Raising Kids in a Pornified Culture

Helpful.  From Zach Nielson re: @betweentwoworlds.

1. Aim to give our kids a huge view of God who is gloriously delightful.

2. Teach them the gospel. 

3. Teach them that boundaries bring freedom and obedience is a blessing.

4. Talk to them sooner than later about sex.

5. Begin to train your kids on how to interact with the opposite sex.

6. Guard who your kids spend time with.

7. Put Your Computer in a Public Place and Turn Off The T.V.

8. Seek to cultivate a relationship with your kids such that they feel as though they can be open with you about anything.

Go here for the whole thing.  It's worth the read, especially here in the OC.

She Gets It

...and says it far better than I.

This is how I feel about my babies.

Leading Our Kids To Knowing Jesus

Important resource for parents!

From Justin Taylor:

1. Genuine Salvation: More Than a Prayer

2. How Children Come to Faith in Christ

3. Taking Our Children to Church: Is That Enough?

4. How to Deal With Doubt

5. Observing Salvation in Your Child: What Does It Look Like?

6. The Family: No Better Place to Come to Know Christ!

Transcripts are also available at the bottom of each of these pages’ links.

I cannot recommend these talks enough to any parent wanting to be thoughtful, careful, and prayerful in the salvation of their children.

Lessons and Tips for Parents

Challies alerts to this resource from 9 Marks.  Lots of good stuff.

Includes this top 10 for being a crappy parent (in other words, stop doing these things!):

1. Make it a habit to discipline your child while angry.
2. Make it a point to scold your child – especially in public. Mockery and ridicule work well.
3. Deliberately embarrass your child in front of his/her friends. Name calling really gets their attention.
4. Create double standards so that the child never knows who or what to follow.
5. Preach and hold the child to a gospel of self-discipline instead of a gospel of grace. (Note: the Bible presents Pharisees as very unhappy people.)
6. Never admit you're wrong and never ask your children for forgiveness.
7. Inspect your child until you find something wrong. Holding them to an unreachable standard makes this task easier.
8. Judge a fight between your children before you've listened to them.
9. Compare your child to others.
10. Promise your children things early in the day and then don't fulfill the promise.

Biblical Parenting

The astute Tedd Tripp, author of the fantastic Shepherding A Child's Heart, did a conference at Mars Hill Church on Biblical Parenting.  This is the worth the attention if you've ever had a parent, want to be a parent, are a parent, or have friends who are parents.

Audio and video here.

HT: Justin Taylor

Beautiful Things That Don't Make Sense

Appreciate the wisdom in this list from Jeana:

1. How having four children quadrupled the love I have for my kids instead of dividing it into four.

2. How focusing on meeting my husband's needs results in my needs getting met.

3. Why having a lot of "me" time tends to make me more self-centered, not less.

4. Why serving other people makes me more content, not less.

5. How spending time with God usually results in me accomplishing more that day, not less.

6. Why exercising gives me more energy, and not exercising makes me more tired.

7. How submitting to God's will brings freedom rather than confinement.

8. Why things that taste good often are not good for me.

9. Why having fewer things makes me enjoy them more--and vice versa.

10. How I can know all of these things are true and too often behave as though they are not.

HT: Josh Harris

Pray With Your Children

Trevin Wax gives wisdom for parents of young children:

Let me encourage you. Young children soak in everything we say to them. Don’t be frustrated if they’re not reciting the catechism by the age of 4. Don’t be frustrated if they seem to be disinterested when you pray. Don’t be frustrated by their lack of attention span.

Pray anyway.

Our son has learned the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and other Psalms merely through repeating certain prayers each night. No, we have not tested his memory or promised him certain rewards for praying fervently. Mere repetition does it all.

HT: Tim Challies

Parenting to the Glory of God

Two messages from John Piper.

A nugget:

Ninety-nine percent of the actions you perform that influence your children are unpremeditated actions. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of them every day. Your facial expressions; your posture; your tone of voice; your gestures; your responses to the dog and the weather and the slipping clutch and the dripping faucet and the late spouse and the TV news; and a hundred other spontaneous expressions of who you really are. Ninety-nine percent of the behavior that influences your child is unpremeditated.

Your children will most likely imitate what they see makes you the happiest, not what they hear you tell them to do, or even what they see you do but don't like to do. They will mostly imitate what they see you do that seems to make you happiest.

The implications of these two principles is that we parents should devote most of our energy to becoming a certain kind of person, not to trying to master parenting strategies. It will never work. You will never stop producing 99% of your child-influencing actions spontaneously. You would go insane if you tried to ponder several options before all the hundreds of minute actions that make up your day and your relationships. Your only hope—if you want to influence your children for God—is to be a certain kind of God-besotted person, so that when you react spontaneously what they see is God.

And if children imitate what really makes you the happiest, then the priority of parenting must be to find your deepest satisfaction in God, so that your joy in him spills over in what you say and do.

Hearing From Fatherless and Feminist

Joe Carter shares about his fatherlessness and the family resemblance for which he is aiming.

I don't know how to answer 50% of my medical history forms; I don't know if I have more brothers and sisters; I don't know what my last name should be (Carter is the surname of my brother's father.); I don't know if I'm half-Jewish, half-German, or half-Ukrainian...

My hope is that someday I'll grow up to be like My Father. People will know what kind of person I am from seeing the family resemblance. Perhaps then instead of seeing me and thinking "Urkranian" they'll say, "You look like you're Christian."

Rebecca Walter, the daughter of a feminist leader (Alice Walter), remembers and rejects her mother's message.

How sad to be taught by your own mother that you enslave her and keep her from the good life...

You see, my mum taught me that children enslave women. I grew up believing that children are millstones around your neck, and the idea that motherhood can make you blissfully happy is a complete fairytale. ... As a little girl, I wasn't even allowed to play with dolls or stuffed toys in case they brought out a maternal instinct. It was drummed into me that being a mother, raising children and running a home were a form of slavery.

Feminism has betrayed an entire generation of women into childlessness. It is devastating. But far from taking responsibility for any of this, the leaders of the women's movement close ranks against anyone who dares to question them -- as I have learned to my cost. 

"Honor your father and mother" must also mean that we honor the role of father and mother.

How Do You Help Your Prodigal Child?

Abraham Piper (who once was wayward) has an excellent article on the subject.

I found it on his blog.

Cross-Centered Parenting

If you've an interest in parenting that is God-glorifying, you ought to listen here.