Parenting Like Hannah

Awkward Teachable Moments and God

Teachable Moments and God - Parenting Like Hannah Teachable moments are some of the best tools in the savvy Christian parent’s tool box. You can create an experience or take advantage of one that happens naturally to teach your children important lessons. A lot of the ideas in Parenting Like Hannah are actually ways for you to intentionally create teachable moments to help your child develop specific godly characteristics.

Sometimes, the teachable moments which occur naturally are not so much fun. You may find yourself in an awkward situation. Your child may be devastated emotionally over something that happened at school. Your children might stumble upon a situation exposing them to seriously ungodly behaviors you had hoped not to address with them until they were much older.

You know these moments need to be addressed, but being blindsided by them can keep you from even thinking clearly. Suddenly becoming intentional and providing a meaningful spiritual or life lesson out of the situation seems impossible.That is why I was excited to be given an opportunity to review (and give away a free copy!) of the book Teachable Moments: Using Everyday Encounters with Media and Culture to Instill Conscience, Character, and Faith.

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Children and Complaining

Complaining and whining are two habits that seem to come naturally to most children. They are also two of the things most likely to drive a mother to send everyone to their rooms in an effort to avoid the assault on her ears and nerves. For generations, parents have had children memorize Philippians 2:14 with varying degrees of success. Although whining and complaining can be stopped by various consequences, it is the root of complaining that concerns me the most.

You see, at the heart of every complaint is the idea that it is easier to talk about something than to actually do something. Think about it. It is easier to complain about exercising and eating right than to actually do it – even though it is what is best for our bodies. It is easier to complain about someone than to do the work necessary to improve the relationship.

Training your children to act rather than complain, is teaching them to be the sort of active Christians God calls us to be. Can you think of a time when Jesus or the Apostles sat around just complaining? If you are mentioning a time, look again. Most likely, you will find they are actually teaching and correcting these people – not complaining about them behind their backs. (OK an argument could be made for the Pharisees, but hang with me – I think it still meets the action criteria).

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Making Childhood Sticky

Making CHildhood Sticky - Parenting Like Hannah Raising small children is indeed a sticky endeavor. In this case, sticky refers to memorable experiences that “stick” with your child throughout life. What I want to talk about specifically is making God, worship, Church, service and faith sharing a part of the precious memories of your children’s childhood. What can you do to make those memories special, fond ones? How can you help imprint those memories so that if your children are ever tempted to leave God and the Church, those memories call them back?

Here’s where I think a lot of people make a huge mistake. I don’t think it is about showmanship and entertainment. Parents with grown children can tell you the amount of money and “flash” doesn’t necessarily make for the clearest memories. We recently asked our daughter about some early trips we had taken when she was very young. We knew at the time her memories would be sparse, but consoled ourselves with the knowledge it was “creating wrinkles in her brain” (code at the time for increasing a child’s ability to learn later by exposing them to enriching things at a young age).

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Fun Family Bible Study

Fun Family Bible Study - Parenting Like Hannah We have had a lot of fun with the kids at church this summer studying the Jewish holidays. It is a subject Christian children often never study, but those holidays tell us so much about the nature of God. As we studied them, we also realized they point to Jesus in really awesome ways.

Yesterday we learned about the Feast of Booths or the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot). This is a great holiday to recreate with your children at home. Originally, the feast partially celebrated the late harvest. It lasted seven days (although a worship service/sacred assembly was also required on an eighth day). It was a feast of celebration – a thanksgiving for all of the blessings God had and would provide for them.

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Common Sense (and Giveaway)

Common Sense (and Giveaway) - Parenting Like Hannah What’s the old saying? “Common sense isn’t so common.” If you love the book of Proverbs, you have probably realized wisdom is often in short supply in our world. Yet for our children to be productive Christians, they also need to be wise. So what constitutes wisdom? What if we don’t always feel so wise ourselves?

There are some basic principles of wisdom you can pass on to your children, even if you haven’t quite mastered them yourself. Let’s face it, King Solomon wrote much of the wisdom literature in the Bible and still made some pretty dumb mistakes (I mean 1000 wives and concubines! What was he thinking?!) There is probably a lot you can do, but here are some ideas to get you started:

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