Parenting On Purpose

When There Is No Return On Your Investment First we need to clarify what this means.  What we are discussing today is when it feels like one spouse is investing more then the other.  This is not when there are major sin issues, affairs, or abuse these are areas which need professional guidance.  This is [...]

The Five “A’s”- The Need For Affection & The Need For Activity Even though some people may be more “touchy feely” we all need affection to feel loved.  We also need to have a sense of fun in the relationship.  This is accomplished through activity together.  These two are examples of areas that couples are [...]

The Five “A’s”- The Need For Admiration It is amazing when you are dating and the relationship is new how your significant other can seem to do no wrong, and even when they do it is easily glossed over.  Equally amazing how that changes quickly in a marriage and almost reverses.  It is easy to [...]

The Five “A’s”- The Need For Attention & The Need For Acceptance We all have basic needs as spouses.  With our focus this week on being proactive, a great place to start is to look at the needs of our spouse and do what we can to meet them.  The first basic need of both [...]

The Need To Set Boundaries With everything going on in the world around us it is easy to see how important placing boundaries around your marriage is.  We must be proactive to protect our relationship with our spouse.  This is such an important topic we spent a week discussing it.  Click here to check out [...]

Looking Outside our Walls  

Being Other’s Focused This is such an important topic we have written another series on teaching your child to serve. Click here to view the week long series on this. And as always listen to today’s podcast for more on finding the balance of family and individuality.  

What We Can Do There are many things that we can do as a family to help our children look outward to the needs of others. Today’s child will fight a battle of not even knowing how to interact appropriately with others, if we allow devices and social media free reign in their lives. One [...]

Why Is This Important? We touched on this yesterday, why it is imperative to teach our children to function in a unit. If our goals for parenting are to raise a child to become a Godly adult who is both marriageable and employable, then teaching a child how to “lay down self” is an extremely [...]

Getting Past the "Selfie" Today’s cultural focus is the individual. If we are not careful we can allow this to impact our parenting. We are told to value “me time” or that we “deserve” certain things, even if it is to the detriment of others. This seems to be blatantly obvious anytime we are out [...]

Don’t Teach Them To Love and Respect God How are we living out our faith in front of our children? Are we a family who lives out what it means to have a relationship with Jesus or are we merely a family who follows a list of religious do’s and don’ts?  Is this relationship something [...]

Let The Culture Around You Dictate Your Parenting Plan There are several areas we can allow the culture to impact how we parent.  The first is keeping a crazy schedule.  It seems like there is a belief that if I keep my children busy they won’t get into trouble.  The problem with that is then [...]

Get Your Own Issues In the Way of Your Parenting Because this is so easy to do, we probably need to constantly monitor to make sure that we aren’t allowing our issues to impact our parenting.  This battle may be greater then ever before.  One of the issues that can impact how we parent, is [...]

Don’t Prepare Them To Become Adults The whole goal of parenting should be to raise Godly children who will become responsible adults. This will make them marriageable and employable.  To do this we should be giving them more and more responsibilities as they age. They can earn more privileges and freedoms as they prove themselves [...]

Don't Teach Them To Respect Authority Many have said that parenting isn't for the feint of heart.  Parenting is hard work! Unfortunately, there are things that we can do to make it much more difficult then it has to be.  The first thing that will make life a lot more difficult is to not instill [...]

Get The Big Picture We may ask why are we doing this in the first place? Is having a bedtime really that important?  We have given several reasons through the course of this week answering those questions. Everything from making sure your “no means no” to preparing your teen for college life.  There is one [...]

Help Them Manage Their Fears We mentioned earlier this week that one of the reasons for the bedtime battle especially for young children is fear.  It is our job as parents to acknowledge, help them cope and eventually overcome these fears.  But what does that look like?  It first starts with acknowledging that it is [...]

Teens And Bedtime The goal for parenting is raising a Godly, responsible adult, who is both marriageable and employable.  Part of this is knowing how to be responsible with getting some sleep.  How many college students are not responsible with this part of their lives and their classes suffer? It is very difficult in the [...]

Why Is It So Challenging? It almost seems that the area of bedtime can be a battle for every stage of parenting, from birth to curfew.  This week we will address those issues, as well as, steps we can take as parents to help the bedtime battle. The first thing we need to ask is [...]

Communication Blockers (part 2) The final blocker this week is one that we all have to deal with at one time or another.  It is impatience.  This is an emotion that can sometimes be avoided if we are simply more organized and not having to rush everywhere.   But ultimately patience is a Fruit of the [...]