relationships and community on Challenges of Parenting

When we realize that having children isn’t about us but is rather about God, then the trials and sacrifices of parenting are more easily borne. We see the purpose behind the difficulty and remind ours...

In his book Scream-Free Parenting , family therapist Hal Runkel recounts a visit to the Waffle House with his family that went horribly awry. It was a Saturday morning and the place was busy beyo...

There’s a story about philosopher John Dewey walking with his young son on a cold, wet, and windy day. The boy, barefoot, was gleefully splashing in a puddle despite the weather. A concerned friend pa...

Our Father, Lord, the world is sometimes a dragon with teeth set to devour the dreams of our children. Help our little ones go softly from our homes remembering all we taught them of your great love a...

Any parent who has children of speaking age has likely heard the expression, “That’s not fair.” Those words come in all shapes and sizes—quickly shouted, drawn out almost with extra syllables, or said...

In her compelling memoir Still Life , author Gillian Marchenko recounts her struggles with depression. In this excerpt, Marchenko shares a funny but poignant moment as she deals with the challenges...

Many, many fathers and mothers carry a particular problem into their parenting, and they don’t know it. It affects the way they think about the task that has been assigned to them. It affects the way ...

Compared to earlier generations, we are emotionally closer to our kids, they confide in us more, we have more fun with them, and we know about the science of child development. But we are too indulgen...

Perhaps it takes courage to raise children.

There have been times in my life when I’ve wondered if I have failed to accomplish what God intended for me in my professional life. I have worried that I have not lived up to my potential. I judge my...

Here’s the humbling conclusion that God, in His grace led me to: I am more like my children than unlike them—and so are you. The reality is that there are few struggles in the lives of my children tha...

Dr. Kevin Leman once told me that parenting is like an airline emergency. Before takeoff, every plane passenger is instructed that if the oxygen masks come down, parents should put on their own masks ...

The balancing act we parents attempt is convincing our children: 1. You are loved more than you can imagine. 2. The world does not revolve around you.

You have to love your children unselfishly. That is hard. But it is the only way.

In her book, Feminine Appeal , Carolyn Mahaney pontificates on the relationship between God’s providence and the guilt we often experience as parents who often fall short in our parenting: We can ...

God doesn’t provide many specific instructions about the parent-child relationship, except that parents should teach their children about God (Deut. 6:7; Prov. 1-9), discipline them (Prov. 23:13; Heb....

You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.

Children are God’s gifts to immature people to help them grow up. They are also God’s gifts to help parents go deep with God. . . . Parenting is not for anything. It is not a contract with God in whic...

Remember that you are not called to produce successful, upwardly mobile, highly educated, athletically talented machines...Giving your children great opportunities is good; it is not, however, the goa...

Childhood happiness has become the scorecard by which adults measure their success or failure as parents . . . Constantly striving to please your kids turns them into your boss. Their happiness become...

Paul Tripp argues in Parenting that a common cause of dysfunction in families is that parents (often unconsciously) adopt a view he calls the “ownership view” of parenting. In effect, it is acting a...

“That's the nature of being a parent, Sabine has discovered. You'll love your children far more than you ever loved your parents, and - in the recognition that your own children cannot fathom ...

Parenthood is the scariest hood you will ever go through.

Adolescence is a period of rapid changes. Between the ages of 12 and 17, for example, a parent ages as much as 20 years.

Having children is like living in a frat house - nobody sleeps, everything's broken, and there's a lot of throwing up.

Show your children God’s love by loving them and others as Christ loves you. Be quick to forgive, don’t hold a grudge, look for what’s best, and speak gently into areas of their lives that need growth...

At three years old, Kyle had never put on his own shoes. He always had help—shoes can be tricky. At four, he had never put together a puzzle all by himself—he’d get frustrated, so Mom or Dad or the ba...

Have you ever noticed the severe discrepancy behind the very few verses in the Bible that discuss the “how-to” of parenting and the hundreds of Christian books that confidently proclaim “God’s plan fo...

As a mother you learn what it is to be both martyr and devil. In motherhood I have experienced myself as both more virtuous and more terrible, and more implicated too in the world’s virtue and terror,...

Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them.