Closing the Generation Gap

Today I drove 45 minutes on winding roads to visit my dear friend, Mrs. Jeannine Stewert. It’s a long trip with two preschoolers, but they love rummaging around “Miss Jeannine”’s stylish log cabin, inspecting her assorted vintage trinkets, pulling out her tin cans of toys for little boys, and dashing every half hour to the [...]

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You know you’ve got a problem when…, part 4

You know you’ve got a problem when you’re exasperated and frustrated with your children.

Your children should be a rest and delight all day long, not just when they’re sleeping.
However your home runs, it’s the way you want it because you’ve trained your children to respond to you a certain way.
If your children exasperate you, it’s because [...]

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Playing Skillfully

 We all know that music is a way to worship our Creator, so it follows that we should teach music and understand music in the church. Looking at the history of the church can give us insights into how we can bring truly beautiful music back into the church. 
If I asked you to name a [...]

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You know you’ve got a problem when…, part 3

You know you’ve got a problem when you find yourself making excuses for your children.

Parents should not apologize for their children; while it is normal for children to disobey, the child should be expected to make his own apologies.
Parents can be apologetic (making excuses) or defensive. If you’ve delegated responsiblity to someone who is trustworthy, [...]

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September 11

That day changed our lives forever. While many women lost their husbands and children that day, many more women would lose family members in the war and conflicts sparked by 9/11. And many more women continue to struggle to keep their homes together while their husbands are thousands of miles away.
My own family experienced the [...]

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How Women Change the World

“It is interesting that of all the ways Paul could have told the women to combat the decadence of their culture, he told them to invest their energies in training the younger women to live Christianly in their society.”
Susan Hunt, Spiritual Mothering

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Sunday Serenity

Instead of being the best day of the week, Sundays with toddlers can easily be the worst! I’ve found that a little planning on Saturdays goes a long way to making Sunday a happy day of worship and rest!
Saturday Check List

Clean the house. Waking up to a clean house is always nice!
Wash and iron little [...]

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You know you’ve got a problem when…, part 2

Your children roll their eyes when you try to instruct them.

Proverbs 6:20. The Bible tells children to pay attention to their parents’ instruction.
We often misunderstand the authority that God has vested to us as parents. When we put on the robe of “father” and “mother,” we must insist that the office be respected.

These notes are [...]

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You know you’ve got a problem when…, part 1

I recently (last night) listened to an audio series on Biblical Childrearing from Canon Press. The series is a collection of sermons by Doug Wilson. Wilson stresses that works will not save your home or your kids–only faith will do this. Faith believes what God says about our families. Faith believes what God says about [...]

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Child-rearing or Parenting?

This is an interesting article about the history of child-rearing theories and how the focus has changed from the child to the parent, indicated even by the words we use to describe the process. The article is rather long: here is a paragraph.
But amid this seeming consistency, there is one staggering change: For 1999, the [...]

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Home Comforts

“Our children’s beds should be happy places. They should be appealing, smelling fresh and clean, and feeling warm and snugly. Fluffy blankets, billowy pillows, warm comforters, and a favorite stuffed animal can make a big difference. They should enjoy their beds, and mothers can do much to keep the beds in good shape.”
Nancy Wilson, Praise Her [...]

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Decisions, Decisions

In case you haven’t noticed, hands-off parenting is all the rage these days. Letting kids pick their own friends, their own cell phones, and their own tattoos is in. Dictating your child’s manners, clothes, and bedtime is out. I even heard of a new preschooling program that lets children decide how they want to be [...]

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A Passion for the Puritans

  This month, I actually walked into Pathway and bought a copy of this magazine. Why? Because my husband’s picture is on page 36! Though he isn’t reaching to be identified with that particular group of folks, he and a couple of his friends were caught red-handed at the Together for the Gospel conference in [...]

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Teaching Music

Should music be considered an enrichment class or should it be part of a student’s core curriculum?
If we categorize all the subjects that are taught in schools today by the various aspects of personal development: spiritual, cognitive, social, emotional, and physical, we would find that no subject incorporates all of these developmental aspects of a [...]

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A Little Give ‘n Take

And the space between our lives sometimes, is more than the distance between the stars. – Michael Card 
Church membership and church discipline. It doesn’t make for a great sermon title, but today my pastor used this topic to remind the church of the obligations and rewards of commitment. He said we were afraid of commitment [...]

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