Category: Parent/Child Relationship

Fun Ways to Shower Your Kids With Love

There is a not so little secret to effective Christian parenting. It’s a lot easier if you have a close, loving relationship with your kids. Children are a lot more responsive to their parents’ spiritual teaching, mentoring, coaching and even correction and discipline if they feel close to the parent providing it. Every parent child relationship has its strained moments, but parents and children who are generally close feel a strong love and respect for each other.

Children usually love and respect people who love and respect them. Since God is love and Christianity is built on a foundation of love, it only makes sense that a strong parent child relationship is also a very loving relationship. Please don’t misunderstand. A loving relationship does not mean you cater to your child’s every whim or that you never correct or discipline your children. Rather, it means that even on the worst of days – when your kids don’t feel lovable – they still know you love them.

With kids, there is a twist to love. They need to feel that you like them as well. If they could verbalize the need, they would tell you they believe parents are somehow required to love them, but that when you choose to like them, it means you love them unconditionally. Once again, they don’t expect you to approve of their poor choices, but they do hope you will like and accept their basic personality, preferences and passions even if they are very different from your own. (The exception, of course, is if any of these is sinful.)

Thankfully, there are fun things you can do to show your kids you love and like them. Here are a few of our favorites.

  • Spend one on one time doing something they love. This is especially important if they know their hobby is something you don’t normally enjoy or know nothing about. Let them teach you some of the basics. Take a class together. Hunt yard sales for items they need for their hobby. You don’t need to make it your hobby as well, but showing an appreciation and understanding for it helps your child feel loved.
  • Shower them with hearts. Cut hearts out of construction paper. Make sure you have at least a dozen for each child. On each heart, write something you appreciate about that child. Be careful not to overstate. A child who makes so-so grades isn’t going to believe you think he or she is “the best student ever”. Your child will believe, however, that you love the way he or she tries so hard to do the best possible job on schoolwork. Have fun showering your kids with the hearts. Put them where they will see them all at once when they get up in the morning or come home from school. Or give them one a day for a couple of weeks or an entire month – perhaps snuck into their sack lunches or in their backpack or on their pillow each night.
  • Pillow journal or notes. Make an entry or leave a note on their pillows about something positive you noticed about them that day. Try to focus on internal rather than external compliments. Which you choose to do will depend upon how consistent you can be. If you can remember to do it every night for every child, you may prefer a journal. If you can only manage to do it sporadically, then notes may work better. If you have more than one child, keep it as even as possible. Don’t give either the ”golden child” or the child struggling the most more notes than the others, as that can become a breeding ground for other issues. They don’t all have to get one on the same day, but even over a short period of time, the notes should be equally distributed.
  • Have regular parent child dates. These dates can be both parents with one child or a parent with a child – making sure each child gets a date with both parents at some point. The date doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive. The focus is just to have fun together and give your kids a chance to talk about anything and everything without a sibling vying for attention. Make sure you are listening actively and don’t use this as an opportunity to lecture your child about anything.
  • Have device free fun time. Put away the devices for several hours. Play board games. Go for a hike. Choose an activity least likely to dissolve into sibling arguments – even if it’s just going for an ice cream cone. Having fun together as a family enhances feelings of love and acceptance.
  • Serve someone as a family and share your faith with them in some way – even if you are serving Christians and it is more sharing encouragement. Serving others and sharing your faith can give your kids perspective on life. Maybe their day wasn’t quite so bad after all. They have an important purpose and mission in life. God has good works He has planned in advance for them to do. plus, doing it together as a family enhances feelings of belonging, purpose, acceptance and love.
  • Use a special heart plate. It doesn’t have to be expensive. Each child should have turns using the heart plate at family meals. What privileges come with the heart plate or up to you and your creativity. Maybe the child with the heart plate has everyone say something they love about him or her. Perhaps they get to choose the menu when it’s their turn or their favorite food is part of the meal. Once again, how often you do this is flexible, but make sure each child gets equal turns.
  • Cuddle up and read a book together. Even teens can enjoy being read to under the right circumstances. Picture books are best for young children, but reading a chapter regularly out of a longer book can be fun for older kids and teens. Choose a book you enjoyed at their age or that you know they will like. Plodding through a boring book won’t work. Or cuddle up and read a story from the Bible together – sharing God’s love with them as you show them your love.

Have fun with it. Be creative. Make sure your kids know you love them. You might just find parenting gets a little easier.

3 Gifts Your Kids Need From You This Christmas

It’s only a few days until Christmas. Your kids have visions of new bikes, games, dolls or whatever they asked to receive as presents. There are three gifts, however, they didn’t think to add to their lists. Gifts that are the absolute best gifts you could give them.

The first gift your kids need from you is a large amount of quality time. Time where your focus is on them, not a device. Time when you listen as they tell you whatever is important to them….no matter how silly or unimportant it may seem to you. Time when you mentor rather than lecture. Time when you teach and coach them how to be who God wants them to be. Time to have fun and just enjoy being together.

The second gift your kids need is that you live out Deuteronomy 6:7 and 11:19 as if their very souls depend upon it.”Impress them on your children (God’s commands). Talk about them when you sit at home, when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” Your kids need you to do what’s in this verse every single day. They need you to do this so they can develop a strong faith foundation.

The third gift your kids need from you is to see you live your faith daily. They need to see how being a Christian makes you different from other parents and other people. They need to see you showing love to everyone…even your enemies. They need to see you obeying and worshiping God. They need to see you love reading your Bible and value praying to God. They need to see you have the character traits God wants His people to have. They need to see you serving others, being generous and sharing your faith with everyone you meet.

Your kids will recover if you couldn’t find the toy they wanted for Christmas. They won’t fare as well, however, if they don’t get these three critical gifts from you.

Fun Ways to Get Your Kids Talking

Some kids, usually extroverts, seem to be born talkers. Not only will they talk about anything to anyone, they also often have the ability to turn even the most mundane experience into a fun, energetic story. Other kids act as if perhaps they are paying someone a tax for every word spoken. Getting an “Okay” out of them in response to an open ended question can feel like a major victory.

PC Henry Clark

In the “children should be seen and not heard” era, quiet children were probably valued. For Christian parents, however, it’s almost impossible to know where to adjust your parenting to fit the needs of your children if they won’t tell you their thoughts and emotions. Of course, the more pressure you apply to quiet children, the more likely they are to retreat even farther from engaging in conversation.

The wisest advice I ever heard given to the parent of a quiet child was to think of the child as a little bird. If you wanted to hand feed the bird, what would you do? You’d be present, available, quiet and non-threatening. The same applies to encouraging a quiet child to talk. You have to appear available, ready and non-threatening at the moment they want to tell you something. If you appear too busy, not interested or frustrated at their “interruption” of whatever you are doing, they will scurry off without saying very much. They’ll also be much less likely to attempt to talk to you again in the future.

Fortunately, there are some fun ways to be available and approachable while giving your kids rather large chunks of opportunity to open up to you. Most of them also involve an activity that will distract them from their fears, so that many kids will even surprise themselves at how easily they begin sharing what is on their hearts and minds. Here are a few of our favorites.

  • Take a long walk or hike. Nothing so arduous that you physically can’t talk, but long enough to give your kids time to relax and start talking. You will have to experiment a bit to see if a familiar route or hiking somewhere totally new causes them to open up more.
  • Sit by a pretty stream. Allow time to wade or look for pretty rocks or fish. Bring a snack, so after you finish playing in the water, you can just sit, relax and take in the beauty. (Looking up at the clouds or the stars from a shared blanket works in a similar way.)
  • Put together a jigsaw puzzle (bonus points for by a fire!). Set up a card table in a cozy room and pull out a jigsaw puzzle. Keep two or three chairs at the table. This is great for encouraging multiple conversations over a period of time. You can start working on the puzzle and wait until your child joins you or notice when your child is working on the puzzle and join him or her.
  • Cook something together. Kids are drawn to a kitchen with someone cooking like moths to a flame! To keep them in there longer and creating more openings for them to talk, engage them in the process. Decorating sugar cookies, making mini pizzas or tasks like shelling beans allow plenty of room for conversations.
  • Share a craft activity or work on crafts side by side. Most crafts are engaging, but not so difficult that conversation is annoying. You can either work on a project together or work on individual projects side by side. Be careful to avoid projects like complicated knitting and crocheting patterns that require full concentration.
  • Read books together and talk about them. This one can take a little more planning on your part, but can also result in more targeted conversations. Read the book to your child, talking about it as you go. Even older children and teens often enjoy being read to from chapter books…a certain amount of time or a chapter a night. Or, if all else fails, both of you can read the same book independently and then discuss it. Make sure to have lots of open ended questions to ask and be prepared to share your observations, too. This may take practice to get proficient at using books as a platform for meaningful conversations, but there is a lot of free information on line to get you started. Just Google something like “thought questions for xyz book”.

You may need to experiment for a bit to find the activity that encourages your kids to talk the most. Each of your kids may have a different favorite. You may also find it’s better to provide separate opportunities where you can be alone with one of your kids and other activities you do together and allow all of them to talk at once. It’s a little more challenging, but for some kids the extra cover of sibling comments gives them the courage to speak, too. (Others will be even more quiet with siblings around.) Have fun with it, but get your kids talking!

5 Fun Ways to Learn More About Your Child’s World

Have you ever met parents who seemed totally clueless of how their child behaved out in the world? Sadly, it’s more common than you think. Too many parents think their kids are doing just “fine” and have “great” friends when that isn’t even close to their child’s reality. If you already have a great relationship with your kids – the type where they freely tell you anything and everything about their lives – good, bad and ugly – you probably don’t need to worry. On the other hand, if you know very little about your child’s life outside of your home and even less about his or her friends, you may be missing out on crucial information to help you parent more effectively.

For Christian parents, knowing if your child lives differently outside of your home can be crucial as it may reveal serious issues with the heart. Hearts that are beginning to view lying and hiding things as acceptable are generally not headed in a very godly direction. Spying on your kids by invading their privacy is rarely the best choice. There are more honest, fun ways of seeing your kids in their daily environments that give you opportunities to see how they are living while also giving you opportunities to get to know their friends and peers better, too.

  • Volunteer. You would be surprised how much the “catsup” mom learns about all of the kids in school – her own included! Most schools and extracurricular activities need volunteers to do various tasks. Look for ones that give you opportunities to interact with your children and their peers while volunteering. Instead of talking with other volunteers, observe the kids and interact with them in ways that are considered appropriate. Most kids desperately need someone to listen to them, so you will be ministering to them as well.
  • Sponsor or lead. Some activities need adults to lead them. This requires a bigger investment of time, but also gives you more long term access and involvement in the activity lives of your kids and their peers. Once again, many parents find this is also a great opportunity to minister to young people who need mentoring.
  • Host their friends. Whether it’s a play date, sleep over or Friday night pizza and game night, having your kids’ friends in your home is the best way to really get to know them. If you entertain enough, you may even find yourself with a few extra members in your family after a time. It’s important to remember that opening your home and leaving them to their own devices is very different from being accessible and available. You don’t have to hover, but popping in with cookies or a question periodically is a great way to remind them you are available and that you are aware of what is happening.
  • Treat to ice cream or coffee. Kids and teens love special time with adults. Whether it’s just your child or your kid and a friend, taking them out for ice cream, “coffee” or some other special treat gives you relaxed time to have deeper conversations with them. Sometimes framing questions with “I heard/read kids/teens your age ———-, do you think that is accurate?” can often yield a wealth of insight into their world.
  • Learn something new together that they choose. This is a great way to learn about your kids’ gifts and passions. If they’ve always wanted to learn how to weave a basket or play the ukulele, taking a class together can be fun. Even if it’s not your gift or passion, it gives you a better understanding of what they love and why they love it.

Taking extra time to join your kids in their worlds is a great way to make sure your kids are doing as well as you hope they are. If you discover issues, it also gives you time to parent them before things get too serious. It’s worth taking some extra time and effort.

One Thing I Wish My Parents Knew

There’s a well known book that was written for educators called, One Thing I Wish My Teacher Knew. The premise is that often teachers could be more effective in educating any particular student if they knew what that “one thing” was. It’s an interesting premise and the author has a valid point. Often adults struggle to reach a young person, not realizing that child or teen holds the answer to the issue.

I believe that same principle can apply to Christian parenting. Often kids know and can easily articulate the issue that they have with the way they are being parented. Their “one thing” may be that they can’t hear what you want them to know when you are yelling at them. Or maybe it’s that they are really tired after school and they can’t handle the deep conversations you always seem to want to have when they first get home. Or maybe their “one thing” is actually a question they have about God that is a stumbling block for their faith.

Your kids’ “one thing” may actually be several things. Each of your kids may have a different “one thing” from their siblings. The problem is that without knowing their “one thing”, you are parenting by trial and error against a wall that has an unknown building material. You may get lucky and guess the “one thing” that is getting in the way of your Christian parenting efforts with your child. Most likely though, you won’t. At least, not without your kids’ help.

Fair warning though. Your kids may not believe you truly want to know their “one thing”. You will have to make them feel safe enough to reveal it to you. If you immediately get angry when you hear it, that will probably be the last time your kids will open up that much to you. And that’s unfortunate, because their “one thing” will probably change over time. You will need to have them share periodically their current “one thing” with you.

You may be thinking, “What if their “one thing” is something outrageous, like wanting to never be corrected?” If that were to happen, ask some follow up questions. Explain that correction is in your job description as a parent, but can they think of a way you can correct them that will be more effective in helping them make crucial changes? Agree to try it their way for a period of time and see if it works better. If not, talk again and come up with a new strategy.

Asking your kids to share their “one thing” with you can be scary. If you can listen calmly to your children’s “one thing” and make needed adjustments, however, you may find your Christian parenting makes great strides in its effectiveness with relative ease.