Author: Thereasa Winnett

Thereasa Winnett is the founder of Teach One Reach One and blogger at Parenting Like Hannah. She holds a BA in education from the College of William and Mary. She has served in all areas of ministry to children and teens for more than thirty years and regularly leads workshops for ministries and churches. She has conducted numerous workshops, including sessions at Points of Light’s National Conference on Volunteering and Service, the National Urban Ministry Conference, Pepperdine Bible Lectures, and Lipscomb’s Summer Celebration. Thereasa lives in Atlanta, GA with her husband Greg, where she enjoys reading, knitting, traveling and cooking.

Raising a Humble Child

Humility gets a bad rap in today’s world. People often associate the idea of humility with being a doormat, unwilling to stand up for anything and letting people take advantage of you. People may verbally say it is great to be humble, but they certainly don’t act like it.

“Toot your own horn.” “If you don’t promote yourself, who will?” “Demand what is rightfully yours!” Our children hear over and over again how they need to shout their personal greatness to the world so everyone can truly appreciate them and they will get what they are “due”.

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Answering Kids’ Tough Questions About the Bible

Kids are great with questions. They can ask “Why?” at the end of even the most thought-out response. Many parents are afraid of studying the Bible with their children – mainly because of the questions their kids may ask. Don’t worry though. You don’t have to know all of the answers. It is perfectly acceptable to tell a child the two of you need to do a little research on the subject and find the answer to that great question together.

Of course, your next question to me is “Where do I go for the answers?” Unless you are a very strong Christian who has studied the Bible for years, I would avoid Google and Wikipedia at all costs. For every grounded Christian who writes something there are multiple agnostics, atheists and very confused people who write something that is so far from the Biblical truth as to be scary.

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Teaching Kids to Reflect God’s Image

We don’t talk about this much in Church and I don’t think I have ever heard it discussed in a child’s Bible class, but we were created in the image of God. This means, just like Queen Elizabeth wants the coins and stamps to reflect her image and not that of Putin or even Prince Charles, God wants us (and our kids) to be an accurate reflection of Him.

Teaching your kids to accurately reflect God’s image has two important advantages. First you are training them to be more godly. You are also teaching them how to attract others to God, by being the type of person who almost glows reflecting God. People will be drawn to that light and want to know more about the God whom it reflects and how they too can worship and obey Him.

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Your Kids Need Multiple Reasons Why They Should be Christians

As adults, we begin to value the concepts of complete forgiveness and eternity in Heaven. In fact, the older we get, the more important they can become. Teens often have a difficult time understanding why they should be concerned about something that happens after their death. At that age, many teens have almost a sense of immortality. It is one of the reasons why they readily participate in risky behaviors most older people would reject as “not worth it”.

Your teens need to understand how God and Christianity can have a meaningful effect on their lives right now. Yes, you still need to impress upon them their need for forgiveness and the desire to spend eternity in Heaven. For a teen though, the most impactful things you can share are how being a Christian touches your life in meaningful ways every day.

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Creating Your Christian Parenting Village

We are having tons of fun these days planning our daughter’s graduation party. We decided to turn it into a huge thank you party for all of the people who have helped us raise our daughter over the years. We are inviting everyone from her “aunties” to the sweet lady at the cleaners that always asks about her activities and buys Girl Scout cookies to our neighbors and the people at Church who have had a hand in her spiritual growth. Don’t tell my husband, but it’s a long list!

I am a strong proponent of learning from the mistakes and lessons of others rather than insisting on making the same mistakes yourself, “just to see”. Probably one of the least heeded scriptures in the New Testament is Titus 2:3-5. It admonishes the older women to teach the younger, with the implication that the younger women are listening. Yet if you ask older women in most churches, they will tell you the younger women routinely dismiss any wisdom they have to share as old-fashioned or uninformed.

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