Having Fun With Gardening, God and Your Kids

Having Fun With Gardening, God and Your Kids - Parenting Like HannahSpring is a wonderful time to have fun teaching your kids about God. His beautiful creation is blooming all around us. Trees and plants that looked dead, come to life with new greenery. The birds are louder as they call for mates or chirp warnings for nest builders.

Spring is also a great time to start a garden with your kids. The great news is you don’t even have to own land to garden with your children. There are a lot of great websites and books about container gardening and raising food from plants you grow in your house. (I found Indoor Edible Garden at Costco and it’s on Amazon for just a little more.)

As you plant seeds or tiny plants, care for them and wait for them to grow food, there are also lessons you can teach your kids about what God wants them to know. They don’t have to be formal lessons. Casual conversations as you plan and work often resonate better with children anyway.

So what are some of the lessons you can teach your kids while growing things?

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Teaching Kids About Loneliness

Teaching Kids About Loneliness - Parenting Like HannahThe statistics are frightening. Years ago, I don’t ever remember hearing about a child committing suicide. Teen suicide was even somewhat uncommon. Today elementary school teachers have to be trained in suicide prevention. Why? Because for the last few years a child under the age of 13 commits suicide every 3.4 days. Most of these children are 11-12 years old, but the youngest was only six. If you are African American, you have even more cause to be alarmed as roughly twice as many African American children commit suicide as their Caucasian peers.

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Top Tips for Choosing Entertainment for Your Kids (Part 2)

Top Tips for Choosing Entertainment for Your Kids (Part 2) - Parenting Like HannahIf you aren’t actively overseeing which movies, shows, books and games your kids use for entertainment, you are possibly allowing them to be swayed by those who want them to believe ideas that run contrary to God’s commands and principles.

Satan wants parents to believe monitoring our kids’ entertainment is excessive and unnecessary. Yet, even the Bible points out the influence the things we expose ourselves to can have on our thoughts and our faith. If you are a Christian parent, you absolutely must take the time to find a way to keep your kids from consuming mass amounts of entertainment that will change their thinking and in some cases even the hard wiring of their brains.

Ratings are virtually useless for Christians. What is now considered acceptable for children and teens to watch would have been rated “R” or “X” even a few decades ago. So what do you need to consider before allowing your kids to consume a particular entertainment item?

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Top Tips for Choosing Entertainment for Your Kids

Top Tips for Choosing Entertainment for Your Kids - Parenting Like HannahWhat’s the last movie you took your children to see? What are your kids’ favorite shows or games? What books do your kids read for pleasure? It would seem like entertainment marketed to their age group would be appropriate for your kids. Or if it is a “hit” all of your kids friends have seen, then surely it must be fine. Right? Not so much.

Whether we are aware of it or not, what our kids watch can influence their thinking over time. It can literally change the way their brains are hard wired in some cases – making it much more difficult to think, speak and behave in the ways God would want them to do.

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Finding Godly Mentors for Your Kids

Finding Godly Mentors for Your Kids - Parenting Like HannahYoung people today are bombarded by messages that can undermine their faith. They are often over scheduled and stressed. The pressure, along with the very mixed messages from society and their peers, can lead many of them to use ungodly and unsafe ways to try and cope.

Sadly, many young people don’t get enough meaningful attention from parents and other adults to help guide them through the ups and downs of growing up in our world. If young people do have parents who give them enough attention and guidance, they also need other adults to reinforce what their parents have taught them about what God wants for their lives.

Your kids need godly mentors in their lives. It helps them to have another adult who gives them the same advice God wants them to have. If their mentor has expertise in areas – like schools or careers – in which you may not, it also gives you and your kids another resource.

Some churches have a formal mentoring program. The ways they choose and train mentors can vary greatly. Or you may need or want to try on your own to find a godly mentor for your child. In either situation, you need to be aware of the qualities of a person who will make a great mentor for your child.

A potentially great mentor is someone who:

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