parenting on Self-Improvement

As popularized in Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s fascinating book by the same name, nudges are small changes in the environment around us that make it easier for us to make the choices we want to ...

Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their f...

Parker Palmer’s book Let Your Life Speak arrested my heart a few years back. It begins with a poem by William Stafford, “Ask Me”, that begs this question: “Some time when the river is ice ask me mista...

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...

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...

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...

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...

I was standing in line in a crowded public rest room engaged in one of my favorite hobbies, people watching, when I observed a brief interaction between a mother and daughter. Mother looked harried an...

Becoming mature Christians will require the sovereign work of God. Only God can save and sanctify. Still, God uses men and means. Certainly we as parents must seek to bring our children to Jesus Chris...

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

Over the past few years, I’ve often heard parenting and child development experts offer the charge: “Give your kids a childhood they don’t have to heal from.” I’ve heard its echoes even in my own comm...

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...

Principle: Nothing is more important in your life than being one of God’s tools to form a human soul.

Children are likely to live up to what you believe of them.

Why would a lazy guy become a parent of five? Then again, why would creative people who inherently don't like change and criticism become writers, actors, or comedians? There's something about...

Let me share one more lesson I am learning about daily surrender. It concerns the way we relate to others. Daily we encounter people who express views opposite to our own, hold values with which we ca...

Leave your pride, ego, and narcissism somewhere else. Reactions from those parts of you will reinforce your children's most primitive fears.

Preaching Commentary Summary of the Text Songs of Ascent Psalm 133 is part of the Psalter’s collection of the Songs of Ascent, Psalms 120-134. The Songs of Ascent were sung by the throng of pilgri...

Summary of the Text Songs of Ascent Psalm 133 is part of the Psalter’s collection of the Songs of Ascent, Psalms 120-134. The Songs of Ascent were sung by the throng of pilgrims making their way to ...

Above all, we [as parents] must make sure that the open book of our lives - our example - demonstrates the reality of our instruction, for in watching us they will learn the most.

When singer John Davidson was learning to drive, his father, a Baptist minister, offered him a deal: he could have a car if he earned straight “B’s” on his report card, read the Bible more, and got a ...

We do not develop habits of genuine love automatically. We learn by watching effective role models – most specifically by observing how our parents express love for each other day in and day out.

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...

We become who we are in the environment of home. We are shaped by our families. Home is formative. Sociologist Cody C. Delistraty explored the most recent scientific literature for Atlantic Monthly an...

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 ...

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...

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

Let no Christian parents fall into the delusion that Sunday School is intended to ease them of their personal duties. The first and most natural condition of things is for Christian parents to train u...

If you’ve been around a kid who’s just learned to ask “why?”, it can be a bit much. You’ll be asked, “why is grass green?” “Why do birds fly?” “Why do I get hungry?” and much, much, more.  Pa...

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...