Rick Stephens
Rick Stephens is a co-founder of Raising Families, a husband, father, and grandfather. With 33 years of experience as a top-level executive of The Boeing Company and having raised four children of his own, he is able to support parents and grandparents by incorporating his knowledge of business, leadership, and complex systems into the family setting. It is this unique combination of leadership and family life that allows Raising Families to help parents become more joyful and confident, as well as more proactive, intentional family leaders.
Rick currently resides in Alpine, Texas with wife and fellow Raising Families co-founder Elane V. Scott.
Posts by Rick Stephens
2 Ways to Stop Yelling at Your Kids
Do you remember the last time someone yelled at you? If you're like me, you didn’t like it and just wanted the person to stop yelling. If you’ve ever yelled at your kids, they probably felt the same way. Yelling may have gotten their attention, but it probably didn’t do much else or help the situation. In the long run, all it did was teach them that they should yell when they get frustrated or angry. That’s not exactly what we want to be teaching our kids. The relationships we have with our kids have more
How to Create Opportunities for Your Kids
Many times, kids think of work as a four-letter word. Parents can show their kids that work can create opportunities, though. Parents can do this by teaching, coaching, and mentoring (TCM) their children about work. For kids, work routinely evokes strong feedback and emotion, often including statements like, "I don't want to clean up my room!" Sometimes it isn’t as harsh and is more of a question, "Do I have to do the dishes?" Regardless of the response, many kids see work as an imposition of their time and freedom to do what they want to do.
Teaching Kids about Money: Be a Coach and Mentor
If your kids are already in school, it’s definitely time to start teaching them about money if you haven’t already. One study found that money habits in children are formed by the time they're seven years old. At Raising Families, we know that parents have greater success when they change their role from being a teacher to a coach to a mentor as their kids get older. As parents move from each role their children will learn not only about money and how to use it but also about the value of money and how to
The Role of Parents – 3 Overlapping Parts
The role of parents is constantly changing. Regardless of changes in society, the needs of children and family are always evolving and parents often find themselves at a loss for what their role should be. As the founders of Raising Families, we've spent years helping families expand their understanding of the role of parents and what intentional parenting involves, including the transformation parents go through as their children mature. Keeping an eye on the big picture of enabling our children to grow to become happy and caring adults, ready to fulfill their dreams is what we're
What Are Family Values Exactly and Are They Important?
What are family values? Do they differ from other values? Are they important? Do you need them? Can they change? Most parents trying to raise thoughtful and responsible kids find themselves asking these kinds of questions more often than you might think. Most of us believe we are clear on our values and generally live our lives accordingly. But then we get married and perhaps have children. Suddenly, we're tested in all kinds of ways. We have to start making some small and some very large decisions that affect our partners and our kids. It's then
