The Traditions of Tree Trimming
Cheer as a family when the tree is lit. Close the evening in prayer and thanks.
Little traditions like these will encourage warmth, togetherness, and stability in your family.
The Traditions of Tree Trimming
Cheer as a family when the tree is lit. Close the evening in prayer and thanks.
Little traditions like these will encourage warmth in your family.
Focus on the Family Magazine: Marriage, Money and Merry Christmas
God designed you to be a complement not a duplicate. It wasn’t a mistake for you to marry your opposite. The two of you, like chips and salsa or peanut butter and jelly, need each other’s spending habits to create a strong combination.
This is a good article on capitalizing on your spouses strengths. The saver is benefits from some luxuries they deprive themselves of and the spender benefits form some money being saved. The key is to consult to avod anger and resentment.
The Thanksgiving Test: The Thanksgiving Test
I’m thankful God is working in her even when I can’t see it. Like Taylor’s 6-year-molar that just emerged, at the right time a mature attitude will develop.
Grieving the Death of a Husband
He never let a day go by without us embracing,” Rachel told me. “He helped me to remember that we needed to embrace each moment we had together. That may be part of the reason I’m able to let him go and accept his death — we lived our marriage as a gift.”
Neglect — the other child abuse.
Neglect ‘leaves a physical mark’
Study suggests that the primary effects of neglect are found in their ability to prevent a child’s ability to bond.
TrueU.org | Women’s Hall: Simple Chastity
Everything in your relationship gets some of its charge from the uncertainty, the unknown. This may be the single most significant way that married sex — sex as it was created to be — differs from unmarried sex. Married sex does not derive its thrill from the possibility of the unknown. Married sex is a given. It is solemnized and marked in ritual. It is established. It is governed by vows. It becomes a ritual in itself; it becomes a routine. Married sex is exciting, but its excitements are very different, and much more tender.
I do not agree with all points — particularly strange is the idea that seeking to know your spouse more does not elicit excitement in your marriage.
Teaching Like Jesus Over Meals
Preparing for Adolescence: Family Mealtimes Decrease Teen Rebellion
She found that dinnertime was of more value to child development than playtime, school and story time. Clearly, there is power in “breaking bread” together.
Teens need to eat with their families 5x a week.
The Dangers of Trying to Control Your Child
Preparing for Adolescence: Stemming the Tide of Peer Pressure
When we become controlling, authoritarian parents, we suffocate our children and cause them to resent us. The jaws of the peer group are just waiting for a kid who is easily controlled. So our job is not to create a controllable kid who will be devoured by his peers. When a tween/teen does not have something positive to identify with and has no say so over his life, he is more likely to grow up with a nagging feeling that he needs to “find himself.” These adolescents — when they grow up and have families of their own — are more prone to leaving their spouse and kids in a pursuit to finally “find themselves.” They end up chasing rainbows that don’t even exist.
Preparing for Adolescence: How to Avoid an Identity Crisis
when a son believes his mother dislikes him and feels out of place in the family, studies show that he’s more likely to become peer dependent. And the one thing you don’t want your son to be is peer dependent. On a positive note, when a daughter feels like she belongs in her family and receives healthy affection from her dad, she is the least likely person to try to prove something sexual to her adolescent boyfriend.
Preparing for Adolescence: Steps to Overcoming Inferiority
Ask if she would be willing to share that list with you or with her youth pastor. Let her know that it’s highly likely that many of the problems she has listed have been experienced by most people, and she can benefit from their experience.
Encouraging Self Worth in Teens
Preparing for Adolescence: The Agony of Inferiority
Did you know that approximately 80 percent of teenagers don’t like the way they look? No matter how minor the physical “problem” is, it can create anxiety and depression.
I like that this articles stresses that a child may not feel intelligent if he/she struggles in school or fails.
Preparing Teen boys for Adolescence
But regardless of your size right now—or how big you get in the months ahead—remember this: Others will accept you because of your attitude, not your altitude. It’s best to focus your energy on growing the man inside: who you are at your core, how you treat other people, and especially how much you imitate Christ.
How to Help Your Child Grieve:
How to Help Your Child Grieve:
Cherish the memories. Continue to talk about the loved one who died. Look through photo albums, talk about funny things the deceased said or reminisce about pleasant experiences.
Song of Solomon Romantic Example
Husbands and Wives: Pure Pleasure: Setting the Mood with Words
In Solomon’s Song of Songs, both the bride and her husband knew the value of a few kind words. The young wife was insecure in her looks and about her simple background and station in life. Her husband used language to build up her self-esteem.
In turn, this bride sought out times to be with her husband.
This is a good article stressing that intentional romantic commitment cultivates a strong/intimate relationship. Cal affirms me in this way almost daily.
Dating 101 When You have Children
Focus on the Family Magazine: Taking It Slow
Dating as a single parent can be complicated. We’re torn between letting our date get to know our children and protecting our kids from being hurt by another person potentially leaving their lives.
This is a fantastic brief article on protecting your children’s hearts from uncommitted relationships.
Challenging Agnostism and Building Trust
Office Hours: As Though There Were No God He shook his head. “If I don’t know the answer to the God question, then how could I be committed to an answer to the God question?”
“Commitments are reflected in movements of the will.”
“What does that mean?”
“They’re reflected in how we live.”
I good article in living as if we believe God exists even if we do not know for sure.
Why Kids Need Their Grandparents:
Every child needs a grandmother and grandfather — a person who is older, wiser and willing to hold his or her life up as an example of faith. A person who forgives and teaches forgiveness. A person whose abundance of faith will be there in sufficient supply when children need it. Because sooner or later children need more faith than what they possess.
Parenting Skills to Counter Adolescent Rebellion
You Can Survive the Stormy Teen Years:
This article makes a great point to enforce values God has laid on your heart according to His timing.
Teaching Children to Be Peacemakers: Teaching Children to Be Peacemakers
Wise-way choices are better than my-way choices. Selfishness is not smart and will not lead to happiness. The wise way is to obey authority, make right choices, seek godly advice and respect others.
Praying for Healing from Disappointments
When Your Child Is Wounded: How to Pray for Your Child
When my child is hurt by others, please give me an abundant measure of peace, compassion, strength, grace and wisdom to talk about this with my son/daughter. Help me to sense in my own heart whenever he/she has been wounded.
Husbands and Wives: Lifelong Love
he ultimate secret of lifelong love is this: Simply put, the stability of marriage is a by-product of an iron-willed determination to make it work.
Of course there are times when a person’s criticism of you may be unfounded, but ask the Holy Spirit to show you the truth in what they’re saying. Even if a complaint is invalid, a humble attitude and loving spirit will allow you to be Christ-like.
There is a great description of our blind spots and sanctification.
Our task as parents, then, is not to eliminate every challenge for our children but to serve as a confident ally on their behalf, encouraging them when they are distressed, intervening when the threats are overwhelming, and above all, giving them the tools they need to overcome the obstacles.
Reaching Out at Christmastime: Tips for Hosting a Christmas Coffee
Think through the personal story you will share that night. The goal is not to preach to neighbors but to let them know a little about you personally and why Christmas is meaningful to you.
Reaching Out at Christmastime: Tips for a Kids’ Caroling Party for the Needy
Organize a group of young carolers who will sing to neighbors for donations of food to the local food pantry. Here’s how to get started:
Teaching Children to Serve Others
Reaching Out at Christmastime: Reaching Out at Christmastime
Benefit: Kids learn that building a relationship outweighs remuneration. This can also be the start of a lesson in God’s economy; the feeling you get from giving can be far better than any payment.
Helping Children Grieve Separations
Focus on the Family Magazine: Standing in the Gap
My son was just 5 years old when his father and I separated, and my son was very angry. He had been witness to two prior separations and audience to the disintegration of our relationship.
This is a great article to pour out anger/sadness to God about wanting a real parent.
In the most crucial issues of life — like God, human nature, right and wrong, sin, forgiveness, death and eternity — you can’t afford to guess what is true. Your life depends on whether what you believe is, in fact, true.
This is a good article in that it raises common doubts to examine so they are less likely to be acted out.
Charlie’s angels meet the porn industry?
This is a must see. This group of women is attacking the erotic/porn industry from the inside. They go into the clubs — to where the broken men and women of the industry work and play — and simply love them while presenting them with the love of Jesus.
They have even adopted the glamor and style that grabs people in that world such that they blend in to it in every way — except they are destroying it from the inside.
No judgment, no condemnation — just the love of Christ and the promise of a better tomorrow. It’s about time!!!
(I do wonder though, how can people so dead-on add such dead-wrong off-site links???)
Defining Godly Attitudes for Children
How to Shape Your Child’s Character:
A multi-part article addressing the formation of the character of a child.
You can show that you have faith in Christ by your lifestyle. “And how can we be sure that we belong to him? By looking within ourselves: are we really trying to do what he wants us to?
Are we Really Loving Our Neighbour As God
Helping Your Child Value Others: The Good Samaritan
As you teach them the importance of “loving your neighbor as yourself,” have your children act out the Bible’s story of the good Samaritan, with you as the narrator. (See Luke 10:27-37.) Afterward ask: • Which of the characters was a neighbor to the man who was robbed?
Teaching Respect for all People
Helping Your Child Value Others: Helping Your Child Value Others
eaching your children to demonstrate value toward others is a vital step in developing key virtues, including self-control, compassion and benevolence. Here are a few tips:
Focus on the Family Magazine: Playing the E Game
No spiritual partnership. Mike and Janet are at church together every time the door opens, but they don’t worship together in their home or kneel in prayer hand in hand. When couples don’t get spiritual refreshment together, dashboard lights are usually flashing.
A brief article on the positives of dating your mate.
Raising Thinking Kids: Popular Parenting Styles: Power, Suggestions or Explanations
“How do you think your brother feels when you hit him?” or “Can you think of a different way to show your brother how you feel when he takes your things without asking?” The questions encourage and guide your child to become an active participant in the conversation. They create dialogues, not monologues.
Teaching Children to make Decisions
Raising Thinking Kids: Solutions, Then Consequences
It will be tempting to tell your children why one idea is better than another. But at this point it’s important to let the child be free to think.
This is a basic article in teaching children to think differently rather than giving them the answer.
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A professional record of confidential information including records, assessments, treatments, and rendered opinions obtained during counselling involvement.
