Friendship – Parenting Like Hannah

Teaching Your Kids About Friendship Levels

As a Christian parent, you are probably teaching your children to be kind and loving to everyone. Which is absolutely what you should be doing. It’s important, however, to also teach them how to be discerning in their friendships.

While that sounds counter-Christian, even Jesus had different layers of intimacy with various people. He was closer to his Apostles than he was to other people. He had a special friendship with Mary, Martha and Lazarus. He wasn’t as close to Judas as he was to John. And there were reasons for each one of those choices. Of course he was closer to John, because he knew John loved him and he could trust him (as far as we know, John was the only Apostle at the crucifixion). Judas, on the other hand, was stealing money from their funds and he knew would later betray him.

While your children should be loving and kind to everyone, granting certain intimacies to the wrong people can hurt them in multiple ways. It can lead to betrayals that range from gossip to allowing themselves to be convinced to do things they shouldn’t (which can at times lead to injury, trouble with authorities or even death).

Discernment is a biblical principle. Hebrews 5:14 tells us that a sign of spiritual maturity is discernment – the ability to distinguish between what is good and what is evil. While the children who can cause your kids trouble are not necessarily going to rise to the level of evil, they can still cause them a lot of pain and trouble.

So how do you teach your kids discernment when it comes to friendship? It begins by teaching them about three levels of friendship.

Best friends. There is no limit to the number of best friends one can have. The trick is not in the number, but in the choosing. Best friends should be people your kids can trust to keep a secret. People who have their best interests at heart – whether it’s standing up for them or encouraging them to be the best they can be. Best friends are encouragers, supporters, nurturers. They can also be fun and have interests in common, even though those things aren’t mandatory. Of course the very best friends will be Christians. Why? Because if God is the most important thing in the lives of your children and their best friends, they will hopefully be operating from a biblical worldview. Having friends who understand why your kids make unpopular choices and make the same ones themselves can make the teen years so much easier for your children.
Friends. These are often people your children enjoy spending time with doing similar activities. Often they haven’t risen to the level of best friend because they haven’t known them long enough to know whether or not they can be trusted, they don’t have enough in common or they enjoy being together but your child knows they can’t keep secrets or aren’t supportive during tough times.
Acquaintances. This is everybody else. Your children should be kind and loving to these people – regardless. They shouldn’t do things they know will be hurtful to them. Some acquaintances may later become friends and some will stay at this level – and that’s okay. Jesus didn’t become close to everyone he met, but he was kind and loving to them, served them and taught them what God wanted them to know. Jesus didn’t need to be everyone’s best friend in order to help them get to Heaven.

Have constant conversations about friendship with your kids. Because at their age, friendships can help determine the choices they make that can impact the rest of their lives.

Fun Holiday Dinner Conversation Starters for Kids

Holiday meals and gatherings can add an interesting dynamic to any family. Suddenly large groups of family members are spending time together who may not normally see each other for a variety of reasons. Children can be shy around people they don’t know well in general and if your kids spend a lot of time online, making conversation may not be one of their strongest skills.

It’s not just the kids though. Sometimes adults become very stilted and awkward around children. Or they ask embarrassing questions or feel a family gathering is a great time to give a personal critique of everything about your child they find unfortunate. Throw in a few random discussions about politics and family hot topics and things can go wrong very quickly.

Thankfully, there is something fun you can do to encourage healthy conversations when everyone gets together. Place conversation starters in front of every place setting. Each person should have unique questions in front of them. These are open ended questions designed to get people opening up in fun ways and telling stories. You can find free printable conversation starter cards online, but add a few of your own. Make sure to include a few that encourage the Christians in your family to share their faith stories. Questions like, “Tell about a time you saw God working in your life” or “tell about a time you realized God was smarter and wiser than you” can provide some interesting faith stories.

If you have people in your family who have rejected God, place questions in front of their plate that are more subtle about pointing them to God, like “name three things for which you are grateful” or “what is your favorite way to help others”. Their answers might let others get a peak into how to better minister to them.

If you know a family member has a particularly good story to share, you can give them a set up question that will hopefully lead to the story, like “tell about your funniest encounter with someone famous” or “tell about the time an older relative had an interesting encounter with the mailman”.

Have fun with it. You can take turns with everybody listening to the same stories or divide the table into smaller conversational groups. If you do smaller groups, bring everyone into the same conversation during dessert and have everyone share the most interesting or funniest thing they learned.

This year minimize awkward and boring conversations. Have some fun and bond as a family by learning more about each other.

10 Fun Gratitude Activities for Your Family

Did you know the Bible tells us to give thanks 73 times? That’s a lot of repetition of a relatively simple command. In addition, the words thanks and thanksgiving appear in another hundred or so verses. Obviously our gratitude is important to God. He wants us to be grateful because it helps align our spirit with His. Arrogance, selfishness and other unchristian character traits are more difficult when one stays in a spirit of humble gratitude. Likewise, service, generosity and faith sharing are easier when you are grateful for the gifts God has given you.

Our world doesn’t encourage gratitude. Oh, we may hear people talk about it from time to time, but it’s really not a priority. Which is interesting. Even from a secular point of view, gratitude has been shown to have all sorts of benefits to physical and mental health.

Just like many of us have gotten into the habit of being ungrateful, we need to help our families develop the habit of gratitude. Thankfully, there are some fun things you can do to put your family in a gratitude mindset. Here are some of our favorites.

Gratitude tablecloth. Find a plastic tablecloth light enough to write on clearly. Place padding underneath it so markers don’t bleed through to your table. Every time your family sits down to dinner (also a great Thanksgiving idea for extended family to join in), have everyone take a marker and write something new for which they are thankful. How long does it take to fill up the tablecloth? To keep from repeating, review previous entries before allowing anyone to write something new. This also serves as a reminder of how much your family has been given by God.
Thanks jar or centerpiece. This is another idea that works well year around or at Thanksgiving. Find a pretty jar or bowl. Place beside it blank slips of paper and pens. Encourage everyone to write something on a slip for which they are grateful. You can make it a regular thing or just remind them when something happens to write a gratitude slip for it. Periodically, read all of the slips in the bowl and pray to God thanking Him for those blessings.
Sidewalk thanks. If you live on a street with a sidewalk, take some chalk and write “Please tell us something for which you are thankful”. Be sure to write a few things yourself to get it started. Then leave a couple of sticks of chalk where people can see them, but not step on them and get hurt. You may even want to put a little container for them in the grass so people will return the chalk where it’s safe.
Thank you treats. Make some muffins or cookies or other treats and bag them up with a short note of thanks. How many people can you thank with them? Can you focus on people who may normally be unseen by others, but should be thanked for everything they do?
Thanks in many languages. This is a way to make saying thanks more interesting, because it can encourage more conversation if you thank someone in Czech! It also can be a way to think about those in the mission field who are often making sacrifices to serve others and teach them about Jesus.
Thanks by color. This is a great way to teach young children how to thank God for His blessings in prayer. Cut out little slips of different colors of paper. Place them all in a little container. Encourage your children to take turns choosing a color and thanking God for something that is the same color as their slip of paper.
Gratitude art journal. For those with young or artistic children, buy a journal that is meant for sketching. Place pencils and crayons beside it and put it where everyone will see it during the day. Encourage everyone to draw either something for which they are grateful or a depiction of their day and everything in it for which they are grateful.
Pinterest thanks. Search for “volunteer thank you’s” and you will get tons of ideas you can use to create little thank you surprises for people.
World record thanks. Challenge each other to see how many people you can thank in one day. It will be hard to keep count, but at the end of the day, celebrate by sharing some of the thank you stories and the reactions you got from people.
Leftover candy thanks. If you are reading this close to Thanksgiving, you likely still have too much candy in your house. Get creative and tape a little punny thank you note to a piece and give it to someone. (ex. Reese’s – There are so many Reese-ons we are thankful for you!)

Have fun with it, but focus your family on gratitude. You may be surprised at the new blessings that come from being grateful for the ones you already have.

When Your Kid Doesn’t Fit In

We all seem to be a bit hardwired to want to fit in….to be popular. It’s perhaps a little less common in adults, but for children and teens it can be a major preoccupation. Some are content with being on the margins of popularity, while others will do literally anything to be considered popular or a member of the top social group.

While there are Christian character traits that will make people more likable in general, our beliefs mean we can’t do or even believe a lot of what popular culture and hence many peer groups promote. Your kids may go to a Christian school, which can help, but often even “Christian” kids aren’t really living their faith or even have any knowledge of what God commands of His people.

The truth is that if your kids are going to be strong Christians, they also need to learn how to stand with God – even if it means they are left out of parties or certain people they like won’t date them or befriend them. They need to learn how to do this without it destroying their self esteem or causing them to become arrogant, bitter or ugly in how they treat those who reject them.

They need your help in identifying their support network. Who are those people who will accept them and encourage them to obey God – even if they don’t agree with their Christian beliefs? Who will support them when they are struggling? Who will listen when they need to vent? Who will give them hugs or pray for them?

Remind them that even when you aren’t around to love and support them in person, you are always praying for them. Encourage them to use prayer and scripture to remind themselves that God is with them. Teach them how to reach out to their support network when they are struggling.

The truth is that Christians are never truly alone. Satan wants your kids to feel passing loneliness to their core. He wants them to crave fitting in and being popular. If he can accomplish that, it will be easy to get your kids to disobey God in a myriad of ways. Because the truth is that culture will always be anti God even when it pretends to be Christian. Your kids have to have the strength and courage to stand alone if necessary to please God. Fitting into the culture surrounding us rarely ends well for the Christian. Teach your kids to be comfortable on the margins.

Fun Family Activity on Controlling Your Words

One of the great things about little children is that they have no filter. If they think it, they are extremely likely to say it! While that can be funny at times, they can also say things that unintentionally hurt the feelings of others. Over time, most children begin to develop a filter of sorts. They learn that it is probably not the best idea to say certain things. As the world around them is beginning to have no filter, however, you will have to spend more time working with your children on developing a godly filter between their thoughts and words. There is a fun mini family devotional and activity you can do with your kids to begin the process.

For the activity you will need white paper, markers or crayons, pens and scissors. Call your kids together and tell them the story found in Numbers 20:7-12. Point out that Moses evidently thought he would strike the rock instead of speaking to it as God commanded. His thoughts convinced him to (in this case) not say something God told Moses to say. More often though, we think something and shouldn’t say it, but do.

Give your children each a sheet of paper. Have them draw a brain at the top and a mouth at the bottom. The drawings don’t have to be fancy, just clear enough so your kids will remember which is which. Then have them cut another sheet of paper into strips.

Have them write on slips of paper things they often think, but shouldn’t say out loud. They can stick these slips to their brain drawings with glue or tape. Then have them write on slips the types of things they should be saying to others and tape those slips to the drawings of their mouth. Older children can draw a filter between their brain and mouth and write down things they could say to themselves to remind them to not actually speak things that shouldn’t be said.

After they are finished, talk about their art. How hard is it for them to remember to not say certain things? What can they do to get better at filtering their thoughts before speaking? Why does God want them to be so careful about what they say to others? With older children also talk about the difference between opinion and truth and that it isn’t necessary to share their opinion with anyone. (Note: “Their truth” is usually an opinion and not an objective truth.) You might also want to all memorize scriptures like James 1:26 and 1 Peter 3:10.

If you have children who are extroverted, you will need to revisit this conversation multiple times. Extroverts are more likely to speak, which often increases the chances they will say something they shouldn’t. Introverts aren’t immune to saying unkind things, however. They just may say it a little more quietly or think no one hears them because they are saying it under their breath.

If your family has developed really bad speech habits, you may want to have a fine jar for collecting fines when people don’t filter their speech. Of course, once your kids can control their tongues, don’t forget to work with them on controlling those negative thoughts to begin with! The Bible says this is one of the most difficult skills to master, so make sure you spend plenty of time with your kids working on it.