Home Archive by category "Parenting" (Page 9)

Category: Parenting

Dr. Seuss’ Bible

In Dad School, I’m in a process of teaching my son both how to read and to understand how we got the Bible. One recent trip I purchased Dr. Seuss’ “The BIG Green Book of Beginner Books” and my five year old is loving the funny stories it contains that originally were published books in their own right, but now, are compiled in this single thick green book. Since we are currently practicing pointing out the letters of words and sounding them out, I decided the title of the book would be our goal last night since it provided a review of “BIG” (he just learned that a few days ago in Go, Dog Go!”) and a review of plural with the occurrence of “Book” and “Books” both being in the title. Then it struck me! Here I was helping him sound out a “Book of Books” which is exactly what the Bible is! The cover even shows little pictures of the “books within this book!” My heart skipped a beat! I had to force myself to hold off on the spiritual application and stick to the reading lesson first. But once he had mastered the title, I first explained…

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Teaching My Son About Liberty

This was the first Memorial Day I got to hang the American Flag with my son’s help and explain to him the meaning of “Memory Day.” He asked very thoughtful questions like, “Why do we celebrate when none of our family has died?” and “Why would people die for us when they don’t even know us?” Then we stood and recited the Pledge to the American Flag which he as learned at school. We surprised me by asking me to explain it phrase by phrase – and my tears surprised even me as I explained in language a five year old could understand: “I pledge Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America…” “Luke, that means that while we love all nations and God created all nations, I am feel blessed and proud to be an American and live in this country because of how wonderful it is – and this flag is the symbol of this nation. A symbol is something that stands for something – just like you recognize cars by their symbols, people recognize our nation by this flag at world-wide sporting events, on rocket ships, and even by the flag on the moon that…

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Seek and Ye Shall Find…

So how do Daddy and Son survive in the store when Mommy is shopping forever? Why, we play hide n seek, of course! I love hunting for my son, and I love how his giggles give him away, or how he is oblivious with his feet sticking out. And I love the look of pure joy on his face and how it lights up when I find him! We both hide from Mommy every night at bedtime, and it’s a challenge to find a new stop where a grown man and a boy can hide from Mommy, but we do pretty good, and while sometimes she plays along, sometimes we fool her pretty good. The goal is always to hear, “That was a good one!” But the truth is, there aren’t too many places to hide a little boy, and he’s pretty easy to find if you look. That’s the nice thing about our Heavenly Father too. God has good things for us, and if we are willing to look, He hides them pretty easy too. After all, didn’t He say, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”…

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Just Thinking About Kids… and Behavior

Children get enough discouragement from adults telling them constantly what they are doing is wrong or needs to be better. They need to hear more often how they are loved, forgiven and believed in. They need to be encouraged and reminded that while their behavior may not always be good, their value and worth is good beyond description! They are good kids in God’s eyes because He made them and whatever God made IS good! After all, every day of creation God finished by saying, “It is good.” As we shepherd the children in our ministries it is critical that we focus on their hearts more than their behavior. When we see bad behavior, our impulse needs to be not to correct the behavior, but to mold the heart that determined the behavior. There are plenty of techniques out there that can shape children’s behavior, but if we only succeed in changing behavior, we will have only created little Pharisees who know how to behave at church. But it will be unlikely that we will impact much how they behave at home and even less how they behave at school and after they outgrow children’s ministry. But if we reach…

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Daddy, Let Me Push You

Today, when I took my son to the park I had an experience that got me thinking. You see, my five year old LOVES to swing, and he’ll have me push him for a very long time – and it’s O.K. – I’ll use that time to talk to him, or sometimes just think as he swings and swings and swings. I’ve tried working with him on pumping his legs so he can swing himself, but it’s no use. He’d rather have his daddy push him still. So I do. And I try to just push until he says, “I’m done Daddy.” Then today after only a few minutes he said, “Daddy, let me push you.” I was a little worried I’d clobber him on one of the return swings, but he did O.K. But then, after only a minute he got tired of pushing and said, “Why don’t you try pumping with your legs, Dad, I think you can probably do it on your own.” And walked away! Just like that! After all the visits to the park where I’d pushed him for loooong periods of time, never stopping until he was done, being such a patient and long…

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