10 Important Things for Christian Parents to Agree On

Last week Bryan and I celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary! It’s hard to express just how much we have matured and grown together during those years. If I had to point to the one thing that has been the strongest catalyst for that growth, it would be our mutual spiritual development.

When we got married, we were both Christians, but our faith was only a small part of our lives. God certainly wasn’t the center of our marriage. Over the years, by God’s grace, we have grown together steadily to this place where nothing is more important in our home than our faith.

As I was reflecting on how important it is that we are on the same page with respect to our family’s spiritual life, I wanted to identify what things specifically make a difference for us in how we raise our kids.

Here are 10 things we agree on that I feel fundamentally drive our desire and ability to create a Christ-centered home. Continue reading

A Prayer Worth Shaping Your Parenting Around

The other day, my youngest daughter, Alexa (age 2), reached out and pulled Kenna to the ground by her hair, then attempted to bite her on the arm. I promptly (but calmly) carried her upstairs to her crib for a prolonged time out and firmly told her that biting and pulling hair are not OK. After her time out, she apologized to Kenna and we went on with our day.

If we could rewind to when Kenna and Nathan were 2, just 21 months ago, I would be describing a vastly different response to a hair pulling and biting episode. If I’m honest, it would have sounded like this:

Kenna bit Nathan. I picked her up immediately, angrily told her that she will NEVER bite Nathan again, and that she would have to have a spanking for hurting her brother. I spanked her, then put her in time out. I was furious that one of my children would bite someone else.

It’s hard to imagine that my approach, attitude and reaction have changed so much with Alexa. If you have more than one child, I bet much has changed with your younger children as well. It’s not that we weren’t thoughtful parents with our first child(ren). It’s that we had limited perspective.

With Nathan and Kenna, I thought biting was a sure sign that 1) they would eventually turn into uncontrollable monster children and 2) I was a parenting failure. I reacted in kind. I now know that 1) most children bite at some point without later turning into beasts and 2) your child’s bad behavior is not necessarily an indictment on your parenting ability.Continue reading

5 Discipline Tactics That Can Make a Big Difference

By far, my biggest challenge as a parent has been trying to figure out how to discipline my kids effectively. With three kids under four years old, discipline takes a huge portion of our day! There are days – and weeks – when discipline issues take the forefront, and any of our “positive” parenting efforts seem to get lost in the mix.

While discipline is certainly not an issue specific to Christian households, it does have specific implications for a Christian family’s ability (or inability) to have the right environment for faith development.

How can you engage in faith conversations when discipline problems create a relational barrier? How can you explore ways to pray when your kids won’t behave long enough to listen? How can you study the Bible when your kids are constantly fighting?

I’m certainly still figuring out how to minimize discipline issues in my house. But, along the way, I have found a few things that have made big differences for us in this area.

Here are 5 discipline tactics that could work for you too!

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Make Sure Your Kids Know the Bible is Weird: Part 2

This is a continuation from my recent post, “Make Sure Your Kids Know the Bible is Pretty Weird: Part I” (Part I contained 5 of 10 reasons the Bible is weird). If you didn’t read the first part already, be sure to do so for context! Today I’m picking up with reason number 6…

 

6.    The Bible is not a history book. (This is a huge one!)

 

The Bible is historical in nature, but it is not a history book by primary objective. The primary concern of the Bible is theological (a study of God). It was common regional practice in the time period of the Old Testament that kings kept separate historical and theological writings. Historical writings were intended to be precise and thorough in detail (or at least as thorough as the conventions of the day). Theological writings only contained portions of historical detail that were pertinent to the theological message being conveyed. Theological writings were, therefore, typically not historically precise nor thorough in historical detail.

The Bible falls into the category of theological writings. You can see traces of this distinction in notes such as this (1 Kings 14:19): “The other events of Jeroboam’s reign…are written in the book of the annals of the kings of Israel.” Annals were what the historical materials of kings were typically called. In other words, this verse is basically saying, “If you want the historical detail, go find this other book.” It is clear the Bible was not intended to be a history book, by its own implied admissions in verses such as this.

(Click here for several other examples of historical source materials mentioned in the Bible that we don’t have today.)Continue reading

Back to School or Back to Chaos: How Much Time Does YOUR Family Have for God?

My twins started preschool last week – a big milestone for our family! Even though they are only going two mornings per week, it represents a fairly big change in our schedule. One of the two mornings they go used to be dedicated “mommy time” (I work two days per week, so I’m not necessarily with them every day). Concurrent with preschool starting, Kenna is beginning ballet on Saturday mornings and Nathan is beginning tee-ball at the same time. These Saturday morning activities are replacing what used to be dedicated “family time.”

I was amazed at Kenna’s immediate response when I told her of all these “exciting” changes.

Kenna (age 3): “But mommy, what about family time? That is family time!”

Even at her young age, Kenna cherishes family time (what she knows as time with mommy and daddy). And she immediately called me out on the impending loss of it when I told her the days these new activities would take place.

This prompted me to evaluate – really quantify – how much quality time we have with the kids. When I say quality time, I’m talking about time outside of “life maintenance” activities (sleeping, eating, driving, morning/night rituals, etc.); time that is completely free for us to spend building relationship with each other and with God.

Being the overly analytical person that I am, I created a spreadsheet in Excel that labels and color codes every hour of my kids’ week (can I admit I am so “type A” that I actually enjoyed doing this?). Click here to see a PDF of what I did. I then used my chart to calculate how many hours per week my kids spend engaged in various activities – and how many hours that implicitly leaves each week for family and God time.Continue reading

Little Songbirds: Kids’ Worship CD Review and Giveaway!

Today I’m excited to tell you about a worship CD for kids that I received from Little Songbirds. We’ve bought quite a few worship CDs for the kids over time, but many of them never catch on. It seems like we always come back to the same few that they love! When Little Songbirds offered to send me a CD in exchange for my honest review, I was happy to try something new.

In two short weeks, the Little Songbirds CD has become a new family favorite! Here’s a little about why my kids and I are loving this album. They’ve also sent me a CD to give away to a reader and I’ll let you know at the end how you can win!Continue reading

60 Faith Questions I Hope To Answer Before My Kids Leave Home

In my recent post about starting faith conversations with kids, I pointed out that it’s one thing to acknowledge we need to be intentional in fostering the deeper conversations of faith; it’s another thing to have a plan for what those conversations should be. I said that I would draft a bucket list of conversations I want to have with my kids before they leave home someday and share them in a post. Here they are!

A few notes on this list:

1)      These are questions that I feel are important for any Christian to consider and eventually be able to answer. The possibilities are endless, but after reflecting on my own experiences and questions, these are the ones I want to prioritize with my kids.

2)      After you look over these questions, ask yourself this: Would my kids be able to answer these questions simply by watching how I live my life, or would I need to intentionally find ways to talk to them about these things in order for them to be addressed? While there may be a few that are answerable by observation, I think you’ll see that overwhelmingly these are questions that require a parent to intentionally initiate conversations (the point of my original post on this issue).

3)      Most of these questions are BIG questions. They are questions that, if asked point blank, would probably only be understandable to older teenagers. That doesn’t mean that they are 1) intended to be answered a single time or 2) intended to only be discussed with my kids when they are almost adults. In almost every case, these are questions that will be answered over the course of several years, with age appropriate ways of learning at each stage. I absolutely believe I am able to contribute to my kids’ understanding of many of these already at age (almost) 4. When you consider your own bucket list of questions, therefore, don’t be dissuaded by age. Write the questions you want to ultimately answer and work backward from there on how to start teaching those answers at whatever age they are now. (For example, we had a conversation just the other night about how we need to learn to love God a little differently than others because we can’t see him, touch him, hear him, etc. We acknowledged how strange that is and started talking about how we love God through our actions, our prayers, our worship, etc. This all is an age-appropriate way of addressing my question below, “What does it mean to really love God?” As they get older, we can look at deeper and deeper meanings of that.)

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Make Sure Your Kids Know the Bible is Pretty Weird: Part 1

The Bible has a lot of weirdness in it.

I’m not being irreverent. Really. The definition of weird is simply “out of the ordinary; unusual or striking; differing from the normal.” Most people would concur that much of the Bible, by its very nature, is weird by that definition.

There is a problem with weirdness. It’s jarring. When we encounter the abnormal, we tend to question its reality because it is outside of our own typical experience.

Why should you care? Well, the Bible gets torn apart by non-believers over its weirdness. I recently read a book written by an ex-Christian, now atheist, who provided all of his purported evidence for why the Bible can’t possibly be the inspired word of God. If you really analyze it, the author basically worked to debunk the credibility of the Bible by pointing to its many examples of weirdness and appealed to people’s association that weird means wrong or impossible.

It was eye opening to see all the weirdness of the Bible presented together in about 250 pages. It also reminded me just how wrong we can get what the Bible says if we 1) read it on a cursory level and 2) have the expectation that it shouldn’t be weird, as this author clearly did.

So why should we expect the Bible to be weird? Here are 10 big reasons for discussion with your kids. This is a really important topic. It’s a guarantee that your kids will eventually encounter non-believers making uninformed attacks on the Bible. It’s much simpler to attack weirdness than to defend it, so be sure to ground your kids in these points!

Due to the length of this post, I am breaking it into two parts. Here are the first 5 reasons.Continue reading

5 Principles for Starting Faith Conversations with Kids

Let me ask you something. Looking back at when you left home, were there perhaps a few conversations about faith you wish your parents had with you but didn’t?

Try not to laugh!

Seeing as how fewer than one in ten Christian families read the Bible together or pray together outside of mealtimes, most of us probably weren’t regularly engaging with our parents in conversations on the deeper matters of faith. But how much more grounded in faith we would have been, had we been given more opportunities to reflect on such questions in our childhood!

Consider this small sampling of faith challenges I grappled with in my first few years after leaving home:

  • Why does God want us to worship Him? Isn’t He “bigger” than that?
  • Why does the “Old Testament God” seem so different than the “New Testament God”?
  • How do you actually love a God you can’t see, touch or hear?
  • Why does it matter if I date or marry a believer vs. a non-believer?
  • What should the role of the Holy Spirit be in my life?
  • When people talk about “God’s will,” what does that really mean? Does God have a will for my life specifically, or only for the world at large?
  • How does a Christian approach the topic of homosexuality?
  • If I don’t believe in a literal creation story, where does that leave me with the rest of the Bible? With the rest of my faith?

The problem is, these types of faith conversations don’t casually “come up” in the course of an average day, or even in the course of an average morning at church youth group.

In order for conversations such as these to be had, they have to be part of our intentional parenting efforts.

Initiating conversations like these doesn’t come naturally to many of us, probably because we have so little experience engaging in faith discussions in our own childhoods. As a thought starter, here are 5 principles for starting more of these meaningful faith conversations at home.Continue reading

Teachable Moment: Prayer is a Privilege

I recently implemented a behavior reward system for my 3-year-old twins, and they absolutely love it. They get a star to put on a chart when they obey the first time I ask for something, when they do helpful things without being asked, and when they are especially kind to one another. When, between the two of them, they have filled in the chart with all 50 stars, everyone gets to go out for ice cream.

There is an important catch here: they don’t get a star EVERY time they do one of these things. As I have explained to them, if they get a star every time they do something good, they will learn to do good simply because of what they get in return. The stars are only there to help them get in the habit of thinking in the right way.

Now, if they were a little older they would figure out that the general pattern is a star every other time a qualifying “event” occurs. It can’t be every time, but if stars are too infrequent, I know they will lose interest and no longer be incentivized to work on their chart.

Picking a Velcro star from a little bag and sticking it on a chart is magical for a 3-year-old. On the one hand, I would like to say that as a mature adult, I can’t understand why stars matter so much to kids. On the other hand, I have to say I completely understand.

Prayer has been a difficult thing for me lately. I have felt like the master of praying prayers that go unanswered. As just one example, I’ve been praying for several people dealing with life-threatening illnesses. In every case the news continues to come back negative.Continue reading