Encouragement – Page 39 – Parenting Like Hannah

Being the Message for Your Kids

Being the Message for Your Kids - Parenting Like Hannah Sometimes Christianity can be confusing. There are so many churches, looking at the Bible in so many ways. Frankly, some seem so far removed from what God teaches, it is hard to imagine they consider themselves Christian. Yet, as Christian parents, we not only have to figure out how to teach everything in the Bible to our children, but help them learn how to actually live what they read.

Recently, I was given the chance to review the new book Be the Message: Taking Your Faith Beyond Words to a Life of Action by Kerry and Chris Shook. Throughout, the authors attempt to help readers understand what living God’s Words – being the message in their terms, looks like on a day to day basis.

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Love Letter to Moms of Preschoolers

Love Letter to Moms of Preschoolers - Parenting Like Hannah The other day I was in the checkout line behind a young mom with two children under the age of five. She was simultaneously trying to get her older child to help her unload the cart, while also answering her younger child’s questions and keeping his busy hands from handling things she had no intention of buying for him. She looked tired and I don’t blame her.

Parenting preschoolers can be exhausting. Everything is new to them. They are built to explore everything in order to quickly ramp up their knowledge base. This often involves exploring things they shouldn’t, which means teaching appropriate boundaries almost non-stop. They are also trying to figure out what they can and can’t do physically. This means lots of accidents, clumsiness and touching and handling things which shouldn’t be touched or handled. Of course, this requires more limit teaching and limit reinforcing. Experiments with language also require more teaching, more limits, more reinforcement.

Let’s be honest. The parent of a preschooler has basically a non-stop running monologue that consists of “No!” “I said no!” “Please don’t touch that” “Be gentle” and answering thousands of important questions which usually begin with “Why?”. Frankly, there are days when the idea of running a marathon seems easier than keeping up your pace for the ten hours left in the day.

I will tell you what I told that precious mom who was trying so hard to train her children to be helpful, respectful and obedient in the checkout line. “God bless you! Keep doing that hard work every day. If you can be consistent and use godly principles as your foundation, you will never regret it. You will find the rest of childhood and even the teen years a breeze in comparison.”

So hang in there, Mom! I know you are tired, but I promise you there will be time for rest later. Right now love those precious little ones. Teach them about God and His commands. Teach them how much God loves them. Teach them we show our love back to God by obeying His commands and loving and serving others and telling them about God. Set firm, consistent limits and enforce them consistently. Give meaningful consequences for disobedience. Enter your children’s worlds and help them discover their God given potential. You won’t regret it for a minute.

Parenting and the Excuse Whisperer

Parenting and the Excuse Whisperer - Parenting Like Hannah Have you ever met a person who is trying to break a bad habit? Many times they have attempted more than once – usually with minimal success. If you talk to them long enough, you will often hear a lot of excuses for why they can’t break the habit they know is only harming them.

Excuses go all the way back to the beginning and the Garden of Eden. When God asked Adam and Eve about what they had done, the excuses started flying. They sounded a lot like what you may have heard many times in your own home – “She made me do it”. “It was his fault”. The source of ideas for all of those excuses was Satan – the great excuse whisperer.

There are two problems with excuses and parenting. The first I hope is obvious. All of those excuses we have for not parenting our children the way we know God would want us to do come from the same source as Adam and Eve’s excuses. We are often more willing to listen to Satan’s lies than God’s truths. Why? Because Satan knows how to push our buttons and make us think the wrong way is easier, more popular or “smarter”.

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Teaching Kids to Make Good Choices

Teaching Kids to Make Good Choices - Parenting Like Hannah Life is full of choices. Lots and lots of choices. Some of them are insignificant and there really isn’t a good or bad choice. Other choices can change the path a life takes for years to come. As parents, one of our biggest challenges is teaching our children how to make consistently good, godly choices.

Unless you become intentional about teaching your children how to make good choices, they will most likely go one of two ways. They will either copy whatever you currently do when you are faced with a choice or they will figure it out on their own – possibly by making decisions based on feelings or some other potentially unreliable method.

Jeff Shinabarger’s new book Yes or No: How Your Everyday Decisions Will Forever Shape Your Life can give you a framework for teaching your children the essentials of making good (and hopefully godly) decisions.

Shinabarger realizes some decisions are easy and have few consequences, The focus of this book is helping people know how to make decisions when they are confusing, difficult or have life-changing consequences. He divides the twelve chapters into three major sections – choosing decision making, your philosophy of choice and the decision making process. Each chapter ends with discussion questions if you want to read and discuss the book with others.

Shinabarger doesn’t necessarily introduce any radical new ideas into the decision making process. What he does is often take his personal journey with the non-profit Plywood People and show how his suggestions work in real life situations. His ideas are solid and provide a good framework for teaching a child or anyone else how to consistently make better decisions.

While this book is not what I would call a Bible study, Shinabarger does interject his Christian beliefs from time to time. Probably not enough for those wanting scriptures for every principle, but enough to make seekers know he believes God is an important part of the process.

My favorite part of the book was actually his discussion of problem solvers. I had never quite looked at leadership in that way, but what he said fit what I have experienced over the years. He emphasizes the need our world has for Christians who are willing to make the tough decisions and attempt to solve the world’s problems.

Although I wish Shinabarger had written more strongly about the importance of including God in the decision making process, this is basically a strong book on decision making with a Christian slant. While I personally would not use it in a Bible study, it can help provide a framework for skills you may want to teach your children to help them make good decisions. Personally, I am keeping it on my shelf for his quotes and thoughts on our responsibility to make the hard decisions to change the world.

A copy of this book was given to me for free in exchange for my honest review.