Encouraging parents in their efforts to raise their children to be enthusiastic servants of the Lord.
It is not that I necessarily want an extra long to do list several times a year. For me, holidays are a way for me to show the people I care about how much I love them. I want everyone who is special to me to feel special and to know how much they mean to me.
I have heard many parents defend letting their very young children watch PG-13 movies. They believe the children have fun and understand it is just pretend. Interestingly, the subject often comes up because the child, who supposedly loved the movie, is still talking about it days later. Not in a joyful way, but in such a manner it is obvious the child was very upset by the images she saw. I have even seen parents puzzled why their child is having nightmares or acting out violent scenes from the movie.
A few weeks ago, my daughter and I spotted two rainbows in the course of a few days. Now that does not sound unusual, except at the age of twelve, those were only the second and third rainbows she had seen. (In spite of me forcing everyone outside to search for rainbows after any storm!) I told my daughter how I always think of God when I see a rainbow because of His promise to Noah. We had to chuckle as we realized we were seeing rainbows because we had finally had a lot of rain after numerous years of drought.
One of the easiest ways to help your child understand that the Bible is about real people, places and events is to continually tell them before you read or tell them a Bible story. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I even separated Bible story time from picture book reading times to create a boundary between the two types of stories.