5 Ways to Communicate Love No Matter What (Even in Misbehavior!)
0Communicating “love no matter what” when kids misbehave can seem like a tall order. But when these five simple changes come from a calmed heart, they can powerfully turn the tide of negative discipline encounters.
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The Most Important Time to Love Your Child
What might happen if every time we disciplined our children we remembered this powerful message of God’s love for us: “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” (1 John 3:1).
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6 Practical Tips to Tame Your Temper
Parents who learn to effectively discipline misbehaving kids learn to first calm themselves for this often difficult, emotion-laden task. We suggest that parents develop the habit to “Stop, Breathe, and Get Perspective.” But what does that look like? Here are six easy ways to “get perspective” as you calm your heart for discipline that connects.
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R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Can I Get a Little?
No matter how hard we try to keep calm, sometimes we blow it. When that happens, we can be open to ideas from the Holy Spirit, as was Brenda, a mom who receives our email tips. When we heard her story we invited her to …
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Regroup & Resolve: How Humble Pie Can Help Your Family
Every parent fails to deal perfectly with every parenting situation. In other words, we all screw up sometimes! Along the way we’ve discovered that what’s far more important than handling every parenting situation perfectly is to regroup, and resolve well. For it’s in resolving well …
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What to Do When We Blow Up
As hard as we try to parent like God would, we are human, and sometimes we mess up. We lose our cool, we speak harshly, or sometimes we even blow up at our kids. See how one mom handled her blow-up: The boys wouldn’t stop …
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Would Jesus Spank?
We learned quickly in our home that not every child responds well to spanking. When we spanked our intense son Daniel he would glare daggers at us defiantly as if to say, “What good does hitting me do?” His spirit wasn’t “breaking” the way the …
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To Spank or Not to Spank?
We often get asked, “What about spanking?” Recently it was by a parent who had explained to her pastor that her daughter’s behavior was really frustrating and difficult. She told us that the pastor’s advice was brief and to the point. He said, “When she …
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When Kids Fight
Siblings have conflict. Even a little pushing and shoving can be normal. The fighting itself is not necessarily the problem, it’s what kids learn about conflict and resolution over time that’s important. This blog addresses physical fighting between siblings, but the principles apply to verbal …
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How to Avoid Combat with Your Kids
When your kids act up, Stop and Breathe. Breathing clears your mind and calms you down. When you don’t breathe, your brain stays in fight or flight mode and you can’t think clearly. You usually charge in and start a battle. When you breathe you calm …
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Parenting Goals You Can Meet
Choose as your goals to be sure you stay calm, to be sure that your child knows he’s loved and respected no matter how he behaves, and to help him focus on his responsibilities.
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Be Angry (if you must) But Don’t Sin.
Sometimes parents get too angry. (See last week’s tip about that.) Other times they don’t get angry enough – or at least they don’t stand firm to keep kids growing in responsibility for their own lives. In the name of keeping the peace parents sometimes …
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Managing Kids’ Anger – and Ours
© jeangill | istockphoto.com We parents sometimes get it backwards. Our kid acts up and we get angry. We then tend to justify our anger saying, “I wouldn’t be angry if you didn’t act up.” This means that we’ve let our child be in charge …
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Radio conversation with Julie Nelson and friends!
Daniel here. Yup, THAT Daniel. Jim and Lynne’s firstborn. (-: I’m not a parent. But a friend of mine (who IS a parent) said he listened to the following interview and cried four times. So I listened. It’s powerful. I didn’t cry, but I furiously …
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When Kids Act Up Breathe In God’s Presence
Terry is a typical parent. When her six-year-old daughter acted up, Terry yelled to get her daughter under control. The daughter’s misbehavior usually went away for awhile. Terry concluded, “Whatever it takes to let my child knows she’s out of line and get her to …
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