Thomas Weaver writes 5 Ways to Make Your Kids Hate Church and I would add to that title . . . or encourage them to just drift away when older. Many churched kids grow up and quietly drift away. Brian wrote a nice piece here on how to help your kids get and stay connected to a family of believers.
H.T. Challies
Being a Mom requires a deep commitment to delayed gratification. Amy Scott writes here about how even when you mother the best you can, the fruit of gratefulness comes some day in the future.
Excerpt:
Maybe the Proverbs 31 lady gets praised in the gates by her children, but the Bible doesn’t say when that happens. Once a year on my birthday, they hint at having nice feelings for me. On Mother’s Day, the kids who remembered to make a card remind me that I’m the best mother they’ve ever had. (Being a traditional family, I’m the only mother they’ve ever had, but you take what you can get.) But really, you’re pretty much toast the rest of the year unless you buy them an orange soda at the mini-mart.
Maybe thankfulness from our progeny comes when our sons go off to boot camp and realize that making them clean their room wasn’t the worst idea after all. Maybe it’s when a mother’s children hear the secrets from friends of broken homes. Maybe it’s when they emerge from the safe nest of their home and realize that the world is a cruel place, that there are people out there who are not cheering for them.
Every parent asks this same question: When should I talk to my kids about sex. CCEF has a helpful short video to get you going. Here are a couple key lines from the clip:
It’s better to be proactive than reactive.
It’s better to inform than to go back and re-interpret our children’s view of sex.
H.T. Vitamin Z
Question: How do you say I love you to your 14 year old son?
Answer: Ask him how his day went.
This is how the text exchange went . . . Read more…
I’ve been reading Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive. One of their suggestions is that encouraging people with small steps can be helpful in influencing them to take bigger steps (and they cite a study to support that claim). The idea is to make a small request first, and a larger request later. The smaller request prepares people for the larger one and increases the positive response rate for the larger request.
Then they apply that principle to children. Read what they say, see my experience with it, and see what you think:
Would you do this? Most strangers are quite upset about it. I would think there are better ways than what this mom did, but I confess that I have felt similar urges on occasion. Fortunately, I have not acted on them. What’s your preferred method?
When you had children, what did you expect to happen to your marriage? That it would get better, or worse? What actually happened? Now go and read this and compare your answers to the authors – and note the importance of agreement between the two parents…
(HT: Jesus Creed – I love Saturdays on the Jesus Creed blog!)
Chuck Colson writes a brief and insightful commentary on Twilight: Conversations with Your Daughter.
Colson points out that the clandestine negative influence Twilight may have on teenage girls may be more corrosive to biblical values then parents realize.
Gee, no kidding? Who would have thunk it?
We’ve been working through A Case for Kids (from CCEF) in one of our Adult Christian Education Classes on Sunday mornings at Grand Ledge Baptist, and all involved have found the content very helpful. I am pleased to point out that you can view much of the same quality teaching here. These videos move parents past dealing with behavior alone and help us deal with the heart issues of our children.
Good Stuff!
Here’s a breakdown of the sessions (with session by session viewing): Read more…
