Faith Development – Page 62 – Parenting Like Hannah

Real School

School starts early in Georgia. Before the weather cools or the leaves begin to turn, our children are back in school. We live in a town where the parents are very involved in their children’s education. Almost all of the parents walk their children to class on the first day of school. PTA meetings are packed and home work is a high priority.

Most children in public school spend six to eight hours a day at school. We worry if they are getting taught enough to make them competitive for college admissions. We find tutors if they struggle and push them when they procrastinate. It often seems like their entire future depends on how well they do in first grade.

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Celebrating Holidays

I love holidays. Weeks before a holiday (even the minor ones), I start planning. I am not particularly big on decorating, but I love the celebration part. Most holidays, I am in the kitchen preparing goodies for family and friends. At Christmas, I am that annoying person who has spent weeks making sure everyone has at least one handcrafted gift. I am also the one taking baked goods or candies to just about every neighbor on our street.

It is not that I necessarily want an extra long to do list several times a year. For me, holidays are a way for me to show the people I care about how much I love them. I want everyone who is special to me to feel special and to know how much they mean to me.

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Fact or Fiction

One of my concerns as a Bible class teacher of little ones (and as a parent) is for the children I teach to understand the Bible as history and not as fiction. Unfortunately, there are many people in the world, even some who consider themselves religious, who would argue that the stories in the Bible are fables. To counteract the influences of people in my child’s world who may try to undermine the Bible, I have done everything I could think of to reinforce the reality of the scriptures.

One of the easiest ways to help your child understand that the Bible is about real people, places and events is to continually tell them before you read or tell them a Bible story. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I even separated Bible story time from picture book reading times to create a boundary between the two types of stories.

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Talk a Lot…..

If you have a child under the age of two, you are probably used to conducting a running monologue for your child about everything. You tell him what you see, you ask her questions and then answer them yourself and probably thoroughly amuse bystanders on a regular basis.

Studies have shown you are doing the best thing for your child. The more words your child hears from you, the faster he will develop his own language skills. The constant exposure to your words imprints them in your child’s brain. Eventually she starts to understand those sounds have meaning and the meanings can get her something she wants more effectively than crying. (Maybe that is why my daughter learned to talk so early. I never was very skillful at deciding which cry was for what!)

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Let’s Celebrate!

One of the things I appreciate so much about the Bible is how everything is connected to something else. The water of the flood and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea foreshadow our baptism. Many of the Jewish holidays point the way to Jesus Christ, the Messiah. God gave the Jews Passover to remind them how He delivered them from Egypt. It also foreshadowed the coming of the perfect sacrifice – Christ. Our baptism is a reminder of Christ’s death, burial and resurrection. It also helps us remember that we have put to death our old sinful self and risen a new creature in Christ.

I believe God understands we need markers in our lives to help us remember what is important. Just like those Route 66 signs with arrows help us stay on Route 66, markers can help us stay on God’s path. My baptism is a distinct memory from the moment I committed my life to Christ. When we take communion every week, it serves also as a reminder of the commitment we made to the Lord when we were baptized.

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