This morning as my 14-year-old scarfed down chicken-maple sausage links before school, I pulled Tim Keller’s devo (for adults) on Proverbs off the kitchen’s half-wall, where it sits by the fruit bowl. These pages have become to me a quietly cherished part of our routine.
There’s something about Proverbs’ concrete wisdom and word pictures for developing young brains that makes this book wonderfully tactile. (And bless the person who divided it neatly into 31 chapters, one per day of the month.)
A note from Janel:
This week, I’m welcoming guest authors Donna Kushner and Amy Schulte, a mother-daughter team who, in Amy’s childhood, served as missionaries in Palestine. Both currently work with refugees in professional and personal capacities. (I personally worked with Donna on a free resource to guide immigrant and refugee families into healing.)
Question: Are you the fun parent?
I am not.
I confess delaying on this post a bit because I never know how to talk about stuff like this. Like, ever.
But yes, this past month, I was on the podcast/radio broadcast of Focus on the Family to talk about my book with Harvest House, Permanent Markers: Spiritual Life Skills to Write on Your Kids’ Hearts.
Despite my severe imposter’s syndrome, it was a cool life experience, guys. (If you like this kind of stuff, you might like this post from my FamilyLife Today interviews.)
One (just one) of the problems with writing a parenting book is the whisper spitting in my ear sometimes as I parent my oh-so-real-life teens. Like the one who yelled at me across the lawn this morning. (See? I’m wondering if I should have let you know that.)
Enter the Whisper: And you wrote a parenting book?
Y’know what’s not a good sign? When there’s water dripping from the light fixture in your downstairs bathroom…when someone’s taking a shower upstairs, in the bathroom right above it.
Oy, vey.
This is one of those posts where I’m not an expert, just a mom. (Um, most of my posts?!)
But maybe these small ideas will help. And if I’m smart, I’ll keep this short, right?
Last week, I rubbed shoulders with an old friend:
Guilt.
So some of you parents are thrilled that your kids are home. And some of you would like to be thrilled, you really would! You are definitely working on being thrilled.
Especially if they would go fight somewhere else? Or maybe pick up their cereal bowls.
For a year in Uganda, I taught a class at a local institution for early childhood education teachers. I’d haul in boxes of file folder games and bottle caps and flour for us to make playdough together. I’d bring along one of my kids to show them how the games worked, and we’d split up into “centers” for them to try out games involving clothespins and string and painting with water on cement. I wanted them to feel and smell and hear and taste how fun it could be to teach kids early math skills; to know how to read. In a country where it was still acceptable to cane children in the classroom, I wanted to show them that by getting kids excited about learning–rather than shamed–teachers cut their work in half. Why?
In teaching that class, I uncovered a core philosophy of mine. If kids can “catch the bug” for a subject when they’re young—having fun and being engaged—they’ll be self-driven to learn and experience that topic for the rest of their lives.
(That’s the philosophy that informs the whole Spiritual Disciplines for Real Families series on this site.)
![Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language](https://www.janelbreitenstein.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/love-languages-text-1.jpg "Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language")
© 2024 THE AWKWARD MOM
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑
