Parent/Child Relationship – Parenting Like Hannah

9 Ways Christian Parents Can Support Their Kids in School

Schools start their year in a couple of weeks here. Whether your kids go to public or private school or you homeschool, they will be much more successful and happier if they feel supported by you throughout the year.

You don’t want to do their homework for them (Trust me. Teachers can tell whether their kindergarten student or his architect dad completed the city model project!), but what are some ways you can truly support your children in their educational journey?

Pray for your children, their friends, teachers, administrators, etc. Remind your kids daily that you are praying for them while they are in school. If you carpool, pray over them in the car as you drop them off (with driver’s eyes open of course!). When checking in about their day, remind them you have been praying about any specific need and ask how they believe God is answering that prayer (remember “wait” and “no” are answers from God, too).
Listen. When your kids want to talk about their day or something in their lives, drop everything and fully engage. Use active listening techniques – like nodding and asking clarifying questions. If your kids don’t feel like they can talk to you, they will turn to whomever will listen to them – and that doesn’t always end well.
Point out God. Sometimes you can do this by pointing out how you see God working in a situation. At other times, you may use God’s Words in scripture to remind them of things God wants them to know and how it applies to that real life incident.
Get to know their friends. There is nothing more annoying to a young person than telling a story about friends and continually being interrupted by a parent asking them to explain who the various friends are. If you have trouble keeping it straight, make yourself a cheat sheet you can refer to if necessary. Don’t stop there though. Be the house where there is always food and fun. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Or be the one who drives the group places. You will really get to know their friends as you spend time with them. Then you can help them navigate tricky relationships and be supportive of their friends as well.
Respect their teachers. I know there are teachers your children may have who are less than ideal. It’s okay to advocate for your child, but you can do it respectfully. Go through the proper channels, in the proper order. Don’t email the principal before you have spoken to the teacher about the problem. Avoid yelling, cursing and name calling. As my grandmother used to say, “You catch more flies with homey than with vinegar.” More importantly, you are modeling Romans 13:1-7 for your children. (I know it doesn’t directly address school teachers and principals, but I think the underlying principle applies.)
Make sure they get lots of sleep, exercise and healthy foods. Behavior issues, lack of stamina, poor moods, etc. can often be improved or eliminated with proper rest, exercise and diet. All kids through age 18 can benefit from 9-12 hours of sleep a day. In fact, teens need more sleep than children do in many cases. A quick run around the yard can actually make it easier for them to sit down and do their homework. (Just be sure to agree upon a set amount of time for outdoor play before they start.) Don’t forget that heavily processed foods will make them sluggish and can create immunity issues from a lack of vitamins and minerals.
Have breakfast and dinner together as a family. One country has an amazingly high score on tests of both childhood happiness and kids having similar beliefs as their parents when they become adults. They credit it to mandatory family breakfasts and dinners. They won’t even invite others to join them for those meals. You don’t necessarily have to go that far, but studies have shown spending time eating meals as a family and talking about everything while eating improves outcomes for children and teens in multiple areas.
Know their rights as Christians. Public school students have more rights to discuss and write about their faith than most teachers and administrators know. At the beginning of every school year, various groups like Focus on the Family publish an updated list of student rights that apply regardless of the school system. They also alert you to ones that may vary from school to school. Familiarize yourself with their rights and educate your children so they can respectfully advocate for themselves. If there have been issues in the past, take time to role play ways of handling similar situations.
Celebrate victories! No, as an educator, I don’t feel there is much long term value in bribing children and teens to do well in school. I do believe that school can feel very overwhelming at times. Any victory – whether it’s good grades or getting some sort of award – should be celebrated. It doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive. The point is to acknowledge the victory in a way the child can hear.

All of these tips require you to be engaged with your children and their school life. They don’t need you to micromanage them or swoop in like a mother hawk to attack and “fix” things. They do desperately need to feel your love and support. That’s what will make them truly resilient in school.

Can Arts and Crafts Make Christian Parenting Easier?

Wouldn’t it be nice if Christian parenting were easy? If you could just snap your fingers and rest assured that your children would be faithful, productive Christians as adults? Life would be so much better! Unfortunately, living in a fallen world means nothing is easy. There are things you can do, however, that will make your Christian parenting more effective and thereby, a bit easier.

Effective Christian parenting requires spending a lot of quality time with your kids. If you are all just looking at your phones and IPads though, not much of consequence is happening. You don’t want to lecture your kids, so what are some things you can do with them that help teach them some important Christian life skills and work on Christian character traits?

Surprisingly, one of the best choices is rather old school. Arts and crafts provide lots of benefits for you and your children. Crafting has been found to reduce tension, edginess and anxiety by 50%. What family couldn’t use something that made everyone a bit calmer?!

Even better, doing arts and crafts projects can help your kids work on their patience and perseverance. If you and your children are working on a project that takes a lot of effort or multiple sessions to complete, it can also help them develop a strong, biblical work ethic.

One study found that happiness results from feelings of being able to do things independently, becoming competent at something and doing things with others. Family arts and crafts projects can provide those elements. Yes, Christianity focuses on the joy that is found in Christ regardless of our circumstances, but it’s okay to have a little healthy happiness in your home, too.

Want to really up your Christian parenting game? Find arts and crafts projects that can also be used to serve others. Find ways to share your faith and encourage those who receive your finished projects. Your kids will find meaning and purpose as they grow to better understand the mission and ministry God has planned for them.

Don’t have a lot of money for supplies? Check out coupons for craft stores and yard sales. Find someone who already participates in the art or craft in which you are interested and see if they have some extra supplies they would be willing to give your kids. (Word to the wise. Don’t spend a ton of money on supplies for any one art or craft category until you are sure your kids are definitely going to pursue it long term! There are lots of ways to try a new craft without purchasing every possible supply. Kits are often a good way to experiment without a huge investment.)

Have fun with it. Set aside special times where everyone works on projects together or does a family project. Who knows? It really may make your Christian parenting job a bit easier!

7 Things Your Kids Need This Summer

Summer is quickly approaching and your family is probably finalizing plans for how you will spend those few weeks out of school. Many of you will fill every waking minute of your children’s time with camps and other organized activities. While those things can be good, there are seven things which your kids need more this summer.

Time to be bored. Boredom encourages your kids to process what they have been learning, dream godly dreams and be creative. Take away the devices and provide supplies for crafts, library books, plain paper or notebooks, pencils, pens and free time. If not used wisely, feel free to offer to substitute free time with extra jobs around the house!
Quality time with you. Did you know most parents only interact with their kids for a few minutes a day – primarily with logistical conversations? Your kids need lots of quality time with you listening to them and giving them coaching and counseling where needed. They need you to be totally present and engaged with them for hours, not minutes.
Daily time with God. Summer is a great time to help your kids establish lifelong habits of daily scripture reading and prayer. Those two habits are disciplines that will help them stay healthy spiritually.
Time walking in nature. Long walks in nature are phenomenal for mental and spiritual health. Taking them together can also give you more quality time.
Time serving others. In a selfish world, your children will easily become self centered and entitled. Regularly serving others in ways that allow them to also hear the stories of those people will encourage softer, others focused, servant hearts.
Time doing manual labor. Over scheduling means many kids aren’t learning how to work hard doing things that aren’t necessarily fun – a skill often needed to succeed in careers and ministry. You can add an element of fun, but it won’t hurt your kids to help you with household jobs that require more effort than putting food in a pet’s bowl.
Time learning Christian life skills. A lot of the things God requires of Christians are much easier if your kids have the skill sets to do them well. Things like conflict resolution and budgeting can make loving others and generosity easier. We have a free curriculum on our website, Living the Christian Life, with lessons for you to use.

Don’t make this summer another blur of too many activities and not enough time spent being intentional about helping your kids be healthy mentally and spiritually. Give them what they really need.

Tips for Having Natural Spiritual Conversations With Your Kids

As a Christian parent, you would probably love to have meaningful spiritual conversations with your children. When you try, however, the conversations feel stilted and awkward. Or perhaps you find what you thought would be a great spiritual discussion spiraling into an argument. It seems that no matter how hard you try, you never feel like the conversations are helping your kids grow spiritually.

Fortunately, there are a few simple things you can do to make it more likely you are able to achieve your goals in these crucial conversations.

Choose the time and place carefully – especially if you already know your children will disagree with what you have to say. Timing is half the battle. Try to have conversations when everyone is relaxed and well rested. Sometimes having them on a hike or other area away from home can make potentially tense conversations less so. What you want is for the atmosphere to be as relaxed and casual as possible.
Try opening the conversation with a casual question. Godly Play promotes using “I wonder…” questions when having spiritual conversations with children. Asking a question changes a conversation from sounding like a sermon to a mutual discovery of what God wants from both you and your children. It also gives them a platform for feeling heard, making it more likely they will listen to your counsel.
Give them space to ask questions and express doubts. We say it a lot, but it’s true. It’s not doubts that destroy faith, but doubts that aren’t addressed by Christians with godly, biblical answers. Leaving your children’s spiritual questions unanswered makes them vulnerable to whomever Satan sends their way to answer those questions.
Use their real life experiences to point out God’s wisdom and/or commands on the topic. Combined with “I wonder” questions, this works well. So, for example, if your child comes home talking about how nobody likes Susie because she tells lies, then you can launch at least a mini conversation with, “Hmmm. I wonder if that is one of the reasons God hates lies…. (No one can trust us if we tell lies)?”
Use the cover of their peers. Sometimes your child may be concerned about telling you about a doubt or concern. It can be easier if you frame the question about how people their age or their friends feel about the topic. Chances are at least one of their friends has the same concerns and they can answer your question honestly without having to openly admit they are having the same questions.
Stay calm and listen carefully. What if your child launches a spiritual bombshell in the middle of a conversation? If the child is doing it to get a reaction from you, losing your cool plays right into their plan. Most kids and teens will shut down the minute a parent gets upset. They stop listening, get defensive or begin rebelling. Often staying cool and casually presenting the truth gives them a little time and space to feel like they came to the conclusion on their own instead of being forced into it by you. Bring up this topic again periodically to monitor how they are processing it and don’t gloat when they finally agree with you.
Bring in a “neutral” third party. They may not listen to what they consider a sermon from you, but may read an apologetics book or watch a video. It removes the parenting dynamic from the equation and encourages them to deal with the actual topic without getting entangled with their feelings about your relationship.
Practice authoritative parenting. If you practice an authoritarian parenting style, your kids are already primed for rebellion because you have harsh rules and consequences without a nurturing relationship. If you are a permissive parent, your kids are also primed for rebellion, because you have taught them they can do whatever they want without consequence. Authoritative parents with their nurturing parenting style can get away with being firm and even strict, because their kids know their parents are doing those things in their best interest. They may not always agree with you, but they are much less likely to rebel against you and/or God.
Don’t be afraid to share spiritual truths, but mirror how Jesus did it. Sometimes your children may need to hear the harsh sounding truth that their choices are not making God happy. Making excuses for them or pretending like a sin isn’t a sin won’t help. Neither will pretending there is some mysterious third path where they can call themselves a Christian, but refuse to get baptized or even attempt to obey God’s commands but still go to Heaven. Sometimes the most loving thing we can do for our children is to tell them a hard truth. But even harsh truths can be shared with love and showing them there is a path for forgiveness and grace.
Don’t think addressing a spiritual topic once will settle the topic. As your children age, they will have more experiences that can raise additional questions or concerns. Bringing up important topics periodically can allow you to check in before they get too far down a spiritual rabbit hole.

Having spiritual conversations with your children doesn’t have to be difficult. The more often you have them, the more natural they will seem. And the more time you spend in personal Bible study, the more likely you will be able to handle whatever happens. Your kids desperately need you to have these conversations with them. Don’t let them down.

5 Benefits of Family Chores

Chores in many families are often an individual effort. Each person has a list they need to accomplish over a specific period of time. Chores are a great way to teach your children a great work ethic and responsibility (as well as some life skills), but can often get side tracked by a myriad of issues. One way to short circuit many of these intrinsic issues is to switch up the model to one of family chores.

So what are family chores? Each family member may still have individual tasks to perform, but doing chores is presented as a family effort. So instead of having a child on “dish duty”, present it as “we are all going to work together to clean the kitchen after dinner”. The same child may still be responsible for loading the dishwasher, but everyone in the family has a task at the same time in the same area. This has the benefit of having a more deeply cleaned kitchen, while minimizing the “Cinderella effect” solo chores can have on children. (I’m stuck loading the dishwasher while my sibling is playing video games. Sure, the sibling had an earlier chore while the dish loader was playing video games, but that’s quickly forgotten!)

Or crank up some fun music and work together to clean the house every Saturday morning. You may be separated throughout the house cleaning different rooms, but the music ties everyone together. Or offer to help your child with a chore – like going on a walk with your son as he walks the dog.

What are the potential benefits of family chores?

Gives you more opportunities for teaching and training your kids how to do certain tasks. It’s much easier on everyone if you are working with your child and see her put in a dish the wrong direction to make a quick correction than it is to call the child back to the chore after every dish has been placed incorrectly and must be replaced.
Promotes the idea of your family as a team that works together for the good of all. Too many families are groups of individuals sharing a living space rather than an actual family. Family chores reinforce working together and helping each other reach goals and do things for the good of everyone.
Gives your children the attention and time with you they crave. It’s amazing how much children open up when helping a parent cook dinner or clean a garage. They have your mostly undivided attention and can relax in that space and begin sharing their lives and hearts with you.
Models the way churches should work. Too often dysfunctional churches are merely reflecting the dysfunctional families that attend them. Having a healthy family dynamic can provide an example for the members of your church and for your kids of how Christians should work together to accomplish the good works God has for them to do.
Adds a bit of fun to boring tasks. Let’s be honest. Chores aren’t fun or they would call them hobbies! Working together to music, laughing, telling stories and jokes while you work can make something that’s boring seem more fun and help the time pass more quickly.

Try family chores for a while and see what happens. You may just find they solve a lot of your issues with chores.