Parenting Like Hannah

Teaching Children How Prayer Works

If you are following the 12 month challenge to teach your children to live more like Jesus, this month is all about prayer. Jesus modeled prayer to us in such wonderful ways. It was obvious the prayer life of Jesus was about pouring his heart out to his Father. We only have a few of his actual prayers recorded, but I have a feeling they barely touch the tip of his prayer life.

In most Christian families, prayer is probably the area that gets the most attention when our children are young. Parents love those adorable bedtime prayers of small children and most have a favorite rote prayer which is said at meals. How many of us though, have gone beyond those basics to help our children establish a meaningful prayer life?

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Living Like Jesus Month One Check-In: Bible Study

So, how was your first month trying to live more like Jesus? Were you able to find Bibles and Bible study plans that worked for you and your children? Did any of you work with your children on increasing their Bible comprehension or scripture memorization?

This is my daughter’s junior year in high school and she is being slammed academically. Even though she is home schooled, she is studying six or seven days a week (and long days at that). It would have been very easy for us to give Church, service work and Bible reading a rest this year. To her credit, I don’t think she would have let me had I tried. (I did force her to take a two month break from one volunteer commitment, partially to keep her healthy.)

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Encouragement for the "Antsy" Mom

Have you ever been antsy? (I believe the official medical term is “ants in the pants”.) It’s that feeling where there must be something more. Something more you should be doing, maybe something really important. Something that makes a lasting impact on God’s Kingdom. Surely God didn’t mean for you to use your talents changing diapers and wiping runny noses. Or did He?

Enter The Ministry of Motherhood, by Sally Clarkson. Ms. Clarkson does a wonderful job of gently walking you down the path of discovering what it is God has really called you to as a mother. She has developed a systematic way of examining the idea of mothers as ministers. Not a paid minister in a church, but as possibly the most important minister your children will ever have.

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Teaching Your Child Bible Reading Comprehension

School teachers spend a lot of time working with children on reading comprehension. They understand children need to have the ability to teach themselves information from the written word. Without strong reading comprehension skills, a child will struggle with much of his school work and even in his adult life.

Yet, when our children read the Bible, most of them have had no help with the special comprehension skills needed. They often struggle to understand what is written and give up in frustration. The sad thing is that those words are the most important words your child will ever read. The words in the Bible are God’s message to us and His commands for how He wants us to live our lives.

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Fun Ways to Teach Your Child Perseverance

Thomas Edison is probably the modern day king of perseverance. It is said he tried 3000 different prototypes for the light bulb before he was successful. He is known for his quotes like, “Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration” and “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time”. Would we have the light bulb today if Edison had given up before that 3000th try? Probably, but it may have taken someone else several more years to discover it and who knows what other discoveries would also have been delayed.

Successful inventors, artists, entrepreneurs and parents will tell you one of the secrets to their success is perseverance. In anything you do in life, there are moments where it just seems impossible to go on. The task is too difficult or the solution is too hard to find. The temptation is great to give up and move on to something else. Behind many people, there is a string of unfinished tasks, “quit” jobs and broken relationships, all because they gave up rather than persevere until they could successfully reach their goal.

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