Parenting Q&A (part 2)

Parenting in a Casual Church Q&A Setting

Well, here's what we're gonna do tonight. Thank you for that reading, by the way. Jonathan's one of the men in the class, the preaching class, one of the 10 men. And he, along with the other men, are doing a great job.

I'm really proud of this class. Here's what I think we'll do. I think we'll sing Amazing Grace, because that's a song that the kids know. And it's a song about the grace of God. And then we're gonna have the three elders here.

Pradeep's not gonna be here. And then the ladies can go upstairs. If you've got little kids, if you wanna have the boys stay with the men, you can. If you wanna have the girls go up with the ladies, you can.

Whoever you wanna work it, it'll be very casual in the sense that, imagine we were over at your home and we're just sitting around talking about parenting. And the kids are over here drawing or coloring or this, that, or the other.

And so it'll be very simple. And if the kids make noises or whatever, it's fine. Okay? Okay? And if you pick the wrong hymn tonight. By the way, Mark sent me an email last night and we're ready for the review of all the memory verses.

And you have to stand up in front of class and do the memory verses in 2 Corinthians 4 and 1 Corinthians 2 and 2 Timothy 4 and Proverbs 3 and Psalm 8 and what am I missing? 1 Corinthians 16. And so Mark said, if you're looking for a federal representative, I'll get up and give all the verses for the class so the rest of the people don't have to do it.

And I said, I'll take you up on that. So he gave those verses today. But before he gave the last six, I said, since you've done that so well, I'd like you to pick one other student if you'd like to do Psalm 8.

And I didn't know if he was gonna be nice and just finish the verses, but he picked Robert Muto and made Robert do it. So that was pretty classy, I thought. So let's stand, number 89. We don't have any accompaniment.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound. And we're gonna sing all five stanzas. And I don't know what.

All right, so come on up.

You know what I think I'm gonna do? Scott Farah, would you be up on the panel with us, please? Would you be up here on the panel with us, please? That's true. All right, because I know Cindy's helping out with the ladies, and maybe you can help us as well.

Let's just do this and set it out a little bit farther. All right, Jonathan, how are you today? Yeah, you know what? That's true, did you hear that? If we have a few more guys on the panel. This almost makes it kind of sterile, but that's okay.

I have, oh, I have my iPad, that's what I need. So I still have the questions that you've given us that we can go over, but I thought I would start with not thinking about those questions and just ask if you men have any particular questions related to parenting that we could talk about or things that have come up, and this is not necessarily pit you against your wife or anything like that, but just from a guy's perspective, we can answer.

And I can't have my wife get up or the other ladies get up and tell you men things, but I think our wives can offer specific wisdom to the other ladies, and so that's, in a sense, why we're doing this.

I could have done the whole thing tonight, but then Kim couldn't have talked to the other ladies with Janet and Cindy and others, so that's kind of why. So this is almost supplemental for that because I thought that was important.

I understand you kind of care about that. All right, any particular question before I have my list? I got one. Yeah, sure.

Social Media, Image Management, and the Theology of Justification

Not Christian people, kids eating their non-GMO, organic oatmeal in the morning, and aren't they perfect? The light coming through the window, and I feel like if we're not careful, we can sort of set our expectations too high.

Hmm. So, and I want to be appropriate and kind in how I approach that conversation, just not like, no more social media, right? But I also don't know how to be a mom myself, so what would you say?

Any of you men want to talk about how to be a mom? Okay, I have some thoughts,.

But I don't want to dominate this. Anybody? Well, I mean, first of all, I would say if it's not a Christian mom group, I don't know what the value of it is, right? So I think I'd, I mean, even there are Christian groups in social media that I'm just like, I don't see it, I've gotten out of almost all of them because they all devolve into arguing about the millennium or arguing about whatever, and so I think, you know, the very idea of a idyllic non-Christian mom is kind of a misnomer anyway, and so I would advise my wife to take three steps back from that group.

Senator, a bigger issue with this Facebook in general where we're trying to come across as these wonderful families, and I think almost, Taylor, it's a theological issue for me because if our justification is as good as our sanctification, in other words, we're right with God as long as we're doing the right things, which is an error, but if that's the way we think, then we've really got to keep up the externals and we've got to do the things that we're supposed to do to act in a holy way, at least superficially, but if we realize, you know what, we're worse than the unbelievers maybe and we're just as corrupt, but we're saved, then I don't have to put on this show and how do I look.

I don't know how well I do this, but I try to take myself very seriously where I'm supposed to, there, but outside of that, I'm just a regular person and with the regular foibles and sins and issues and I don't have to paint myself perfectly to have a platform, so I just think when you first get married, remember the book we had you read, When Sinners Say I Do, and you have all this kind of idyllic thoughts about marriage and then you, after a few weeks or maybe a few hours in my case, I realized just how bad I was and how selfish I am and how unrighteously I can act and so then it relates to me kind of as a theological issue.

In addition, and you can push back if you want to ask other questions, there's only so much you can do, right? There's only so much time you have and so all the Facebook time and learning from them or this, that, or the other, I'm thinking, I just have other things that I need to glean from.

I don't think things inherently are wrong if it's a Facebook for, like with your grandma who has Alzheimer's and she's lost her mind and so how do you care for someone who's in bed all day and has lost her mind, right?

I think common grace can help us, but always striving for perfect stuff, doesn't that go back to even with marriage where the world says everything's gotta be five star, everything's gotta be the best, everything's over the top, even if I am talking now to you men, in the marital bed everything's gotta be stars and stripes forever and all these kind of like 4th of July moments when it's just a man and a woman who love one another, are thankful for one another, can just enjoy each other in the small things and whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, you can just enjoy your spouse and honor the Lord.

So it might just take care of itself or maybe you take all those pictures and have all those settings with the snaps, but you just don't have to post them all the time. Does that make sense? Yeah. Go ahead.

Good, you can stay in the church. Well, and maybe Scott Farah's got some input on this too, he can jump in wherever he wants, or Scott Brown and Steve. Sometimes I don't wanna fight a battle until it's needed to be fought.

So when I first married Kim, she was a Christian and I wasn't, and then I became one shortly after that. It's a thing called missionary marriage. That went over about as well as some of the jokes this morning from the pulpit did.

What? I tried. Okay, good. And when I first met her, she didn't wanna get married and when we got married, she didn't wanna have children. And when she thought we're gonna have children, she wanted to make sure we gave them to the babysitters because she wanted to stick with her career.

And I didn't really have to change her mind, although I really wanted to change her mind because I knew it was right. But then after she was pregnant and after she gives birth to Haley, she realized I can't really hand this baby off to let somebody else raise this child.

And so I think to be in preparation for it mentally is good, but you might not even have to fight those battles because there's too many other things for moms to do, especially when you've got the first one because that's hard.

You wanna do a microphone?

I don't think it's, you actually stole my thunder, which is a good thing, but I'm just saying, I don't think it's a hill you have to die on necessarily because I think it's an opportunity for you if it becomes an issue to say, it's my turn to leave here, I am the head of this household and then you can start directing your wife into what she ought to focus her attention on.

She's gonna be overwhelmed, I imagine,.

Just being a mother. But I think if you see a pattern of behavior that you disagree with, I don't think you have to necessarily express your dissatisfaction, but it's your opportunity to lead. I think when we become dads, it's a whole new dynamic in terms of being a leader that you never worry about.

You only worry about yourself and then maybe you get married and worry about your wife and you worry about, it's an entirely different dynamic when you start to say that I have some real responsibility for the spiritual well-being of my children.

And so I just think if you're faced with that at some point in time, use that as an opportunity to lead your wife and lead your children and say, this is the stuff that I want you to understand, this is the stuff that I want you to learn.

And I think by instilling that, the things that maybe she focuses her attention on will become less important. That's just, but again, I don't think it's a thing you have to die on yet. See how it plays itself out and then insert yourself as necessary.

That's my opinion.

But I think some of that too comes with wisdom, right? So how she's treating that information, is she taking it in and trying to top it as others do on social media or is it something that she's leveraging some of the discussions that come from that?

Now, again, if it's non-Christians, we have another issue there, but social media can be used for both good and bad, right? So I think it depends on how she's leveraging that to what you do and your approach to it.

If it's something that is useful, as Pastor Mike said, something like Alzheimer's forms or groups, think of that sort, right? Where you can get clean information from, or is it, hey, look at me, how much I'm better than the Joneses.

And there's that feeling that she has to keep up with that, right? I think that's when it starts to get more dangerous. And that's when I would then start to put my foot down and say, this is something we need to discuss, right?

And it becomes more of a prideful thing than it is a informational or just what's happening, right? We need to top the latest post by doing X, Y, or Z and let's go up and take selfies of everybody and post it.

It's just, that's when you start to realize things have gone a little far.

I think just in general, as I've gotten older, I've realized so many things in life that I thought were important in a marriage or important in child raising, isn't really, they aren't that big of a deal.

It's only taken me 30 years to figure it out, but that's why we look this way, old and just like, you know, decrepit, but we have been around the block. And so a lot of those things, I just wish I wouldn't make minor issues major like I did.

I'm not saying you are, but maybe you could just because of youth and, you know, just excitement and so many things with parenting and my kids did or didn't do. And I think, you know what, either I'm a grandpa now or I'm too old, but I think I wish I could have gone back and just not have been such a stickler on a lot of things, even with parenting.

Okay, other questions about parenting? Yes, Simon. Well, this is nice, why? Really, have you struggled with, I guess, exposing them to issues in the world, evils in the world, you know, events happen like the bombing in Sri Lanka, the shooting in New Zealand, et cetera.

And our default has been to kind of shelter them from that stuff, thinking we don't, they don't need to be exposed to that yet. And that's basically what we've done so far. But at some point, they need to be aware of these things and be taught how to think through them and have a great perspective on these things.

But when does that happen? Like, I don't think it would be an age per se, more of a maturity level, but I guess when you know your kids are ready to be exposed to these evils in the world that exist. It also, as far as, you know, like, you know, I'd like to teach them, you know, maybe we go to like a public event and I would love to say, here's what you do if somebody tries to kidnap you, you do X, Y, and Z,.

But I don't want to make them scared because I'm being kidnapped, you know what I mean?

It's like, it's like how to balance preparing them for these things, but also not trying to make them afraid of the rule. Yeah.

Well, that you're asking the question, I think, is important and you parents have to make a lot of decisions for yourself, right? At what age do you tell your girls about sex, right? And there's not really an age, you just have to figure that out with your wife.

And it's like, Lord, give me wisdom and they're my children and so I know them well and so how do I go about it? We went to the Red Sox games yesterday and my kids are obviously bigger, but if they were tiny, they would have seen a lot of drunk people, you know?

And what do we do with these drunk people and how they first seem funny and then they seem pretty pathetic and then they seem really tired and then they sleep, right? That was a progression of the people in section 18 yesterday because the game was so boring.

What I always did, Simon, was I thought, you know what? I'm gonna make sure I teach the scriptures regularly to my children because then they will be exposed to the worst, right? There's rape in the Bible, there's incest in the Bible, there's murder, there's annihilation of people, there's envy, there's greed and so then I could expose them to those concepts and I knew the Lord could be trusted with a five-year-old or a five-month-old or a 25-year-old and I was just gonna keep teaching them about scripture and how should we then think about these Canaanites?

And how should we think about God tells the Israelites to kill all these people and children too and what does that mean? And so I just tried to regularly do that. I think that if you told the kids, like we saw in the Bible, there's some people that killed a bunch of folks and here's these Philistines and all that and people hate other people and this is what Satan does.

He's the father of lies. Did you know there were some people in a country called Sri Lanka and you showed them, the teardrop of India and some people were killed there in churches. I wouldn't have any problem with that, saying that to a nine-year-old and then hearing what they say and dialoguing back and forth to figure that out and if they said, Daddy, are we safe at church?

And you could say, there's always six people here that are carrying and they're different spots and they're, which is true. I mean, I haven't said it publicly from the pulpit but if somebody comes in here, they won't be able to shoot for long, right?

We can't protect ourselves from the first shot unless Charlie can intercept them and he does a pretty good job checking people out on the way in and that's why the back door's locked and we can trust in the Lord and we have to be ready any time to die, just like when Alyssa Brown was talking about that today.

So while I think people don't talk about sex early enough with their kids, I don't think you wanna wait too long. In other words, if I were you, I'd probably expose them to things faster than maybe you are now.

Does that make sense? Steve? Well, I mean, I think I was reading like Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by the time I was like in the fifth grade. So, you know, I don't know what to say about that. You know, I'm reading the LA Times from a young age so I had no shelter whatsoever.

You know, and I think he's right. I think, you know, you just wanna make sure it's age appropriate and people do bad things all the time. As far as the kidnapping part, I don't have a problem with starting that early.

You know, I mean, just talking about we don't, there are certain things we don't do with strangers and, you know, that kind of thing. You know, if somebody tries to pick you up,.

What are you gonna do? So. We did start from an early age on that, telling the three girls. And Luke, if somebody pulls up and says we're looking for a dog or we've got candy or whatever and you get in the car, we just want you to know one thing.

You're dead. If you get in the car, you're dead. And if you run, they're probably not gonna chase you. And even, you know, when they're older, I would tell Gracie, you know, at 17, don't get in the car if somebody's got a gun, run.

50 of the time, they won't shoot. 50 of the time that they do shoot, they're gonna miss. The times that they hit you, it's not gonna be life-threatening anyway, but if you, and so it's like 8 chance that you're gonna die if you run.

But if you get in that car, you're done. And so I regularly talk to the kids because, I'm sorry to say, they just need to hear that. They just need to know you don't get in the car with anybody unless dad says you can get in the car with them, there's somebody from church gonna pick you up or whatever.

Because there are wicked people, like Goliath who wanted to kill David, right? Or whatever, and you can turn it into a story. But we regularly told the girls, you know, about the whole dog thing and we've lost the dog and everything else, sad to say.

And it does spoil their innocence. It does spoil what they think. But what else am I gonna do.

Because I'd rather protect them. Right, I think what he's meant too, right?

Alyssa, we talked very early about, you know, the dangers that come with being young and a child.

And so forth or what happens with that sort.

So that was very early for her. And we continue to reinforce it as Pastor Mike had said. I think also what we did, I mean, we're not a big news family overall and we're not big news watchers overall. So unless she came to us with a question, hey, I heard about this, or someone was speaking about this, you know, we would have information for her.

But it wasn't that we would actively pursue to tell her this occurred unless she was more inquisitive about it or someone at school was talking about something at Sri Lanka. Then we would sit her down and we would talk to her about it.

As Pastor Mike said, is we would always reference scripture, right? There is evil and there always will be evil. And we would go back to the word to say, you know, here's the reasons why it is. We still can trust in what, you know, our Savior has done for us.

And, you know, rest assured that there is security, but at the same time, there's still bad people out there. So, you know, we wouldn't actively expose her, but it was one of those things that if it came up or someone asked, you know, said something to her, we had open conversations where she would come to us and say, what is this about, right?

And then we would definitely go to whatever level she wanted to. And you can kind of tell, right, at age where they're at, whether how you describe things, you know, if they're young, you can describe it very simply or a little more complex, you know, as they get older at the same time, right?

That's how we handled it.

I'll just make one comment. I'm probably a bit of a contrarian, I'm sorry to say, because I think I 100 agree with them. I just never really placed a lot of emphasis on the homeschool, the kids. It wasn't that I was trying to keep them sheltered, but like Scott just said, we're not a big news family and those things are never a big issue with them, but that whole thing about kidnapping, I was always very much aware that could happen with my kids, but I always made a point of me, and I realize maybe I'm naive here, but I always, at the expense of making sure that my kids would always have the best time if we were doing something that was fun, I was always the one that was on heightened awareness.

So I might have a miserable time, but I always wanted to protect them, my kids, that I was having a good time. Mike Huber, he and I had this little joke, because I told him this like 10 years ago, maybe 15 years ago, when all we had, all of our six kids, they were younger, and I'd take them to New York City during Christmas time on a Saturday, and we'd go see the sights in New York City, and I said to Mike, all I did the entire time we were there in New York City was go, two, four, six, two, four, six.

I was counting my kids, but that's all I did as we were walking on the sidewalks in every building. Two, four, six, two, four, six. I didn't ever project that on my kids that I was doing that, but I kept my eyes on my kids like a hawk.

And so I guess I really want, and again, I'm not trying to in any way speak against what these guys just said, because I think there's a lot of wisdom in there, but my personal thing was I want to take as much, I would try to prepare them and protect them, but I want to take as much burden as a dad on as I possibly can so they can just enjoy as much as possible the innocence and joys of being a child.

So I just always had heightened awareness, and if I knew, oh, this one person's going over there, I made sure that someone's watching these here, and I can go keep an eye on them. I just always kept an eye on my kids,.

And that's sort of the way I did it. Hey, Steve, who asked Scott to be on the panel? All right, I know, I'm just kidding.

I was just like, I was saying it goes, two, four, six, two, four, six, two, four, five.

Church Safety, Childhood Innocence, and Teaching Children to Protect Themselves

Well, that lends itself to a question because a church body is made up of all kinds of sinners, and for those of you that have little kids, here's what we did here. I told my kids they could play in the sanctuary, but I didn't let them go anywhere else.

So if you've got little kids, and it was more difficult for Kim and I because she was talking to ladies and I was talking to people after service, I couldn't watch my children very easily, but I didn't let my kids run all around and do whatever they wanted.

They had to stay within the sanctuary, and I wanted them to play and have a good time, but if I caught them not staying in the sanctuary, they were always disciplined when we got home. If they needed to go to the bathroom, they had to come up to me, put their hand on me while I was talking, and when I was ready, I looked at them and said, what do you want, Luke?

And he'd say, may I please go to the bathroom? Yes, and then come right back because there are people here that have awful backgrounds. All of us have sinful backgrounds, but some people have backgrounds that we can't prohibit from coming to the church, but maybe in your flesh you wish we could.

So just remember when your kids are here, even though it's a church, I would make sure I knew where my kids were because what do you do with people who maybe they're not even Christians yet and they come, are bad backgrounds?

I still think you have to keep your guard up here even at church. So my kids don't get to go anywhere without me when they're little, and then when they got bigger, that's fine, they can kind of take care of themselves.

Yes? When they're in high school, they don't just turn the other cheek kind of thing, they get beat up. How would you approach teaching them to protect themselves, to handle that situation? This thing occurs.

Yeah, okay, good question. I'll repeat it because we haven't been repeating it for the tape, although I don't think we'll put it online. I'll let these men chime in, but I always taught Luke, my son, I never said it's wrong to hit or fight.

I said there are wrong times and right times, and here's the right time. If somebody's hurting your mom or your sister, you pummel them until they stop. That's why you've made like a boy, because you can fight and protect.

There's a time to hit somebody. If someone calls you a name, we don't hit them. If somebody's taking advantage of some other kid and they've got them on the ground and they're excessively beating up and all that, you know, you could intervene.

But there's just times where we hit and times when we don't. And if somebody hits you, you can kind of work through that with Peter. But we had a guy here at church and he does street evangelism and he has a military background, so I know he can take care of himself.

It was Jim McStay. So Jim said, this guy said he was gonna punch me if I said anything more about Jesus downtown Worcester. What should I have done? And I said, well, God gives you reflexes for a reason.

I said, if he was gonna try to punch you, I think you should block it and subdue him, even though you don't have to hit him, but you could just, you don't have to take the shot, right? When Jesus was talking about turning the other cheek, it was the backhand stuff and you could see which cheeks and what's the hand because it wasn't a punch, it was a backhand insult.

And if somebody backhands you and won't even give you the front part of their fist in disgust with their backhand, then you just let them hit the other. But if somebody hits you, I think you've got to duck.

I think you've got to protect yourself. Same thing with guns and kids. We always said to Luke, listen, guns are for the enemy. You do not shoot mom. I'm talking about play guns. The real guns, they stand daddy safe.

You don't point fake guns at mom and sisters, you protect them. That's what these are for. They're not wrong, but they're to protect. They're for the bad guys. So I always taught Luke, there's a right time to hit.

And if you're gonna hit, follow through with the hit. And so we practiced punching. We practiced, here's the thing and how to aim through and punch and turn and everything. So I figured he needs to know that for defending weak people, Proverbs 31.

I'm a pacifist, so.

I'll add just one thing, because I've kind of seen it with Alyssa again, from a female perspective, right? I mean, a girl in essence, a lot of it today is not as physical as I remember back in my days, even between guys and girls to girls and guys to guys kind of fighting.

It's really downturned almost to the social media, the social shame and it gets to the point where it's just being mean, right? So now how do you deal with that type of a thing? You know, we've had to deal with that, some with Alyssa and parents and other things too, just when people wanna be mean, it's very easy to socially shame someone and it's worse than a hit, right?

In most cases, at least I would think it worse than a hit. So that's just what I've seen, at least from the female side, more of that. I haven't, not having boys to raise them myself, I haven't seen it.

I would say my father taught me, as Pastor Mike said, right? There are times when there's a time not to hurt me. You know, that's my own experience from my father, but it was a little bit different with Alyssa.

If it's biblical.

They say, don't look at me, this contact is so important. You said not to. You know, you have to have a boundary. When I contact people, when I see the kids who, you know, I say, pick on all the kids, the kids who turn away, don't make eye contact.

The sooner you can turn these things into spiritual truth, I think the better for the kids. And I was just thinking about 1 Peter chapter two, the Lord Jesus, when he was reviled, he did not revile in return.

When he suffered, he did not, when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. And as Christians, we're going to be persecuted and picked on and everything else.

And even when we're not acting Christianly, we're just a kid on the playground or social media. And I try to teach my kids from an early age, people can say all kinds of things and I know it's going to hurt, but we don't have to get back.

That knee jerk, I'm going to get you back. And if you think you've got a sharp tongue, I've got a sharper tongue. We just have to let it lie and let God settle all the issues. It's okay not to do anything, except Lord, I'm going to trust this to you.

And little Luke would come up to me and somebody would leave the church and say something bad about me. And he'd say, Daddy, why doesn't so-and-so like you anymore? And I just said, you know what, son, it's okay.

You know, I've got my faults and they've got theirs and everybody doesn't have to like me, right? And so we want to just be faithful and we want to just have our consciences cleaned and just say, all right, we can just trust the Lord in this.

Because we want to get back, right? You hurt me, I want to hurt yours. Okay, other questions? How about modesty, the modesty issue? That one came up on the email. Scott, what do you do, either Scott, what do you do with your girls in modesty and how do you teach your boys how to look at girls rightly?

Modesty, Dating Boundaries, and Teaching Sons Purity

Again, Alyssa's been pretty good. And you said this isn't going up, right? No. Overall, she's been pretty good, right? I think, again, social media is a big influence for a lot of kids, right? They want to look like what is being posted out there where they are on it or they're friends and things of that sort.

So, you know, in some ways, and I think it comes down to Karen and I too, is making sure to teach them what is and what isn't, right? Because sometimes they don't even understand themselves, right, they just wear something because they think it looks nice.

And then they come to us and we're like, you're not wearing that, there's no way. That's, you know,.

Let alone go to church wearing that kind of a thing, right? So it's just, it's one of those things that, you know, we've just started to kind of, I wouldn't say struggle with, but it's been one of those things that we're now, that she's out of kind of that age of innocence and young, right, age, and she can buy her own clothing.

And sometimes, you know, she'll now text Karen or me, you know, what do you think of this, right? And so we've, because we've had to return a few items when she brought them back. But I think it, you know, it was a learning process for us because she was our only child and the first, you know, that we've raised as a female, and of course, and so modesty has been something that she understands, and she understands that modest doesn't mean old woman-ish, right?

It doesn't mean she has to be completely covered, but at the same time, there is a point where what is, what is, you know, what is acceptable compared to what is, what you normally see posted somewhere else, right, that would be unacceptable.

So again, it's newer for us. I know you've probably had more experience just with the girls as they've grown up, if any, but I mean, we're just kind of dealing with it very slightly, but, well, and maybe I shouldn't be on the panel because

That's what I was thinking.

Yeah. We've never had a problem, really, with that because we would have great influence over what the kids wore at such an early age. Now, maybe some people would disagree because maybe you've seen my daughters and had a, you know, in terms of what they would dress that, but they were kind of indoctrinated in terms of what clothing the girls would wear, and as they got older, and like Scott's saying, and have the ability to then select their own clothing.

I don't, it's been, I think there have been a couple times we've had to say no to something that someone's bought, but generally speaking, the kids have had to learn a standard based on an expectation for them.

And in terms of the boys and what they look at, we have really relatively strict standards in terms of this whole concept of dating with the boys. So I always, I've driven the point home about purity with the boys because I don't even let, quite honestly, I don't let my boys ever be together alone with a girl, really, until they get married.

That might sound extreme to a lot of people, but that's just the way it is in our household that not allowed to date by themselves. They've always had to have, they always have to have a chaperone, really, until the day they get married.

Emily and Kevin were never alone until they got married. And Emily, Rachel, and Vincent were never alone until the day they got married, and never, I think, actually, I will confess, about two weeks before Vincent and Rachel got married, I was sitting up on the Carolinas basketball games, and my phone rang, and Vincent said, would you mind, could I possibly pick up Rachel and take her out for a coffee?