Giving Christian Parenting advice can be a bit tricky. While there are definitely lots of commands and principles that help, there aren’t thousands or verses that specifically address parents. Yet, God is the best parenting expert there is. He never gives us bad advice and never comes back a generation later to admit what He told you was wrong.
So what does God teach us in the Bible that is helpful in parenting? The new book, The Life Giving Parent by Clay and Sally Clarkson attempts to answer that very question. The authors try to break down Christian parenting into eight ways of touching your child’s life with God. From numbering your child’s days to guarding your child’s heart and more, they give a pretty thorough covering of the main areas of Christian parenting.
No, this isn’t an article about guns. Or metal detectors. Or the failings of our mental health system, schools or parents. It’s about what you, a caring, loving Christian can do to make a real difference in the serious and sometimes deadly problems facing young people today.
Have you ever thought about how often weather plays a part in Bible stories? Storms can frighten your kids. Snow days or beautiful, sunny, warm days may make them happy. The people in the Bible had all sorts of reactions to the weather they experienced, too. What happened during the various types of weather also taught them something important about God.
In Top Tips for Teaching Kids About Empathy, we shared some basic tips for teaching empathy. To really raise empathetic kids though, they need a lot of practice seeing the world in different ways. (This is in no way an attempt to water down God’s Truths, rather to understand relationship dynamics caused by different points of view.) Fortunately, there are a lot of fun things you can do to help your kids begin to develop an empathetic heart.
Can your kids see the world from the point of view of another person, or do they only see the world from their perspective? While God’s truths are universal, many other things in life are seen from different perspectives. Often conflicts arise, because people view things differently and refuse to understand how and why the other person does not view the situation in the same way.