Parenting Like Hannah

Raising Boys to be Christian Heroes

Walk into almost any church and you will find boys with names like Caleb, Noah, Daniel and John. I would assume many parents chose those names in hopes their sons would grow up to become strong in the Lord, just like the men for whom they were named.

Unfortunately, giving a child a name of a godly person does not guarantee your child will be faithful. If it were, every child in most churches would have a biblical name! Parents have to do something more to set their sons on the paths to becoming heroes of faith. But what?

Raising Boys by Design by Gregory Jantz and Michael Gurian gives parents a blueprint for helping develop the character traits your sons will need to become the men God designed them to be. The authors use a combination of recent brain research, counseling experience and their own personal journeys to explain what most boys need and very few are receiving to help them grow to be godly men.

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How to Like Your Children

Often when people learn we homeschool our daughter, they will say something like “I don’t know how you stand to be around your kid all day.” or “My kids and I would kill each other if we had to be together that much.” At first, I just smiled and shrugged. After awhile though, I started to wonder. Do most parents really dislike their children?

I would never question a parent’s love for their children. For most parents, their children are without a doubt, loved and wanted. How many parents really LIKE their children though? I have heard parent after parent talk about how they can only stand to be around their children for a small amount of time or how they can’t wait until their children go back to school/move away/go to college because they are driving them crazy.

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Developing Your Child’s Skills for Service

One of my friends shared something interesting with me the other day. She said it is hard to find younger women who know how to bring home-cooked meals to people who need them or organize dinners for large groups of people. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to help, but they really didn’t know how to do it.

As we analyzed the situation, the light began to dawn. During our childhood, most of our mothers stayed home. We might have participated in one activity a week as a child and at times none at all. What resulted was a lot of time at home with our parents. Times when we invariably annoyed them with complaints of boredom.

Since there were few activities to enroll us in, they enrolled us in helping them do whatever they were doing. This meant many teens could cook entire meals for large groups of people, make simple repairs around the house, sew, knit or display dozens of other practical skills.

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Bridging the Generations

Conversations between grandparents and grandchildren are often hysterically funny. The older generation still tells stories featuring typewriters and record albums, while the younger ones are texting and discussing the pros and cons of the latest gadgets. Sometimes there are more puzzled looks and “huh’s?” than actual communication. It’s almost as if they are from different countries.

That’s the premise of the book Sticking Points: How to Get 4 Generations Working Together in the 12 Places They Come Apart by Haydn Shaw. Shaw’s premise is that most of the tensions in the workplace and our homes is because of our generational issues. We feel like we aren’t being heard by those in older and younger generations, because in reality we are speaking a foreign language to them.

Although aimed primarily at problems generational differences cause in the workplace, there is a lot for the parent and teen child to glean as well. Shaw defines the types of problems in our homes and workplaces that are actually caused because of generational differences. He spends a lot of time attempting to help readers understand why the other generations think and act the way they do.

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Teaching Your Children to Follow Where God Leads

Teaching Your Children to Follow Where God Leads - Parenting Like Hannah If you have been following the twelve month plan for Teaching Children to Live More Like Jesus, you have been busy working with your children on quite a few practical Christian habits and attributes. This month is probably the toughest, perhaps because I am still working through the subject myself in some ways.

One of the qualities Jesus displayed time and time again was that he went where God led him. Sometimes it was to dinner at someone’s house, sometimes it was to heal people. In the end, God’s Will led Jesus to die a painful death on the Cross. Jesus was obviously not thrilled about the idea of a painful death and separation from God even for a time, but ultimately Jesus went where God had led him.

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