Take 5 Bible Challenge

Take 5 Bible Challenge - Parenting Like HannahEver wonder if you only have time to do one thing today to point your kids to God and make them emotionally healthy, what it should be? The answer is so simple, yet so few Christian parents do it.

Take at least 5 minutes each day. Snuggle up with your kids. Tell them you love them. Read them something from the Bible – a scripture or a story.

That’s it. 5 minutes. Your kids will get physical and verbal confirmation of your love. They will learn something important from God’s Words. I won’t bore you with all of the studies that support the importance of these three things in the lives of your kids – daily physical affection, hearing their parents say they love them and exposure to what God wants for them and from them. Trust me, the statistics are overwhelming.

Of course, spending more time listening and talking with them, hugging and reading the Bible to them, praying with them, mentoring your own children towards God will have an even greater impact, but let’s at least start with 5 minutes. We all waste 5 minutes a day. Let’s reclaim those 5 minutes and use them in the most productive way possible.

For those of you who have young parent friends, relatives or mentees, let’s ask 5 of them each day to join us (tag them on Facebook). The best part is you can do this challenge every day for a week. Or a month. Or a year. Then come to our Parenting Like Hannah Community Facebook Group (Be sure to join, if you haven’t already.) and post pictures of the scripture you read to your kids, or where you and your kids were when you read the Bible (You can go outside with the challenge when it gets a bit warmer!). Or have your five young parent friends join our Parenting Like Hannah Community Facebook page and get more challenges and encouragement.

Let’s take the Take 5 Bible Challenge and change the world!

 

P.S. The Bible reading part is an amazing challenge for all of us – even if you will never be a parent. Spread the 5 minute Bible reading challenge to everyone you know! It can change anything and everything!

Fun Way to Teach Kids About God, Money and Poverty

Fun Way to Teach Kids About God, Money and Poverty - Parenting Like HannahNothing can get people more animated than beginning a discussion about money. Or poverty. Or God’s views on the two. Yet scripture after scripture talks about how God wants His people to care for the poor. Whatever your personal interpretation, I believe kids benefit from understanding the realities of poverty. The scriptures also make it clear God expects us to be good stewards of the blessings He gives us. The money your kids will be given and earn during their lifetimes is one of those blessings. Teaching stewardship should also begin early.

The average full time worker making minimum wage in the U.S. takes home about $300 a week. Let’s be generous and raise that up to $500 a week. Let’s pretend she’s a single mom with two kids and like 2/3 of single moms, receives no financial help from the children’s dad. You can make the rest of the activity simple or difficult depending upon the age of your kids and how much time and money you have to spend.

Here are some of the things you can do to help your kids “become” this fictional mom to better understand God’s views on stewardship and our responsibility to help others.

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Fun Ways to Get Glimpses of Your Children’s Hearts

Fun Ways to Get Glimpses of Your Children's Hearts - Parenting Like HannahTo be an effective Christian parent, you really need to understand your children’s hearts. You need to know their priorities, what they love and what gets them excited about life. Those insights can help better guide you as you dedicate your kids to God. Unfortunately, no matter how well you know your kids, you can ultimately only see the parts of their hearts they allow you to see.

If your child is quiet, very private or going through a tough time, those glimpses of his or her heart can be hard to find. There are some fun things you can do though, that will give you sneak peeks into the hearts of even the quietest child. Some of these you may already be doing with your kids, but didn’t realize the important information the results of those activities was giving you about their hearts.

Here are a few of my favorites and how to start interpreting them.

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11 Tips for Teaching Kids to Make Great Choices

11 Tips for Teaching Kids to Make Great Choices - Parenting Like HannahIf you think about it, Christianity is about choices. When God gave us freedom to make choices, He also gave us the freedom to make good choices and bad choices. Sadly, most of us make more bad choices than good ones. It’s the reason Jesus had to die on the cross – for those bad choices that are sins.

Sins are bad choices that can eventually separate your kids from God and prevent them from entering Heaven one day. Your primary goal as a Christian parent is to do whatever you can so your kids make the choices that will lead them to living a Christian life and spending eternity in Heaven.

Unfortunately, like most things in parenting, children are often left to figure out how to make choices on their own. Nobody takes the time and effort to teach them how to make a good, godly choice. The results of this lack of instruction means your kids will be making a lot of unnecessary bad choices – in large part because they are experimenting with the process of making a choice. For many young people, this lack of training means they often default to choices that “feel good or right”. Feelings are often the worst thing to trust when making a choice in life – what we want isn’t always what is best for us.

The good news is the process for teaching kids how to make good choices isn’t really that difficult. The down side is that it can take you quite a bit of time to guide them through this process before it becomes a habit for them at decision making time.

So what do you need to do to teach your kids how to make good choices and make them more consistently? Here are a few of my favorites:

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Fun Ways to Connect Public School Work Back to God

Fun Ways to Connect Public School Work Back to God - Parenting Like HannahIt was the year of chocolate in our daughter’s public school class. I honestly don’t remember what grade it was, but her teacher had done a unit on chocolate. It had included some lessons about how chocolate was grown and processed. The teacher also discussed chocolate’s origins with American indigenous populations.

We were headed to Mexico on a mission trip and decided to try and find an authentic Mayan Mexican chocolate pot, so we could make Mexican hot chocolate at home. For some unknown reason, there were none to be found in the tourist areas. My daughter and I ventured into the “regular people” areas of town and found ourselves deep in the central market.

We were forced to use our limited Spanish to communicate. We saw all sorts of things we had never seen before. (Let’s just say we stop eating meat when we were there!) While we were searching, we had lots of conversations about culture and people and missions. We talked about the importance of getting away from the tourist mission trip experience and trying to better understand real life where we served. In fact, over a decade later, we still mention that adventure from time to time.

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