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.

Simple Ways to Help Your Child Remember God

Simple Ways to Help Your Children Remember God - Parenting Like Hannah — Photo by John Morgan

Poor Beriah! Joseph’s son Ephraim had two sons who were killed by the men of Gath. After their death, Ephraim had another son whom he named Beriah “because there had been misfortune in his family.” (I Chronicles 7:23 NIV) Can you imagine going through life knowing your name reminded your father of the death of your brothers? No small burden for poor Beriah!

Things might not have turned out so well for Beriah, but normally the naming of children in Israel was an exciting moment. The meaning of the name and the parent’s favorite Jewish heroes of faith, often influenced the choice. In fact, Jesus is actually the Armaic form of the name Joshua.

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What Moms Need to Understand About Men

One of my favorite musicals is My Fair Lady. I particularly love the character Henry Higgins. Here was an extremely well-educated, wealthy man who didn’t have a clue about women. He looked upon Eliza with derision for the better part of the movie, only to realize he couldn’t live without her.The truth is, we women don’t understand men much better than they understand us. Oh, like Professor Higgins, we think we do. Yet, if our husbands were painfully honest, we would realize we don’t understand them as much as we believe. Those misunderstandings can lead to spats, fights and even divorce if we aren’t careful.

I was curious when offered a chance to review For Women Only (revised and updated version) by Shaunti Feldhahn. Upon first glance, my inner Henry Higgins surfaced. What woman didn’t know about the eight subjects she was covering in her book? As I continued to read though, I realized most women don’t understand as much as we think we do about how the male mind works.

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Finding Parenting Joy

Have you ever seen one of these extreme close-up photos? They usually look really bizarre, but are often an extreme close-up of something mundane. Once you pull back and see what it really is, you often find you have a new appreciation for the entire object.

The Bible makes it clear children are a special blessing from God. Yet, we often get so caught up in their future, we forget to enjoy the present with them. Instead, we find ourselves stressed, frustrated and exhausted. We suddenly realize not only is our joy gone, but we are not even thanking God anymore for the blessing of our children.

How can we remind ourselves of the joyful blessing our children are instead of constantly stressing about their future? Perhaps, we need to find a way to take a look at the extreme close-ups of parenting our kids. Maybe then, we can marvel at our children and find our joy for parenting refreshed.

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Teaching Children to Recognize God’s Dreams

Teaching Children to Recognize God's Dreams - Parenting Like Hannah On Sunday, the adult Bible class I attended had more fun, excitement and pure joy happening in one place than I had seen in awhile. Our teacher was discussing the idea of dreaming big dreams for God and with God. He divided us into groups and handed each group a sheet of paper with a ministry from our Church written on it. We had several minutes to dream big dreams for that ministry. The only stipulation was that we could not censor the dreams as to whether or not they were “viable”.

We haven’t had a chance yet to see everyone’s dreams, but it seemed like every group was excited about their list. It was refreshing to dream big dreams without censorship.

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Teaching Children to Set Priorities

Life is about choices. Every choice we make has some sort of consequence. It may be good or bad, but something happens because of the choices we make. Many are so minor we don’t even notice them. Others can change our entire world. Some consequences may be immediate, while others will happen years later. As Christians, we also believe that some of our choices have eternal consequences.

Part of teaching our children to make good choices is teaching them how to prioritize. Eternity changing decisions need to be made with the most thought and prayer. Choices about what to have for breakfast shouldn’t require as much of our time and effort. Yet often, we find our priorities have gotten all out of order. Suddenly we find we have spent hours searching for the perfect outfit, but don’t have the time to read our Bibles or attend Church.

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