Monthly Archives: April 2024

Time to Plan the Summer for the Kids!

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by Pat Lamb (Author of: Let the Children Come; Children, Come to Me; When the Stars Fall Down; Widening the Church Doors to Teach the Narrow Way; My Thinking Book; Love is…) Books are available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and www.patlambchristianauthor.com

Train up a child…

Time to Plan the Summer with the Kids

         It has been said that those who fail to plan are actually planning to fail.  Now that the school year is almost at a close, it would be wise to sit down with the children and plan out the summer.  Summer provides an opportunity to spend more time with the children and teach them things that are not taught at school.  Goals need to be set for improvement of needed areas in the spiritual, mental, physical, and social realms.  The more the children are involved in the setting of these goals and plans, the more apt they will be to adhere to them.

         Setting goals involves a certain amount of self-evaluation.  Children need to be asked to be honest in talking about where they think they can improve in each of the four areas mentioned.  An easy way to do this is to use four strips of paper marked off in inches with one inch being the lowest and 10 inches being the highest. Use one strip to represent each of these four areas: social, mental, physical, spiritual.  Ask the child to tear off the strips to show where they think they are in the development in each area; then, place the strips together as if to form a square.  If the child is equally developed, there will be a perfect square.  More likely, however, some strips will be shorter than others.  The short strips show where the child should improve.  Activities for the summer should be chosen to improve the child in the areas needed.  

         As parents spend more time with children during the summer, vacation and play activities can be planned as needed.  Most children need more physical activity.  Should this be the case with your children, one goal might be to involve them in sports teams.  The whole family can have lots of fun as they take part in cheering, providing refreshments, etc. If the children need social development, plans can be made to have outings with families who have children approximately the same age to develop friendship and social manners.  There are many good activities provided by churches such as Vacation Bible School, summer camps, or other get-togethers to provide Spiritual growth.  The selection of trips to educational sites greatly helps children academically.  

         Schools have little or no time to teach children about the care of the home.  Parents need to make sure that children have chores to do around the house and that they are taught how to do them properly.  There are many minor repairs that can be done at home to save money and children need to be taught how to do them.  Cleanliness of the home, cooking, mending of clothes, proper care of appliances and furniture, and lawn care need to be learned while children have time to practice things taught. Many teenage girls love to paint and redecorate a room during the summer.  Many teenage boys love to work on an old car or piece of machinery.  Many teenagers will obtain their first job outside the home, but they will probably still have time to do other things mentioned.

         The summer will go by all too fast.  When fall comes, many will be saying, “Where did the summer go?”  Plan now to use the summer wisely with children before it is gone.

How We Harm Our Children

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by Pat Lamb (Author of: Let the Children Come; Children, Come to Me; Widening the Church Doors to Teach the Narrow Way; When the Stars Fall Down; My Thinking Book; Love is…) Books are available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and www.patlambchristianauthor.com

Train up a child…

How We Harm our Children

       The Bible tells us that children are a gift from God.  When this gift first arrives, we are all excited at the precious little miracle and have high hopes of it becoming the perfect adult.  However, as the little bundle grows into a demanding individual, we are tempted to lose our original intentions of raising a perfect child and may begin pulling away and even resenting the intrusion on our own pleasure and self-fulfillment.

         As children grow, we tend to become confused.  It isn’t as much fun as we thought it would be to have a child.  There seems to be a constant demand on our time and energy.  We begin to do things that are harmful to children as we draw back from our responsibilities of raising the God-given gift as the giver intended.  Many times we do things that harm a child while having good intentions.  Following are some things that we do that I believe harm children:

  • Neglect to step in when a child needs instruction.  (Children are left wondering what to do.)
  • Think that all children should have fun all the time.  (Fun does not develop character. Hardships develop character.)
  • Let a child always do what it wants to do.  (Children need boundaries for security.)
  • Substitute things for time. (Time with parents is far more valuable than things that money can buy.)
  • Give a child all the freedom it wants. (Children learn self-discipline by obeying rules.)
  • Over-discipline a child.  (Children learn by suffering consequences of the decisions they make. Sometimes we need to let children make their own decisions and suffer the results.  Experience is the best teacher.)
  • Stepping in and rescuing a child from the consequences of a decision the child has made. (We become enablers by letting the child think that whatever he/she does, we will always bail him/her out.
  • Letting a child eat whatever and whenever it wants. (The body needs proper nutrition to function well.  Parents should see that a child eats healthy foods. (Soda is not a healthy food!)
  • Letting a child talk so as to dominate conversations.  (Children need to learn to listen to others and respect opinions of others.)
  • Insisting that a child be promoted in school when that child has not mastered the skills of the grade level he/she is in. (Children just get in deeper and deeper, become frustrated, and develop low self-esteem.)
  • Not seeing to it that children have chores to do to contribute to the family.  (Children need to learn that things in life should be earned and most are not free.)

These are a few things we can watch out for as we raise our most cherished gifts—our children.  There is no such thing as a perfect parent, but each of us can strive to improve in our parenting skills.  Children are a real pleasure if they learn to live as Christ would have them live, but children who are neglected and left to their own desires seldom are a pleasure to be around.   Proverbs 23:24 tells us that, “The father of a righteous man has great joy; he who has a wise son delights in him.”