Growing Kids 1

Let's see if I can keep this up.  I've been meaning to recap each week, but we are heading into week 5 so I will try and catch up.  Writing is not a forte of mine, so let's see if I can summarize each week and see if anyone can get any little parenting "nuggets" from this.  :)

Robert and I are leading a Growing Kids God's Way through our church.  It's good foundational material and we have seen it work well in our family.  We went through the class several years ago but wanted to lead it too.  We also thought we could use a little boost seeing that we have more kids and at different ages.

I'm going to pull out my favorite ideas or thoughts from each lesson.  Here we go...



Week 1:  How to Raise a Moral Child


-Basically, we hold the Bible as our standard to which we raise our kids.  We don't lower or raise the standard based on the child's personality or temperament.  Though we take all those things into consideration in how to parent each child.


-Moral training begins with Mom and Dad - who are hopefully living out the standard day and night. 


-Some of the greatest periods of moral training take place in periods of NON-CONFLICT.  I love this one.  Non-conflict training.  I'll give you a few examples.  You cannot expect your child to sit still at a table at a restaurant if you do not practice sitting at the table at home.  Another example takes place at our school on a daily basis.  The principal will line up students and practice saying hello and shaking hands.  He teaches to speak loudly and make eye contact and talk to adults with respect.  How often has someone spoken to your child and your child hides behind you or doesn't speak?  It's happened to me. But lately, I've really seen some improvement.  Lillian get's compliments on her dresses quite often and she's been SO good at speaking clearly and looking at the person and saying 'thank you'.  Practice with your kids at home  - it's fun and I sometimes make it into a game.  Sit times are also very helpful for parents with young children.  Teach them to sit where you tell them at home and when you are somewhere and you need them to sit still, you will have a tool to help you.  I've also been reinforcing the "interrupt rule".  Where the child puts their hand on me to let me know they have to talk to me.  Then I can stop and turn to them.  Even Lillian "gets" this one!


-Giving the moral reason why.  Parental instruction too often lacks moral reason.  We tell our children "what" to do, but do not tell them "why" they should do it.  I always try and give the "why" but sometimes "because Mommy said so" is OK.
The example they give in the book is a little boy wanted to run around the church patio.  The father asked him not to do that.  Then he pointed out mothers with babies, senior citizens, people with hot coffee and helped him to see the potential danger and how running around out here is not morally acceptable.  Hopefully next time, the little boy can watch his behavior on his own because the moral princple was placed into his heart.

Key Principle for this chapter:  Without moral principle placed within the heart, the heart will not be stirred. 



So anyway, those are the little nuggets I pulled away from the first lesson.  Any thoughts??