Encouragement – Parenting Like Hannah

Should Christian Parents Serve Their Children?

The other day I saw a cartoon on social media of a parent in a butler’s outfit bringing their child’s lunch to school on a silver platter. The caption accused parents of being their children’s butlers instead of their parents. You may be nodding your head in agreement for a variety of reasons, but as Christians this topic is a little more complex than it may seem on the surface.

People often think that Christianity is about the extremes, but the reality is that often Christianity requires balancing multiple commands and principles that at first glance may seem in contradiction or conflict. Doing that well is important for successful Christian parenting.

So what are the conflicting biblical commands or principles regarding serving your children? The two obvious ones are the commands to serve others and the command to “work as if working for the Lord”. If you constantly serve your children – never making them do anything for themselves – they will probably grow up and have a really difficult time having a godly work ethic. Why? Because habits begun in childhood are often the most difficult to break.

On the other hand, if your child has a chore to walk the dog and is overwhelmed with homework one night…. If you force him or her to complete the chore, he or she may do it, but it just adds to the already overwhelming stress. On the other hand, this is a wonderful way to model a servant heart for your child and offer to walk the dog “just this once” so your child can focus on the homework.

One of the five love languages is performing acts of service for the other person. Your children need you to serve them at times in order to feel truly loved. On the other hand, they don’t need to live a life of leisure where their only work is schoolwork and activities. That’s not an accurate reflection of what adult life is and will set them up for major shock and issues in several areas when they are independent.

So serve your children. Just don’t become their servants. It’s not good for either one of you or your relationship.

Top Tips for the Frustrated Parent

I recently visited the summer home of Eleanor Roosevelt. Evidently her mother was often verbally cruel to her, telling her she should focus on being especially kind and helpful since she wasn’t pretty. For whatever reasons, it is obvious her mother was frustrated and angry and took that anger out on little Eleanor. How many children are hurt, damaged or even traumatized because parents direct their frustrations from other things at the easiest target – their children?

You may be thinking that your children are the cause of your frustration and it is only fair that they bear the brunt of it. Perhaps they deserve correction and even fair consequences for their actions, but as Christian parents we should be working to control our anger – not unleash it on our children.

So what are some things you can do when you are frustrated that are healthy and holy? Here are some of our favorites.

Memorize the first few verses of 1 Corinthians 13 and say them to yourself over and over. “Love is patient. Love is kind.” Reminding yourself how God expects you to love your children can be a wake up call as you feel your frustration level rising.
Pray. Prayer is great, because you can pray in the moment, silently and be heard by God. It also serves as a reminder of whom God wants you to be as a parent – someone who listens and guides.
Take a time out. It’s perfectly acceptable to send your child to his or her room to give you a few minutes to calm down and make a good decision about consequences. Be honest with your child, because it teaches them to calm themselves before speaking or doing something in anger.
Go for a long walk. If you have to take your kids with you, it may not be a bad idea. Just don’t talk about what made you so frustrated until you can feel yourself calming. Chances are your children will find the silence more of a consequence than whatever you finally give them.
Go for coffee with an older parent – nowhere near your children. Kids have an amazing ability to hear things parents never realize. You may think your kids are in the next room playing, but they may very well hear what you say to your spouse, family member or friend. Don’t say things about your kids you wouldn’t want them to say about you. Don’t gripe about your children to anyone and everyone. Find a trusted parenting mentor and go out without your children. Ask for advice and then prayerfully consider following it. If you routinely talk badly about your children, they will find out and they will be crushed.
Watch your words to your children carefully. Words can hurt worse than physical blows. They can stay with your kids for years. Avoid “you are” statements when frustrated, as in “you are bad”, “you are stupid”, etc. Don’t curse or call them names. If you say something you shouldn’t, apologize – sincerely and profusely. You can’t erase the damage done, but hopefully you can soften it a bit.
Hug it out. After the correction and consequences, give everyone a few minutes to calm down. Then reassure your children of your love for them and your belief in them. Give them a big hug (if they will let you) and tell them again how much you love them. Reestablish your relationship as a loving, supportive one.

God has tasked parents with a tough job – preparing children to be obedient to Him. It’s crucial that you mirror how God corrects and gives consequences, but also how He forgives and loves His children. If you do your job well, it’s much more likely your children will obey God.

Can Arts and Crafts Make Christian Parenting Easier?

Wouldn’t it be nice if Christian parenting were easy? If you could just snap your fingers and rest assured that your children would be faithful, productive Christians as adults? Life would be so much better! Unfortunately, living in a fallen world means nothing is easy. There are things you can do, however, that will make your Christian parenting more effective and thereby, a bit easier.

Effective Christian parenting requires spending a lot of quality time with your kids. If you are all just looking at your phones and IPads though, not much of consequence is happening. You don’t want to lecture your kids, so what are some things you can do with them that help teach them some important Christian life skills and work on Christian character traits?

Surprisingly, one of the best choices is rather old school. Arts and crafts provide lots of benefits for you and your children. Crafting has been found to reduce tension, edginess and anxiety by 50%. What family couldn’t use something that made everyone a bit calmer?!

Even better, doing arts and crafts projects can help your kids work on their patience and perseverance. If you and your children are working on a project that takes a lot of effort or multiple sessions to complete, it can also help them develop a strong, biblical work ethic.

One study found that happiness results from feelings of being able to do things independently, becoming competent at something and doing things with others. Family arts and crafts projects can provide those elements. Yes, Christianity focuses on the joy that is found in Christ regardless of our circumstances, but it’s okay to have a little healthy happiness in your home, too.

Want to really up your Christian parenting game? Find arts and crafts projects that can also be used to serve others. Find ways to share your faith and encourage those who receive your finished projects. Your kids will find meaning and purpose as they grow to better understand the mission and ministry God has planned for them.

Don’t have a lot of money for supplies? Check out coupons for craft stores and yard sales. Find someone who already participates in the art or craft in which you are interested and see if they have some extra supplies they would be willing to give your kids. (Word to the wise. Don’t spend a ton of money on supplies for any one art or craft category until you are sure your kids are definitely going to pursue it long term! There are lots of ways to try a new craft without purchasing every possible supply. Kits are often a good way to experiment without a huge investment.)

Have fun with it. Set aside special times where everyone works on projects together or does a family project. Who knows? It really may make your Christian parenting job a bit easier!

Will You Help Us Help More Christian Parents?

I don’t have to tell you that Christian parenting can be hard. And isolating. And scary. It helps to know someone is willing to walk beside you and help and encourage you – even if you need it at two in the morning. That’s why I began Parenting Like Hannah. So any parent, anywhere could get the encouragement and advice they needed – at any time – day or night. I have been there myself and wanted to create something I wish I had had when our daughter was younger.

Hopefully, many of you have found a post that you needed to encourage you or help you solve a parenting dilemma. The problem with Parenting Like Hannah is that it is only available in English. Which means Christian parents in other countries can’t easily understand our posts. While bits of parenting are cultural, much more is cross cultural than most people realize – especially since Christian parenting is counter cultural by definition. Christian parents in other countries could benefit from our posts – if they were available in their language.

Parenting Like Hannah and its parent ministry (Teach One Reach One Ministries) have a unique opportunity to change all of that. With a little help from you, parents who speak any one of over 100 languages will be able to see posts translated for them at the touch of a button!

That’s right! When Parenting Like Hannah and Teach One Reach One Ministries began, we had no idea God would bless these ministries the way He has. We have shared resources and taught seminars around the U.S. and in multiple countries. What has held us back from helping even more people is the lack of resources in other languages. A new website re-do will give us that and so much more.

For those of you familiar with our parent ministry website, you will love the enhanced stability and improved organization – making it much easier to find what you need quickly. There will be lots of other improvements – both in the inner workings of the site and for users. Many of these enhancements will also improve the Parenting Like Hannah experience.

For a site as complex and with as many resources as ours, we will need to basically finance a full time developer/programmer for 6-9 months. We have done our research and found a company we believe is best suited to help us achieve our goals. A generous donor has agreed to fund ¼ of the project, but we need your help raising the remainder.

We will be posting more financial details in our private Facebook group today. You can donate through our Facebook fundraiser or by going to our Teach One Reach One Ministries website and clicking on the donate button (PayPal). (www.teachonereachone.org) While we love our major donors, we also need those donors who can spare $5 to help us reach our goal. Your gift will help Christian parents around the world get the same support from Parenting Like Hannah that you have received in their own language. Please keep our fundraising in your prayers and join us in helping other parents if you can!

Creating Time for Christian Parenting

If you are a Christian parent, hopefully your top priority is for your kids to spend eternity in Heaven. For years and years, we pretended like we didn’t know why some kids grew up to be faithful, productive Christians while children from what seemed like similar homes rejected God/the Church as adults or were lukewarm Christians.

Thanks to groups like Barna, we now have lots of empirical data. There is research to back up the importance of much of what many Christian parenting experts have been recommending for years. There are definitely things parents can do that dramatically improve the chances that their children will grow up to be faithful, productive Christians. Now we know what many of those things are. (Granted most were already in scripture.)

When I share some of these things with parents of children and teens, inevitably at least one person is brave enough to admit that they won’t be doing many of those things because they are “too busy”. I imagine a lot more parents are thinking the same thing – they just aren’t brave enough to tell me to my face!

There is a secret about time that they are failing to consider. We all have the same twenty four hours in a day. The same seven days in a week. Why are some Christian parents able to find the time to do the things their kids need to develop a strong faith foundation, while others can’t seem to find the time to do even some of the very basics?

The truth is that time management is about choices. It’s considering your priorities and making the choices that allow your priorities to be addressed adequately. Let’s assume your priorities are in line with those God has for your family. Are you making choices that reflect those priorities or are your choices actually indicating something else is actually more important to you than your children spending eternity in Heaven?

In Bible times, women spent two hours a day grinding grain by hand. They spent an additional eight hours in food chores. That’s equivalent to a full time job that we can knock out with a ten minute run to the grocery store or picking up take out food. Who knows how many more hours they spent on other household chores like laundry, that required intense, focused labor (unlike pushing some buttons and doing whatever we want until the load is finished).

I can’t find anything in scripture to indicate that Mary and Joseph were too busy to teach Jesus and his siblings what God wanted them to know. Or attend worship and Bible study opportunities. Or mold their children’s character and attitudes.

It also seems like at least some of the mothers of the Apostles also followed Jesus. For all of their confusion in the early years of Jesus’ ministry, James, John and others had obviously been raised in homes that made serving God a priority – even when it wasn’t easy or convenient.

Have every member of your family keep a time log for a week or two. No cheating! If you play Candy Crush for an hour, you have to write it down. God doesn’t say we can’t work or have fun. What He does demand is that how we spend our time reflects our priorities – which should reflect His. We can’t say our top priority is our children spending eternity in Heaven and then spend less than an hour a week in actively teaching and coaching them to be who God wants them to be.

This is a tough post. It forces you to be brutally honest with yourself. God already knows the truth – whether you admit it or not. To align your priorities with God, you may have to make some really tough choices. We talk about our faith being strong in the face of persecution, but is it strong enough to withstand the assault from the things we enjoy doing more or believe we need to do because they are more important? Do the work so your kids will have the foundation they need to make choices that will lead to them spending eternity in Heaven.