!