It’s Easter weekend and since it’s early, everything here is blooming. It’s going to be a great weekend! If you make Resurrection cookies with your kids, be sure to stop by our Facebook Parenting Like Hannah Community page and post pictures. (Here’s the link to the recipe.) Here are this week’s social media challenges.
Monday: A Week Away is a film on Netflix that attempts to be a Christian High School Musical type movie. Has your family watched it yet? What are your thoughts on what are now called “faith based” movies? Do you care if they get the theology a bit off or depict Christianity a bit wrong? Would you prefer your kids watching this type of content over the regular Disney/Pixar content, or is it an add on for your family? Do your kids think the production values are similar? (It’s a big deal for many savvy kids and early Christian movies had poor production values.) If parents want to have a voice and influence this type of content, you need to be having this conversation in your home. Would love to hear what you think in the meantime!
Tuesday: How much time did you spend fully engaged with your kids yesterday? The day before that? A year ago (during quarantine), we saw the families in our neighborhood walking and playing with their kids. Now that quarantine has started to lift, we see fewer and fewer kids with their parents. Did I mention the kids seemed so much happier getting their parents…both parents…full attention for a block of time each day? Your kids need you to be fully engaged with them for a block of time each day to grow to be emotionally and spiritually healthy. How much time can you set aside to be fully engaged with your kids today?
Wednesday: “Knock and the door shall be opened…” There are a lot of things in the Bible that confuse children. Taking the time to explain vocabulary, metaphors, figurative language and the like can make the Bible easier for your kids to understand, remember and apply to their lives.
Thursday: A new study found that the people “frozen” in time in Pompeii probably only had fifteen minutes to run before they were overcome. Many were caught in the middle of various activities which they never completed. Your kids tend to believe they will live forever. Many think they can live on an imaginary path that allows them to claim they are Christians while freely and knowingly disobeying God. They believe they can “have fun” living in disobedience to God now and obey God later when they are much older. Unfortunately, as we have learned from the last year, no one is guaranteed tomorrow. You don’t need to frighten your kids, but they need to understand there are only two paths in God’s world – those who accept and attempt to obey His commands and those who don’t. There is no third path.
Friday: We had a hard freeze last night, so to protect the young plantings, I had to protect them with a covering. Your kids are too young to be faced with some of the temptations facing adults. Protecting them from being exposed to those things until they are old enough to understand what God wants them to do is a very good thing. Unfortunately, in today’s world that means to protect them you may also have to have conversations at ages that break your heart. Leaving them uninformed, though, when they are able to go places without you, can leave them open to being innocently broken by the sins of others.