Parenting: Early Years

When Your Child Embarrasses You  If it hasn’t happened this week, you know it’s coming.You meet up with another family and out of the blue, your five-year-old pushes a four-year-old girl to the ground. You are humiliated.Or your four-year-old whines when given a command or says, “No” to you. And all this happened in front of other parents. Expecting Mess Ups As parents we are not responsible for the actions of our young children. They are children after all. Parenting is a process with many bumps along the road. In Parenting with Confidence, I urge parents to focus on winning the…

Verbal authority. Some people have it. Some people need to develop it. My mother, at 5’7″ and slight of build, taught high school English. She was a tough and effective teacher. Over the years she has had many students tell her she was their favorite high school teacher. But don’t doubt that she was in control of her classroom. She had football players weighing twice as much as her completely under her control. Her greatest challenge? One year she had an afternoon class of thirty, comprised of hormonal football players and flirty cheerleaders. She exerted her authority … and they…

I was recently having dinner with five couples after a speaking engagement. One earnest mom who had become a Christian around the age of seventeen asked me, “Are we as moms more needy than previous generations? After all, my mother never read a parenting book.” She was so sweet and sincere that I knew it was not a trap even though as a man I felt it was a sensitive subject to address. Here was the essence of my answer to her: No, You Are Not Intentional parents have always realized they were embarking on a new journey with limited…

Question: We are Christians but both sets of our parents are not. How do we handle their disagreement with how we are raising our children (their grandchildren)? I was recently asked that question at a conference. Thankfully, Sharon and I had wonderfully supportive parents. However, I have talked with enough families to begin to understand some of the problems. I know I risk giving simplistic answers to complex family situations and dynamics. Nevertheless, here is my reply. We are commanded by God to honor our parents. Although we don’t obey them as adults we are still called to honor. This…

The heart of The Disciple-Making Parent is helping parents pass the gospel to and disciple their children. Inevitably that spills over into what we might call Basic Parenting or Parenting 101. I cover this in my Parenting with Confidence seminar and course. And in that teaching I make a Study Bible analogy. In a Study Bible, there are inspired words from God that you may not argue with, only seek to understand and obey. There are also words that are commentary from fallible men and women. This Study Bible notes are not inspired but come from wisdom. I offer the…