Character Training – Page 95 – Parenting Like Hannah

Helping Kids Look Inward

Helping Kids Look Inward - Parenting Like Hannah How well do your kids know themselves? Do they know their strengths? How about their weaknesses? Do they know what makes them sad? Do they know if God has given them a passion to serve Him in some specific area? Do they know their heart’s desire? Do they know if their heart is turned towards God or away from Him? Do they have their own faith in God or is it just something they do to please you?

The answers to all of those important questions and more are in your child’s heart. Your children need to be encouraged to spend the time and take the effort to figure out what exactly is in their hearts and whether or not it is what God wants them to have there. To know their own hearts, they have to be able to think, dream and pray. They have to have undistracted time to ponder, reflect and read the Bible. They have to have time where nothing more is required of their brain than finding out what is truly written on their hearts.

Unfortunately, if your kids are like most today, there is no such time in their lives. Their days are filled with school, sports and other extra curricular activities. Even their youth groups probably have them participating in one activity after another. Any down time they do have is filled with screens and noise. Lots and lots of noise.

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Five Tips For “Being” a Christian Parent

Five Tips For Being a Christian Parent - Parenting Like Hannah Parenting books and articles are full of lists of things to do to be a great parent. The assumption is that if you can check everything off of the list, you will have children who grow into becoming wonderful, successful adults. Christian publications are not immune either, as you can see by all of the tips in this blog over the years.

People love lists – especially if those lists can help them be a better person or in this case parent. They come with the promise that if you can just complete the list, you will achieve your goal. In Christian parenting, the stakes are even higher. We feel an added burden to raise children who worship and serve God all the days of their lives. It would be wonderful if someone could guarantee us if we checked things off of some list our kids would be productive Christians.

Here’s the secret no list writer will tell you. They are successful not because of the list, but because the list represents who they are at their core. They can work the list and make it work because the list represents things they do because the goal of the list is so important to them it has become their identity.

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Tips for Raising Grateful Kids

Tips for Raising Grateful Kids - Parenting Like Hannah Gratitude gets a lot of attention in November and December. Between Thanksgiving which for many is a time of giving thanks and the quickly approaching Christmas which can bring out greed in the sweetest child, many parents struggle how to raise children who are truly grateful all year.

From “The Lord has done it this very day; let us rejoice today and be glad.” (Psalm 118:24 NIV) to “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:17 NIV), God makes it very clear he expects our gratitude.

There are probably many things you can do as you raise your children to help mold their hearts to be grateful. These are a few of my favorite:

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Christian Kids and Conflict Resolution

Christian Kids and Conflict Resolution - Parenting Like Hannah It happened again today. An article in a popular women’s magazine was counseling parents about how to manage sibling conflict. What was the number one suggestion? Let them figure it out on their own without intervening. Are you kidding me?!

It never ceases to amaze me the same people who have us baby proofing everything within five miles of our kids and spending hours with them driving in circles around a parking lot, also tell us to allow children to teach themselves conflict resolution. No wonder our world is filled with people who yell, scream and hit when they are angry. They are using the same conflict resolution skills they “figured out for themselves” at age four or five!

Suddenly when people join the business world or marry as adults, they are expected to have the conflict resolution skills of a top attorney. If they are Christian, people expect them to resolve conflict with the same skills Jesus possessed. Adults who were told to figure things out on their own for the previous couple of decades and now have to learn actual conflict management skills have made a lot of people who write books and conduct seminars very wealthy.

Please don’t put your children in a position to ruin relationships, careers and even tear apart churches because you never taught them how to resolve conflict in godly ways. Teach them how God wants us to resolve conflict. If you struggle with handling conflict yourself, here are some basic tips to begin teaching your kids whenever a conflict arises:

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