Foundational Principles for Leading Children to God Being in charge of a small human, a new life, is an incredible privilege and a massive responsibility. We all want our children to experience a love relationship with God and giving them that is a daunting task. Who you are as a person, is the biggest factor in your children’s choice, regarding whether to follow God as an adult. Children grow up to see God through the lens of how they were treated by their parents. If your goal is for your children to know God, then demonstrate to them who God is, by the way that you relate to God. You…

Here are the last three points. 4.We must teach our children that their acceptance is not based on being good. In the same way that our children’s worth does not come from the things they achieve, children do not become acceptable because of their good behavior. The most powerful way to teach your children that their value is not based on what they do, is to express your love and acceptance of them when they are bad. When we withhold love and acceptance from children when they misbehave, we are teaching them a works based righteousness. If our children think that if they sin, we will be disappointed in who…

I work as a Para-educator teaching children to read, and we do something called a reading record where we listen to a child read a few pages of a book, and we mark all of the words that they miss.  I have a second grader who I have worked with for two years, whose name is Calvin.  He is a cute little blond boy with a round face and crooked teeth. So one day I was doing a reading record on Calvin and he mispronounced the name Jose’.   He said “Josie.”  So I marked it wrong.  Calvin stopped and asked “Why did you mark that wrong?”  So I told him,…

A lot of kids are taught that getting an adult during conflict, is tattling.  It is very common for parents to require children to solve problems among themselves.  This method doesn’t lead to positive conflict resolution skills; it leads to the opposite.  When children are left to themselves to stop a conflict and the other child won’t stop, or share, or cooperate, violence and retaliation are really the only option they have.  Older siblings and bigger kids have a lot of power and they don’t know how to use their power in a benevolent way.  They are self-centered and haven’t learned how to use their power for good yet.  When…

Freedom to Choose God did not force us to love him or obey him.  God does not use anger, intimidation, or guilt.  He holds us with an open hand.  He pursues us with love, not authority.  When our children are young we must train them to live according to God’s life-giving principles.  We must have control because we are responsible for their safety and training.  We must provide the moral storehouse and the discipline that they need to be able to follow through.  But as our children grow older we must trust that they have the tools, and accept the fact they have the choice of either adopting them as…

Biblical Discipline Confrontation and discipline should be done in love, to benefit someone who is making choices that are damaging to themselves or others.  God teaches us in His word that confrontation of sin is for the purpose of restoring, rescuing, redeeming, and reconciling, and should always be done in humility, gentleness, and love.  God does not want us to confront sin to get even, to vent anger, or to punish.  Sadly, not many people have experienced confrontation according to biblical principles.  Most people have experienced a corrupted version of biblical confrontation that was not life-giving at all.  This leads to many destructive parenting practices in discipline.  God does not…

Humility We are in the process of being perfected.  We all vacillate several times a day from one false God to another, to find our sense of worth and significance.  When it comes to sin, we are all on a level playing field.  We are never “good” or in a state of sinlessness.  Our only goodness comes from God.  On our own we have nothing to be proud of or take credit for.  Understanding this allows us to be humble with our children.  We can admit that we don’t always get things right.  We can sympathize with their struggle with sin.  We are not above it.  We struggle every day…

Grace  When we understand and experience God’s grace, love, and acceptance, we pass on grace, love and acceptance to our children.  God loves us in spite of our sin and shortcomings. God not only loves us by forgiving us, but He likes us, He accepts us, He is for us.  We don’t lose his affection each time we sin.  Jesus died for all of our sins, the sins in the past, present, and future.  He does not condemn us again and again; sin was condemned once and for all in Christ.  God sees our inability as a part of our reality, and he is not mad at our weakness. He…

Everyone looks to some source to provide their sense of identity.  Identity is essentially how I view myself or who I am as a person.  It is how I define myself.  It is what I use to decide whether or not I have value.  It is also what I use to determine if I am acceptable to myself, God, and others.  One source that people look to define themselves, is the approval of certain people, like a father, boss, husband, wife, or children.  One example might be looking to a father for our worth.  When he approves of us we feel like we are worth something; we feel good and…

One side note is that different phases of childhood require different methods of parenting.  Children in the first five years of life require discipline.  A parent has all of the responsibility for the child’s welfare and therefore all of the authority over him.  As children grow up they gain authority over their lives as they gain responsibility for their life decisions.  They are becoming responsible for their own choices and therefore need to be allowed to make those choices.  They are becoming their own person with their own thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, and they have a right to those thoughts, feelings, and beliefs.  They slowly gain autonomy over time rather…