Hard things happen in life. Teach your kids to apply God’s truth when experiencing overwhelming emotions and facing difficult times. Read more.

I remember when I realized that hard things are just part of life. It wasn’t because anything huge had happened. I think it was because I had already experienced the loss of grandparents, a move to a new state away from all my friends, the crises in many friends’ lives, and lots of other “life stuff.” One day it just clicked, and I understood deep in my heart just how broken sin has made this world. Through the years, that truth has been confirmed to me over and over. I have seen—as I’m sure you have as well—how those shards of brokenness are as numerous and inescapable as the tiny shards of glass that have shattered on a tiled kitchen floor.

Whether you’ve dealt with hard things in the past or you’re dealing with them right now, you know—we will all face hard things in life. You also know that there are incredibly hard, lonely, and bitter times ahead for your children to walk through. Though we often wish this wasn’t true for our kids and that we could shield them from all the painful and sad things in life, we just don’t have that level of control. So the best thing we can do for our kids is equip them to face the hard times well. We have the privilege of teaching them how to deal with all those heavy feelings that burden their hearts.

1) Faith that Makes Lemonade

You probably know the saying that goes, “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.” Honestly, when I first read that saying, I thought it was pretty ridiculous. Am I just supposed to pretend it’s possible to “make lemonade” out of any situation? Even when my heart feels like it’s been ripped apart? Even when I feel completely overwhelmed and helpless? But as I thought about it more, I realized that Christians are actually the only ones who CAN take the hard things in life and make lemonade.

Christians can accept the hard things in life with joy while resting in the sweetness of a relationship with the all-powerful, good, and loving God of the universe. Nothing happens to us that His grace cannot keep us through. Though the hard things and emotions that come with them are very real, it is the TRUTH about God that will strengthen us through the times we feel like fainting.

If we, as adults, struggle so much with these heavy feelings and emotions in hard times, imagine how overwhelming these emotions are to our kids! They may even try to push down or silence these emotions because they seem bad. But the emotions themselves aren’t wrong or just something to get over. Emotions are very real and sometimes, very strong. The problem with emotions comes when our responses to them are wrong.

This is why our kids MUST know the truth about God! When emotions are washing over them like waves of the ocean, remembering and believing the truth about God is the only way our kids can keep from being consumed by the hard things in this life. They must learn to counsel the heavy feelings in their hearts with the truth about their God. Encourage your kids to trust God no matter what, and pray that they recognize His goodness as He works through the hard things in their lives. So when life hands your kids lemons, they can get busy trusting God and Making Lemonade.

2) What to Do With Anger

Whether your kids blow up, bottle up, or a bit of both, chances are, you’ve seen this response to hard things. They may feel out of control or like things just aren’t fair. Maybe they are angry at the person who has inflicted pain on them or those they love. Whatever the circumstance, our kids need to know that anger can take us where we don’t want to go. In fact, sometimes it’s a red flag signaling that our trust isn’t where it should be.

Though we can feel anger without sinning, anger that lashes out or pulls away and pouts is definitely sinful. So when our kids seem to be struggling with anger, they need to know how to deal with it. Learning to ask, “Why am I angry?” can help them get to the root issue. Maybe their anger is directed at a person who has made life hard for them or even at God, because they think He should have kept something from happening. In these times, just as with all hard times, our kids need to come back to the truth they know about God. He IS good and in control. He will bring justice, heal wounds, and work through awful circumstances. They can trust His plan—even when it looks different from theirs.

3) When Fear is Overwhelming

Sometimes when we face hard things, it is that fear overwhelms our hearts. Maybe it’s the unknown following a cancer diagnosis or a move across the country. Our fear could look like the dread of being vulnerable in relationships where we desire acceptance and love but receive rejection or betrayal. In times when money is tight, maybe it’s anxiety over how our needs will be met. Maybe we feel unsafe or forgotten and wonder who could possibly help us or understand what we’re facing.

In a world where fear rules the lives of so many people, we can help our children be victorious over this crippling emotion. We aren’t alone, forgotten, or unloved. On the contrary—our Good Shepherd leads us to green pastures and still waters (John 10 and Psalm 23). He calls us to come to Him with our burdens in exchange for His yoke which is easy and light (Matthew 11:28). Jesus desires for us to cast our cares on Him, because He cares for us more than ANYONE else (1 Peter 5:7). Because of His mercy and compassion for us, we can have the peace to lie down and sleep, knowing He is the One who makes us dwell in safety (Psalm 4:8). As we rest in His hand and trust His Word, this God gives us HIS peace and quiets our fear.

4) Choosing Forgiveness

There are times when pain, anger, or fear burrows deep into our hearts. We don’t realize how quickly we lose trust in people or even in God. We don’t see the poisonous root of bitterness growing in our hearts and infecting every thought and emotion. Instead, we become cynical and sarcastic. We lose the ability to trust, find joy, show compassion, or forgive. This bitterness that festers so silently will destroy our kids unless they learn to recognize it and kill it.

The truth Christians forget when we grow bitter is that God has forgiven us! Our sin against our infinitely holy and just God has an infinite penalty—eternal death and separation from God. But Jesus took God’s wrath upon Himself, making a way for us to receive forgiveness! When we hold back forgiveness from others, we forget the amazing forgiveness God has shown to us. When our kids understand God’s mercy and forgiveness, they will be able to forgive those who hurt them. Instead of being slaves to bitterness, they can be thankful to God and merciful to others.

5) Hope for Right Now and Forever

Maybe you or your kids have come to a place with the hard things in life where you feel like there’s no hope. The hard times have lasted so long, you’re beginning to despair that life will never be normal or happy again. But here’s the truth, friend—our hope doesn’t come from our circumstances, our happiness, or our comfort. Our hope comes from the truth that Jesus has won the victory over our greatest enemy. Because Jesus has won the victory over sin, we have hope for our lives right now and hope for eternity!

God has a purpose for each one of our lives and He has promised to help us, hear us, and work despite our failures or fears. He gives us joy and a new song in our hearts. Jesus perfectly understands us because He came and lived on earth—He experienced the pain, sorrow, and hardness of this sin-cursed world. It is because of His unconditional love that we can have hope for tomorrow. No matter what we face in life, we have salvation which is victory over death, freedom from sin, power to live for Christ, and eternity in God’s presence. Because God is unchanging and His promises are sure, our kids can have lives that are Abounding in Hope!

Learning These Truths

When our kids are faced with hard times, whether they grow and thrive or struggle and despair depends on where they have put their trust. Are they depending on themselves, their plans, friends, or you to keep them steady in this life? What happens when, like Job, they lose everything? Do they lose their hope, joy, and peace as well? They don’t have to! This is why we wrote our Heavy Feelings Series—to help your kids learn to apply God’s truth to the emotions they will face in hard times. If their hope is in the truth about God and His promises in His Word, your kids can be joyful in any circumstance.

Have you ever stopped to listen to the words of the Christmas hymns and really think about what they mean? Read more to find out how Christmas hymns help us focus on Jesus!

If you go to the mall on a Saturday at Christmastime, you’ll probably find a full parking lot as throngs of people hunt for the perfect gifts for family and friends. Undaunted, you find a spot and then head inside, ready (and maybe a little excited) to join in the hustle and bustle of the holiday season. As you go from store to store, the background music catches your attention. It’s one of your favorite Christmas hymns, so you happily begin humming along.

Suddenly, it hits you. This song is about Jesus, and it’s playing right there in the mall! Now you’re not only thinking about the people on your shopping list, you’re also thinking about the reason we celebrate the season in the first place. As you look at the other shoppers around you, you think about how they are listening to the music, too. Whether they realize it or not, everyone in the store is listening to the wonderful truth of God’s Son come to earth.

Celebrating with Christmas Hymns

Christmas hymns are songs that focus on the birth of Jesus. These hymns are often sung in church, during worship services, on the radio, and sometimes even in shopping malls. While many of us enjoy singing the hymns at Christmas, there’s actually much more to these songs than just another holiday tradition.

Christmas hymns aren’t just inspiring words set to beautiful music. They actually convey a very important message. For example, most people know that these hymns tell the story of the birth of Jesus, but did you know they actually express so much more? These songs reassure us of His awesome power and His faithfulness to His promises. They tell of God’s great love for us and His plan of salvation, beginning all the way back to the first book in the Old Testament. Pay close attention to the words, and you’ll hear the story of the gospel. Suddenly, Christmas hymns take on a whole new meaning. 

I have to confess, I don’t always pay attention. Often I’ll catch myself singing the hymns without a lot of thought. Sometimes, I’m surprised I even know some of the words. For example, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel has the lines, “O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free – Thine own from Satan’s tyranny.” I can sing along, but what does the word “rod” mean? And who’s Jesse? And what about “Satan’s tyranny?” Why are we singing these words at Christmas, anyway? 

The lyrics in the Christmas hymns actually have important meanings. They’re not just lovely-sounding poetic stanzas with a few biblical phrases thrown in. Learning what the lyrics mean can give your children (and you!) a better understanding of why we celebrate Christmas. When your family sings the hymns, they won’t just be singing words on a page. Each time they sing, they can be reminded of God’s great love for us in sending His Son.  That’s why we created this brand new Bible study, Adoration at the Manger!

Importance of the Words

As you go through the study with your family, you’ll take a close look at some of the Christmas hymns. Like me, you’ll probably find there’s a lot more to these hymns than just traditional holiday songs. You’ll find out what the lyrics of the hymns actually mean and discover many Biblical truths in them. The words to the hymns include references to prophecies and promises about the Messiah Who was to come. They tell about the events of that holy night, when the prophecies were finally fulfilled. The lyrics also express the promise for our future together forever with Him. In short, Christmas hymns are all about the story of salvation.

But we shouldn’t just take the songwriter’s word for it. We always want to hold the lyrics up against the truth of Scripture. In this study, we’ll get to look at how the lyrics of the Christmas hymns compare with passages from the Bible. You’ll see just how accurately the hymn’s words reflect the biblical account of Jesus’ birth and the prophecies surrounding it.

And of course, we’ll want to look at how the hymns celebrate the birth of Jesus. Through the study, we’ll take a closer look at the words used to describe that miraculous event. We’ll take note of the shepherds, the angels, the town— all of the things involved in the joyous celebration of the Savior’s arrival. And as we do, you’ll see how Jesus’ birth is proof of God’s goodness, faithfulness, and love for us. 

Meditating on Scripture through Hymn Study

There’s one other thing that’s important to mention. When we hear and sing the hymns throughout the holiday season, we’re thinking about them again and again. Once we understand what they mean, we’re not just singing along to a Christmas song. We’re reminding ourselves of the truth of God’s great love and His plan for salvation. We’re worshipping God.

Think of it this way. We meditate on Scripture by thinking about it over and over again. We trust the Holy Spirit to show us how to apply it to our lives. In a similar way, you can meditate on the hymns. When you have these hymns running through your mind that are full of truths you understand, your attention will be drawn back to the real reason we’re celebrating. Even gift-giving will look different as the focus shifts from commercialism to the best gift of all— salvation through Christ.

Adoration at the Manger: A Christmas Hymn Study

Our Adoration at the Manger Bible study shows how Christmas hymns were written to tell the story of Jesus coming to earth as our Savior. By looking at both God’s word and classic Christmas hymns, this Christmas Bible study explains the true meaning of Christmas in a meaningful, memorable way! It is designed to be done as a family with age-appropriate levels for each family member. It would also be ideal to do with a Sunday school class or a small group of your child’s friends. Or, you might give it as an early Christmas gift to other friends or family members.

We also have beautiful Adoration at the Manger Ornaments to go along with our Christmas hymn study. As you complete each lesson, hang the corresponding ornament on the tree, and your family will be reminded of the truth and beauty of these Christmas hymns.

I’m confident that by studying the different Christmas hymns, your family will be encouraged to celebrate the season with a new understanding of what the holiday is really about. It may sound cliché, but it’s so true: He is the reason for the season!

Our world seems to be increasingly connected, yet Christian relationships are suffering. How can we help our kids get truly connected in good Christian relationships? Read to find out more!

In a world that is so connected, we are severely lacking in true relationships. All of us want our kids to experience connections to a community through sports, co-op, church, theater, you name it. Many of these things exist to promote relationships and community for kids and their families. But sometimes our hope that our kids would have good, solid relationships, and community is dashed by betrayal, hurt feelings, exclusion from the group, or busy schedules. So what can we do about it? How can we help our kids connect with others who share our values in seeking to live Christian lives in this world?

How Your Kids Can Get Connected in Christian Relationships

1) Learning to Obey

The most lonely feeling for me is when I know my relationship with someone isn’t on good terms. If I have a disagreement with a friend, the disconnect that results feels pretty miserable! In a similar way, our relationship with God is the starting point for all our other relationships. If our relationship with Him is off, the rest of our relationships will be off too!

This is why obedience is the starting point for all our relationships! What our kids might not realize is that in order to have good relationships with the people around us, we have to first have a good relationship with God. When we aren’t obeying Him, our relationship with Him will suffer—causing all other relationships in our lives to suffer as well. Of course, we can’t be truly obedient to God without obeying the authorities He has placed in our lives! This is why our kids need to learn the importance of obedience well and learn it early. If they can get this principle down, they’ll have the best foundation for all their future relationships.

Check out our Obey Bible Study here.

2) Stirring Up Love at Home

I remember so many fights between my brother and me in the back seat of our minivan—especially as we drove to church. He would try to take my seat, or I would move his stuff. Often, we would just annoy each other on purpose. Inevitably, my mom would tell us to leave each other alone and not to speak if we couldn’t be kind. Then, as we showed up to church, I would immediately go to my best friend and complain about my awful little brother.

The problem with that scenario is that I didn’t understand that my first responsibility was to love the person God had put very close to me in our home. My relationship with my brother was NOT my primary concern, but it should have been!

Often the temptation is to focus on relationships outside our homes and encourage our kids to make those connections. Yet our homes are the primary places where we practice having good Christian relationships—not where we let ourselves be lazy. Your kids’ closest relationship connections happen in your home. Helping your kids build strong relationships at home is the first step to teaching them how to manage outside the home and maintain those connections. So make sure those relationships are STRONG!

Check out our My Brother’s Keeper Bible Study here.

3) Pursuing Peace with All

Christians have the responsibility to (as much as is in our power) be at peace with everyone we connect with. This includes family, friends, authorities, teachers, bosses, church family, and many others. If your kids are Christians, they have this responsibility too! The wonderful thing is that when they are fulfilling their God-given responsibilities as Christians, Christian relationships and connections will come much more easily and naturally.

Relationships are hard when our kids are constantly fighting or having to call on adults to intervene. But a huge part of seeking peace is having the humility to put someone else’s desires or needs above our own desires. As our kids learn to pursue peace in their home, friendships, and at church, their relationships with other Christians will deepen into connections where trust and respect can thrive.

Teaching your kids the steps to biblical conflict resolution begins at home. Kids learn peaceful conflict resolution with their friends, authority figures, and work situations within the family. By practicing to control their anger, praying over disagreements, and developing habits of resolving conflict biblically, kids will learn to pursue peace in all of their relationships.

Check out our Making Peace Bible Study here.

4) Serving Others

Maybe requiring obedience from your kids is a big enough struggle, let alone encouraging them to serve others! But don’t give up hope—we are all growing and learning. As we encourage our kids to think biblically, we also must trust God to work in their hearts and change them.

Serving must be at the heart of every Christian relationship because it is the essence of Jesus’ call to all Christians! Jesus didn’t just teach this though. He lived it! While on this earth, He served by healing, teaching, and washing His disciples’ feet. In His death, He served by taking our punishment upon Himself. Jesus’ call to follow Him is the call to humble ourselves and to serve others like Christ did (Philippians 2:4-8). Becoming a servant is how we show Christ’s love to all those around us! The closeness that comes from meeting the needs of others is one of the sweetest connections our kids could make.

Check out our Becoming a Servant Bible Study here.

5) Finding Good Friends and Being a Good Friend

We all know the saying that goes, “If you want to have friends, you have to be friendly.” While this saying is common, it’s also completely true. Our kids will not make Christian connections that become deep friendships if they are not working to be good friends themselves! While any relationship takes work and intentionality, Christian relationships require even more.

All Christian relationships should model Christ-like love and sacrifice. These relationships are focused on building each other up to be more like Christ. Once we realize this, it’s pretty easy to see whether our friendships are biblical or not.

If our kids don’t understand that the goal of friendship is to be growing in Christlikeness, their relationships will be disappointing and conflict-filled. By understanding the goal of Christ-centered friendships, they can encourage their friends to grow closer to Christ while also being encouraged and challenged themselves. As parents, we get to help our kids as they navigate their friendships and get connected to Christian friends who desire to love and serve God!

Check out our Navigating Friendships Bible Study here.

What You Can Do Right Now

Each of these 5 disciplines takes work, but you’re not on your own! Our Connected Relationships Series includes 5 Bible studies: Obey, My Brother’s Keeper, Making Peace, Becoming a Servant, and Navigating Friendships. Each of these Bible studies gets your kids into God’s Word so that they learn for themselves how to have Christian relationships that glorify God!

A family morning meeting can really lay the groundwork for your homeschool day, especially when you begin with God’s Word! Keep reading to learn how to start your day by bringing the family together!

As we start a brand new homeschool year, there are always a lot of questions. How do you start your homeschool day? What time do your kids get up? What time do you start? Do you need to be intentional about how you start your day?

If you’ve wondered about any of these things, keep reading! Starting your homeschool day intentionally can really lay a solid foundation for everything you do throughout the day, especially when you do it with God’s Word!

In our home, we start each homeschool day with a morning meeting. Over the years, the time of this meeting has varied. We have started at 8 a.m., 9 a.m., and even 10 a.m. depending on the season we were in.

Here’s a little peek into our homeschool morning meeting.

Morning Meeting God Time

I want to INVITE my kids to join me in a conversation about God instead of INDICTING them for falling short. I’ve found that starting our morning with one simple question is the best way to do this.

I ask, “What has God been teaching you in your quiet time?”

This question is open-ended so they can share as much or as little as they want. It also doesn’t require them to say exactly WHEN they learned this either. My goal is to encourage conversations and show my kids how powerful it can be to spend time in God’s Word. If no one has anything to share, you can bet that I’m ready to talk about something that God has been teaching me. I try to point out how my time in the Word helps me with daily frustrations as well as the tough stuff in life.

This gives kids a reason to want to read the Bible. It’s not just because “good Christians” have a quiet time. We read the Bible because God is able to help us with our daily life. He guides us, comforts us, and encourages us. Plus, the Bible is the only way we can know who He is, and that’s how we learn to trust Him.

If no one else shares, that’s fine. I NEVER point fingers or guilt trip them. By simply showing up each day and asking this question, I’m setting an expectation and an example. My kids rise to the occasion more often than not.

We use this method even when we are studying something together, such as one of our Bible studies. Everyone does their own study, and then we come together and talk about what God is teaching us. I find that going through a lesson line by line is frustrating, belittling, and has limited benefit. When kids can get into the Word for themselves, they make it their own!

Need help with kids’ devotions? Check out the Kids Devotional Method course. It’s free!

Morning Meeting Prayer Time

Once we’ve discussed what God has been teaching us, we have family prayer time. Over the years, we’ve used either the JOY Prayer cards or the ACTS prayer cards for this. We rotate them every other year.

I pull out a card, and we pass it around the table as we pray. These cards have prompts to help us think of things to pray for, so we never get tired of using them.

Most days, our prayer time lasts about 5-10 minutes. It really just depends on how long-winded the kids get. I never feel the need to rush it when my kids are talking to God!

Check out all of our kid’s prayer tools here.

Morning Meeting Announcements

Let’s face it. Sometimes we just have to get practical. After our family prayer time, we spend a few minutes going over the events of the day to make sure everyone is on the same page. We go over appointments, music lessons, and anything else that might impact the day. This is a great opportunity for the kids to fill in that planning section of their planner.

Morning Meeting Family Study

This is my absolute favorite part of the day. Many of our subjects are done independently, but our family study time gives us a special opportunity to learn and grow together. We’ve done our To Every Nation study together during this time as well as hymn studies. Most recently, we’ve been working through our apologetics flipbook, Faithipedia.

I read the day’s lesson covering theology words, books of the Bible, names of God, timelines, and more. The kids jot a few notes in their notebooks and add fun stickers. We love the discussion that comes from this time together.

Morning Meeting Tips and Tricks

• Keep It Simple. Perhaps the most important thing to remember is to keep this time simple! Most mornings, our entire meeting is less than 30 minutes.
• Keep Materials Handy. Pick a spot to store everything you need for this time. I keep a basket in the china cabinet behind our table. It works perfectly.
• Keep It Age Appropriate. Don’t expect deep theological discussions out of your little people. Likewise, use Bible studies and materials that are on the right level for your kids. More about Bible study age levels here.

Helpful Resources

• Learn how to help your kids make connections in the Bible in The Secret To Making Bible Lessons For Kids Come To Life.
• Need help with getting started with family Bible Studies? Read more here: Bible Study With Kids: 8 Tips to Make it Amazing.
• Check out our Family Bible Studies that Reach the Hearts of Kids.
• For more tips on family devotions, read Easy Family Devotions: What You Need To Know.
• See 7 Tips for Finding the Perfect Morning Routine for more ideas to make your morning go smoothly.
• For more on planning, read How To Create the Best Homeschool Schedule for Your Family.

Through career exploration, parents can help their high school students make informed decisions about their future. Read more to find out how.

“What are you doing after you graduate?”

If you have a student who is in their junior or senior year of high school, chances are they’ve heard this question more than once. For many of these students, the question can cause a bit of anxiety, as they may still be unsure about their future plans. Back in the day, the common responses used to be either “go to college” or “get a job”, but there are so many more options for young people today. It’s no wonder they’re feeling the pressure – with so many possibilities, how can they know exactly which path to take after they graduate?

One way parents can help their students is to include career exploration as part of their curriculum. Not only can it help students see the many different opportunities that are available, but it can also help them figure out which of their strengths, skills, and interests they want to pursue. Then, they will graduate from high school with a boost of confidence in their choices.

“Follow Your Dreams” is Not Practical Advice

How many cards, posters, and notebooks for kids have you seen with the phrase “Follow Your Dreams” or “Reach for the Stars”? Most parents want their children to grow up confident and self-assured, so these seem like important, affirming messages to pass along. Many well-intentioned moms and dads tell their children, “You can be anything you want if you put your mind to it.” While these are all positive, feel-good sentiments, they aren’t realistic. Children can’t be whatever they want; they must have the ability to fulfill the roles they choose. A child who wants to be a professional basketball player but has no natural athletic aptitude most likely won’t make the NBA, despite a rigorous training schedule. His skills will certainly improve, but chances are, he won’t reach his goal. A teen who struggles with math probably won’t grow up to become an aerospace engineer, no matter how much he longs to be one.

I recall hearing Mike Rowe talk about his desire to follow his passion of becoming a tradesman like his grandfather. However, he struggled with his lack of natural talent for it. His grandfather wisely told him to use the tools that God had given him in his own toolbox. God has created our kids with unique gifts and talents— and it’s important to help them discover a career path that allows them to use those gifts.

It was once common for people to remain with the same employer or career path throughout their lives. However, most people today change careers several times throughout their lifetime. Given the fast-paced changes in the job market, it’s not surprising that many young people struggle to choose a career path after completing high school. It is important to encourage them to view it as a journey, rather than as a final choice.

What About College?

Not so long ago, a popular thought was that if someone wanted to get a good job, they had to go to college. It didn’t matter that many people with college degrees don’t even work in the field of their degree. But today, students don’t want to come away from college without a clear direction and thousands of dollars of college debt, and parents don’t want that for their children, either.

As technology continues to advance and college tuition soars, attending college has become just one path to a fulfilling career. Here’s where career exploration becomes so important. Career exploration can provide students with an understanding not only of the various career options available, but also it can help them choose the best path to fit their goals. Even if you have a student who is definitely college bound, career exploration is a valuable addition to their high school curriculum. With a better idea of where they are headed, students are less likely to change their major in college, saving them time and money.

What Are Some Alternatives?

There are many alternative career paths today that don’t require a college degree. Perhaps your student is interested in pursuing a career in the trades, such as welding, plumbing, or electrical work. Community colleges and vocational schools often offer training and certification courses in these areas. Careers in technology can take a variety of paths, from formal classes to boot camps to online courses. The military is another way students can train in a particular field, and many high schools offer the JROTC Program. In 2018, a Federal bill opened up the opportunity for homeschooled students in the nation by requiring local JROTC programs to admit homeschooled students. This program provides students with leadership roles regardless of whether they choose to enlist. Other options include apprenticeships and on-the-job training.

Alternative Career Resources:

• Unbound – Project-Based Higher Education
• Praxis – An intense personal and professional development program for young adults
• ASVAB Career Exploration Program – The military career exploration program

What Does Career Exploration Look Like?

By providing students with an early introduction to career exploration, homeschooling parents can help their high school students make informed decisions about their future. What exactly does this entail? Here are some helpful tips for parents to guide their children in exploring career options during their high school years.

As students begin thinking about which direction to pursue after high school, they can consider these questions:

• What are the student’s gifts and talents?
• What do they enjoy doing or learning about?
• What are their financial goals? Are they planning to support just themselves, a family, or provide additional income to a household?
• Can their “dream career” meet these goals?
• Are there similar careers that could meet these goals?

Once students have identified their preferred careers, they can then take steps to find out more about their chosen profession. These include:

• Researching- Investigate the training and educational requirements of particular careers.
• Conducting interviews – Select professionals in their chosen field and interview either over the phone or via email. It’s likely someone they know also knows a person working in their chosen career or a similar one. Most people are happy to share what they know with a young person who shows interest.
• Volunteering – Check to see what volunteer opportunities are available at companies that do similar work. A volunteer position will most likely involve very basic tasks, but the student can learn a lot by seeing how the business functions from day to day.
• Job shadowing – If a volunteer position isn’t available, job shadowing may be. Some companies allow students to spend a few hours during a workday with a professional just to see what the job entails.
• Becoming an apprentice –  An apprenticeship is a form of on-the-job training. The student learns a skilled trade or profession by working under the guidance of an expert or experienced worker.
• Participating in extracurricular classes or workshops – Look for classes that focus on skills related to the student’s career interests.

Career Exploration Courses

• Foundations in Career Discovery by Ramsey Solutions
• Foundations in Entrepreneurship for Self-Study by Ramsey Solutions

Other Career Exploration Resources

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook
• U.S. Dept. of Labor National Center for O*NET Development
• Career Direct- Living by Design (formerly part of Crown Financial Ministries founded by Larry Burkett)

But That’s Not All…

Career exploration also includes learning and honing job seeking skills. These include how to create an online resume and cover letter, how to interview effectively, and how to network professionally. If parents feel at a loss on how to teach these skills, they don’t need to worry. There are many resources available to help. Besides online resources, many communities offer free employment help. A great place to start is by checking with the local library.

Soft skills are another important piece of the career puzzle. Soft skills refer to the personal attributes, behaviors, and social skills that help people interact professionally.  They are called soft skills because they are more subjective, but they are still important to develop. Examples include skills such as communication, teamwork, problem-solving, time management, and interpersonal skills.

Soft Skill Training Resources

• Get Hired Digital Course by Ramsey Solutions — covers interviewing, networking, and resume building.
• GCFGlobal.org — Offers free lessons to help with job search, workplace skills, and other training.
• LinkedIn and Indeed— These job search networks have a plethora of articles, videos, and training courses available.

Career exploration is an important part of a high school student’s curriculum. Not only can it help students understand what it takes to succeed in their desired professions, but it also gives them a realistic view of what it takes to reach their goals, including the necessary education and training. They may even find a new dream that better matches their abilities. Whichever direction they choose to take, they will leave high school more confident and better equipped to take that next step after graduation.

To help kids with Career Exploration, we developed a section for Career Planning in our High School Student Homeschool Planner. This simple resource can help guide teens through the career exploration process and prepare them to make future decisions.

Our High School Student Homeschool Planner is specifically designed for high schoolers as an all-in-one planner. It helps your student with time management, independent learning, tracking assignments and credit requirements, as well as planning for the future. This nice, compact planner has literally everything needed in one spot to meet a wide variety of needs and circumstances—everything from a yearly calendar to attendance records, all the way to the educational snapshot (my version of lesson plans). If your kids are involved in things like piano, sports, theater, or volunteer activities, you will want to record those hours diligently. (We even have Student Homeschool Planners available for all grade levels!)

Of course, you’ll also want to document all of the courses and work-study on your student’s transcript. Our free homeschool high school transcript template makes this super simple!

More Homeschool Resources for High Schoolers

• This Ultimate List of High School Electives For Homeschoolers will give you guidance in choosing the best electives for your teens!
• Looking for high school homeschool curriculum? Here is Everything You Need to Know About High School Homeschool Curriculum.
• Looking for great books? Here is a list of 14 Must-Read Christian Books for Teens!
• Don’t forget to check out all of the Homeschool Resources by Not Consumed!

You don’t need a separate reading curriculum. Discover how you can simplify reading requirements, help kids enjoy reading, and make language arts more fun.

I’m as guilty as the next homeschool mom. Every year I roam the aisles of homeschool conventions and browse the pages of catalogs dreaming about homeschool curriculum. Those bright and shiny packages seem to call my name as I wander the aisles.

You see, curriculum is AMAZING. Until it isn’t.

Sometimes we get so hung up on the idea of that open-and-go textbook or box curriculum that we fail to see its shortcomings. Can I tell you a secret? You don’t need a curriculum for every subject. This is especially true for reading.

Why You Don’t Need a Reading Curriculum

Reading is covered in other subjects

When your kids are learning how to read, your MAIN subject and focus should be reading. In fact, you might even want to get some great resources to help you teach your child how to read. But once your child has gotten past those easy readers like Bob Books, you can actually break away from the curriculum. Why?

In late elementary, middle, and high school, the reading required for other subjects such as science, history, and even Bible can get really intense. Having an additional textbook for this subject can frustrate even kids who LOVE to read, but it will overwhelm those who struggle.

I learned this lesson the hard way with my second child. Our reading curriculum was a fat textbook full of a collection of stories carefully curated by a very popular and well-respected company. But that was truly the problem. Reading was a weakness for my daughter, and she was overwhelmed with the amount that I was requiring since many other subjects also required her to read. When we broke free, everything changed. (More on what we used below.)

Kids thrive on bite-sized books rather than chunky anthologies

As a former classroom teacher, I was quick to ditch the anthology (large collection of stories in textbook form) for living books like picture book biographies and adventurous chapter books. Kids thrive on bite-sized pieces. I like to say that when you are teaching kids it’s best to break it down— not water it down.

Kids of any age can learn about obscure and fascinating fish or detailed facts about indigenous people groups as long as they have bite-sized portions of information. We don’t have to give them books that dumb down the topics. We just need to give them less information at one time. It’s incredible what kids can learn!

Living books are far more interesting than textbooks

That fat reading textbook I mentioned above almost caused BIG trouble in our homeschool. I didn’t realize how much it was frustrating my daughter because her older sister loved it! Thankfully, we switched to something else that I’ll share below. But first, I must admit that I didn’t give up so easily on our fat textbook reading curriculum.

A year or two later, I tried using it with my son. He was an early reader and didn’t struggle as much as his sister, but that curriculum was still a disaster. The textbooks were boring to him and he didn’t want to do his reading assignments. He much preferred the stack of books that he had picked up from the library. I found that he learned so much more from those living books found at the library than from the curriculum.

Charlotte Mason was right. Real living books are so much more powerful than a collection of stories in a textbook. Kids pick them up because they want to learn about a particular topic or adventure to an imaginary place. The things they can learn are limitless when it’s done in this format.

Students should get to choose what they read

Most parents struggle with the idea of allowing their children to read whatever they are interested in. We struggle because we weren’t allowed to do that. I spent 12 years in public school being told exactly what to read and when to read it. Perhaps you did too.

But the truth is, SOMEONE is always picking. There isn’t a standardized list of the required reading for ANY age level. Every year teachers pick what they think their students should read. They have to do that because they teach 25+ students per class period. It would be impossible to allow students to choose.

In our homeschools, we are free to choose what we want our kids to read. In some cases, there may be a book or two that you should pick for your kids. But in most cases, let them pick! When kids read about what they are most interested in, they fall in love with reading. They also often fall in love with topics they enjoy knowing about.

When kids are forced to read things they didn’t choose, they might enjoy it, but it’s more likely that they will only do it out of obligation! A true love for reading comes from a hunger to read more. Give your kids the opportunity to experience that!

One great way to have a healthy balance of books so your child is reading quality material— and not all cartoons— is to have a daily book box where they get to choose a few, and you get to choose a few. We would go to the library and pick out five books each to put in our “book basket”. Once they are all read, you can go back and choose again. If fact, sometimes my kids developed new interests just by swapping books with each other!

don’t be afraid to kick the reading curriculum to the curb. There’s a MUCH better option.

What You Can Use Instead of a Reading Curriculum

A reading curriculum should allow your kids to choose, use living books, and simplify the time needed for reading each day. Does such a thing exist?

When my daughter started struggling, I created a system that would allow her to do all of those things and STILL teach the literary elements she needed out of a reading curriculum. It’s called the reading journal. Originally developed for elementary grades, the reading journal allows students to pick their own books and then complete a short 10-15 minute lesson to reflect and show what they have learned. It works with picture books and chapter books. As long as your child can read fluently (not easy readers or Bob books), they can use it. We typically say it’s perfect from 2nd grade through 5th grade.

Is your student older? We’ve developed reading journals for middle school and high school too! They offer the same freedom to choose ANY book, even books they are reading for other subjects like history, science, and social studies. These reading journals include literary analysis and other important skills.

Has your child asked to be baptized? Learn more on how to talk about baptism with your kids with our FREE printable! Read to find out how!

Baptism is an integral part of the Christian life and a mark of a transformed heart. Something particularly exciting about our faith is that Jesus specifically said to let the little children come to Him. This means that the same transforming work Christ has done in you is being done in your child. Every part of being a Christian is available to them, including baptism!

If your child has accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and has submitted their life to His transformational work, it may be time to talk about baptism with them. Congratulations! This is an exciting step for your child and for you. Now it’s time to enter into multiple conversations to help your child understand what baptism means. But where do you start? 

Has your child asked to be baptized?

First, you should address whether or not your child has asked to be baptized. If your child has asked to be baptized, but you’re not sure they’re ready, that’s okay! Don’t discourage them in their growing faith and excitement. This is a great time to talk to them about what it means to be a Christian. Our Bible study I Have Decided is a great resource for those talks.

Sometimes, children haven’t asked to be baptized because they don’t understand the significance. This is an opportunity to gently guide them into a conversation about what baptism means. Take care not to pressure your child into feeling like they need to be baptized to please you. Baptism should be an outward demonstration of the inward changing of their heart.

And if your child has asked to be baptized and you are certain they are ready, don’t wait!

Are they ready?

Now that baptism has been brought up in your home, it’s time to talk about baptism and ask if your child is ready. Most importantly, has your child accepted Christ as their Lord and Savior? If the answer is no, don’t worry! Discuss what salvation means, and pray that God works on your child’s heart. Our Bible study Rock of Salvation is another resource for talking through accepting Jesus with your child.

If your child has accepted God’s transformational work of salvation, they may be ready for baptism. While there are no explicit biblical requirements for baptism, you don’t want your child to be baptized before they’re truly a believer. Look for fruits of the Spirit in your child (Galatians 5:22–23), and see if there is evidence of God working in your child’s heart, even in subtle ways. Sin won’t be put to death immediately in your child, but they should be showing a desire to honor God even as they struggle against sin.

These are all conversations you can have with your child, and once you’ve come to the conclusion that your child is ready for baptism, you should ask some more questions, such as why they think they should be baptized. Ask your child what baptism means. Can they describe what the gospel is and what it means to be saved?

Look at the Bible together.

There are no right or wrong answers when answering these questions, so don’t worry if your child isn’t sure how to articulate baptism or stumbles over explaining the gospel. Remember, we’re all growing as Christians, and there was a time when you couldn’t explain those things either. Instead, look at Scripture together to see how God defines baptism and the importance it plays in the life of a Christian. Below are some references to get you started talking about baptism, but be encouraged to search the Bible for yourself too!

Resource to Help

We have created a special printable to make it a little easier to talk about baptism. We’ve packed it full of Scripture for you and your child to look at and think through what baptism means. It asks questions and encourages your children to seriously think about what the Bible says about getting baptized. Download and print it out so you can start talking with your child today. Baptism is a gift to believers from God, and helping walk your child through this decision is an enormous blessing!

It’s exciting when your child makes a profession of faith! Read more to learn how to teach your kids to build on God’s truth after salvation.

I don’t know about you, but social media can make me feel pretty untalented! Maybe someone on Pinterest renovating a fixer-upper or turning a school bus into a home has made you think, “Why can’t I do that!?” Personally, I’m not very handy at building things. But as a homeowner and husband, I’ve tried several projects to save money and impress my wife.

I’ve learned that the Christian life is similar to a construction project. I’ve also found that using this comparison can be helpful when talking with kids or teens about salvation.

As a Christian parent, your greatest desire is that your kids would choose to trust Jesus. A lot of prayer and talking about salvation goes into encouraging them to make that decision. But once they trust Christ and make a profession of faith, spiritual conversations aren’t over. In fact, God’s construction project has just begun! You have the amazing opportunity to help them see what God is trying to do in their lives and learn how they can cooperate with it.

What do you do after your child makes a profession of faith? What do they need to know, and what kinds of conversations do you need to have with them?

4 Truths to Teach Your Kids After They Make a Salvation Decision

1. Help them understand God’s plan for their life

When we bought our house, we knew we wanted to change a few things. I finally mustered up my “can do” attitude, bought some supplies, borrowed some tools, and put up a shiplap wall in our kitchen. Unlike the home we had been renting, we had the right to make this improvement because we owned the house. Not only did we have the right, but we also had a plan for what we wanted it to look like. That plan guided the project to make sure it was done correctly.

Before salvation, the Holy Spirit is actively drawing a person to repent of their sin and trust Christ. When they place their faith in Christ’s work on the cross, they get a new owner. They once were the slave of sin, but now they belong to God (Romans 6:18, 22). He paid the full price to purchase their soul, so He has full rights to do whatever He wants with what He owns (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). The life He purchased is a brand new creation—a “new build” (2 Corinthians 5:17). God has a plan to make that fixer-upper one day look like Jesus (Romans 8:28–29). Furthermore, He promises He will never stop working on His project. What He began at salvation, He will continue until eternity (Philippians 1:6).

As parents, we have the amazing opportunity to help our kids see the beautiful masterpiece that God is making with their lives. Just like a visionary can turn a school bus into a home, God wants to take our previously sin-cursed life and turn it into a beautiful masterpiece for His glory. It’s exciting to know that a big God has a big plan He’s never going to give up on!

2. Help them see their part in complying with His plan

The amazing thing about God’s construction plan for our lives is that He enlists us to have a part in the process! We aren’t just mindless pieces of shiplap that He hammers and cuts away at. He allows us to participate in accomplishing His ultimate design. You may have heard the expression, “A worker is only as good as his tools.” God has given believers every tool they need to live for Him (2 Peter 1:3–4). He calls them to use those tools as He fashions their life into the image of Jesus (2 Peter 1:5–9).

God is a master renovator who can accomplish His plan without any help. He doesn’t need us in order to be successful, and nothing we do can make Him fail. He won’t give up because of project setbacks, and our performance will never determine His effort or ruin His ultimate design. However, if we don’t learn how to use His tools, or if we choose to resist His directions, it will take Him longer to accomplish His goal.

As you talk with your kids about the Christian life, it’s important to help them understand that their performance doesn’t earn favor with God or make them better than others. However, the faster they learn to use His tools and comply with His plan, the more work He will be able to do! This is why it’s so important to teach them how to personally walk with God in openness and submission (Romans 12:1–2; Galatians 5:16; 1 John 1:9).

3. Help them embrace teamwork with other Christians

One of the things I’ve learned about handyman projects is that I can’t do them alone! I’ve had to watch YouTube videos, ask my father-in-law for advice, and let a friend walk me through something over Facetime. Even the most skilled craftsmen ask for input from others!

We technically COULD become more like Jesus with only God’s help. Joseph and Daniel didn’t have Bible studies or a youth group, yet God gave them what they needed to walk with Him. But even though that’s possible, it doesn’t mean it’s ideal. God gives us the help of other believers to aid us in our spiritual growth.

Kids need to understand that church is not just an obligation or a fun hangout. The church is the body of Christ. It’s made up of believers who are committed to providing encouragement, accountability, support, and guidance to one another. They serve together, learn together, and grow together. As they do so, God uses each person’s contribution to help grow the rest of the body (Romans 12:5; Ephesians 5:19; Hebrews 10:25). This is why it’s so important that kids learn how to enjoy consistently attending, serving, and fellowshipping in church.

4. Help them see the purpose of God’s design

When people see the shiplap wall I put up, I don’t want them to be impressed with the wall. I want them to be impressed that I made it! I’m always excited to show people that I did something.

God doesn’t want our lives to be grand structures that impress others—He wants our lives to show off who made them. He wants us to reflect glory back to Him through what He has done in us. He wants us to LOOK like Jesus so we will point others TO Jesus.

Kids need to understand that learning about the Bible, doing good things, and mastering spiritual disciplines aren’t about making us look good. As we become more like Jesus, the more humble we will be. The more humble we are, the more we’ll want to bring attention to God instead of ourselves (Isaiah 42:8; 1 Corinthians 10:31; Colossians 2:6–7)

How We Can Help

We’re here to help make it easy for you to support your kids as you talk about the Christian life. Once your child makes a profession of faith, we are here to help you discuss God’s construction project on their lives. Our I Have Decided Bible study is a great resource to help new believers learn and apply God’s truths for themselves.

I Have Decided Bible study will teach them:

• about their new identity in Christ
• what their life should look like within that design
• how to rely on help from God and others on that journey
• how to exercise their faith by walking daily with God

Learn how grandparents can support homeschooling their grandchildren, the challenges, benefits, and more practical tips.
Read this ultimate guide.

Today, education can look different for each and every family. Some kids are in public school, others private, and then, of course, there’s homeschooling. Even in homeschooling, though, it’s not the same across the board. While for a long time, it has been primarily mothers who were homeschooling their children, these days, dads often jump in too. Since the pandemic, we’re also seeing a rise in grandparents who are involved in their grandkids’ homeschool journey!

There are many different reasons a grandparent may have regular or complete involvement in a grandchild’s home education. Having flexibility when it comes to a child’s education is such a gift. It can be a huge blessing when grandparents are willing and able to come alongside and assist. They don’t have to make it a formal classroom experience—one of the many benefits of homeschooling—but there still are so many opportunities to teach grandchildren even outside regular school hours.

Grandparents Can Support Homeschooling Parents

Even if they are not full-time educators of their grandchildren, grandparents can support homeschooling their grandchildren by supporting the parents. Here are some great ways to be involved:

• Reading to the grandchildren: There have been countless studies proving how important reading aloud to children is for their literary, social, emotional, and overall mental development. Children who have been read to tend to be better readers, have a larger vocabulary, and have improved reading comprehension skills.
• Storytelling: Grandparents have unique experiences and perspectives. Every memory and story has the opportunity to be a history lesson. Whether recounting historic events they witnessed or sharing ancestral history and traditions, simply sharing their past is a teaching moment for grandparents.
• Extracurricular activities: Taking grandchildren to extracurricular activities—such as co-op classes, sports practices, dance, music, or art lessons—is a simple yet important way grandparents can impact their grandchildren’s education.
• Life skill training: From woodworking to baking to mechanics, grandparents came from a generation that fixed something when it was broken and made do with what they had. These valuable life skills are often left unshared by younger generations, leaving them ill-prepared to start their lives as adults. What may seem like a simple chore to a grandparent can be a life-equipping lesson for their grandchild! 
• Taking them on field trips: Parents often wish their children could attend more field trips but cannot make it happen due to work and time constraints. This is a space where grandparents can step in and help give grandchildren a chance to see and experience learning things they otherwise wouldn’t have. 

Grandparents Can Support Homeschooling From a Distance

When a grandparent doesn’t live close to their grandchildren, there are still plenty of ways to engage in homeschooling their grandchildren, such as:

• Teaching virtually: Using technology like FaceTime, Skype, or Zoom calls, grandparents can teach their grandchildren skills and knowledge such as home economics, shopping, or family history.
• Financial support: Contribute to extracurricular activities and clubs, such as a sport, dance, music, or art lessons. A little bit can go a long way!
• Taking trips with the grandchildren. Take them on educational “vacations” to historic sites, zoos or aquariums, or museums. Church mission trips are other great trips that are both educational and faith-building.
• Researching college scholarship programs. Junior and senior years can be hectic for a high schooler, and searching for scholarships is another burden on an already busy brain. Grandparents can scout for scholarships and mentorship programs for their grandchildren, even from miles away, and help alleviate that pressure. This is also a great help for busy parents who may not have time to do so.
• Attending homeschool conferences. Go with the whole family! It always helps to expand one’s knowledge about homeschooling and attending conferences with homeschooling parents can help grandparents understand more about the process. It also creates space for grandparents to spend time with their grandchildren while Mom and Dad are in sessions.

Grandparents Can Homeschool Their Grandchildren Full-Time

What if a grandparent wants to fully take on the burden of homeschooling their grandchild?

The laws around grandparents homeschooling their grandchildren may vary from state to state. If a grandparent is in a situation with custodial rights and is raising their grandchild, most state laws allow it. In some states, parents are permitted to delegate teaching to other people, including grandparents, as long as they comply with the homeschool statutes. Read about your state’s homeschool laws at HSLDA.

Reasons a grandparent would be homeschooling their grandchildren:

Both parents work but want the child to be homeschooled

• Child: Children all have different educational needs, and many benefit from homeschooling’s flexible nature and one-on-one teaching opportunities.
• Economy: Families may have been homeschooling for some time, but both parents now need to work. 

Single parent situations

In another situation, a single parent would love to homeschool their child, but work and the burden of running a household alone are too much to also include educating their child.

No matter what the reason, if a grandparent has the ability, availability, and desire to homeschool their grandchild full-time, homeschooling can have many benefits for both the grandparent and grandchild. However, it isn’t without its challenges as well.

Benefits and Challenges of Homeschooling a Grandchild

Challenges of Homeschooling as a Grandparent

• Setting up boundaries: Grandparents often have a reputation for being fun and more lenient than parents. “At Grandma’s house, you can have ice cream before dinner!” This dynamic will change once a grandparent is in charge of staying on top of schoolwork, enforcing deadlines, and occasionally dealing with discipline and conflict.
• Less energy: Teaching is tiring! Grandparents may feel the added strain of being their grandchild’s primary educator and be less energetic because of it.
• Strain on parental relationship: This applies if the teaching grandparent is not the child’s guardian. There could be potential friction between grandparents and parents with differing opinions on how the child should be taught. 
• Change in personal activities/Schedule flexibility: Homeschooling takes time, and a grandparent enjoying the retired life will find that their once ample free time has now been gobbled up by homeschooling. Activities they previously had time for will take a backseat to the priority of homeschooling.
• Negative reactions from friends: Because grandparents homeschooling their grandchildren is not a mainstream concept, there will be unsolicited feedback from peers, often negative. Grandparents will need to prepare themselves for how they will respond to these questions and comments. 

Benefits of Homeschooling

• More time with grandchildren: In today’s culture, grandparents are spending less and less time with their grandchildren. Homeschooling is a great opportunity for grandparents to remain heavily involved in their grandchildren’s lives.
• Sharing the work of raising grandchildren: They weren’t kidding when they said it takes a village to raise a child! With grandparents homeschooling, the burden of caring for and raising children is spread out. This frees up time, patience, and even money for the parents and the grandparents, while the children receive a more rounded education. This leads to the next point.
• Diverse opportunities both for grandchild and grandparent: Each teacher, whether in a public school classroom or as a homeschooler, has unique experiences and perspectives to share. Children who have been taught by their grandparents will receive a rich education tailored to them.
• Godly blessings: Titus 2 instructs older men and women to educate the younger men and women. While homeschooling certainly isn’t the one and only way to do that, it’s an excellent opportunity to live those verses out. Grandparents can share their faith, talk about all the things God has done for them, and explain the Bible to their grandkids!

Find Homeschooling Support

Even with grandparents involved in the homeschooling journey, it is nearly impossible to walk through it alone. Finding support emotionally and academically makes a huge difference for anyone when it comes to homeschooling, but especially for grandparents! 

• Extended family: If others in a family are homeschooling, grandparents can reach out to discuss lesson plans, trade teaching days, plan field trips together, or simply talk through challenges they are facing.
• Church: Community is first found in the church, and homeschooling is no exception. A local church often has resources for homeschoolers, and a strong church community is excellent for offering spiritual and emotional support.
• Homeschool community: Co-ops and other homeschool groups make a huge difference in any home educator’s life. Some offer classes to supplement or support a child’s education, while others provide field trips, sports, and social activities to keep children social and active. Home educators are able to gather together to support and encourage each other, sharing resources and knowledge so that everyone can succeed.
• Homeschool associations and conventions:  Conventions like Teach Them Diligently or state-associated ones like the Home Educators Association of Virginia, Florida Parent Educators Association, or INCH in Michigan. These are full of resources designed to help any home educator—parent or grandparent—succeed in homeschooling.
• Legal advocacy associations: It’s important when homeschooling to make sure that all state laws regarding education are being followed. The Homeschool Legal Defense Association, or HSLDA, is the best place to start to find all the requirements needed for homeschooling.

Final Thoughts

There are so many different ways homeschooling can function successfully. If you’re a grandparent looking to jump into the crazy, exciting mess, don’t worry! No home education looks the same, so find what works best for your family. It’s a learning process and takes lots of trial and error to learn what works for you and your student. Our hope is that this article has helped take some of the mystery out of how grandparents can support homeschooling and made it feel a little more doable for you!

We live in a world full of confusing messages, so we know our kids need a strong
Christian foundation. Here are 5 truths to teach them.

In the world all of us live in today, we see what happens when truth, morality, and justice are not based on a Christian foundation. The helpless are in danger instead of being protected. Dishonest and deceived people are given a platform, while those speaking the truth are silenced. Emotions are held up as truth, while the real truth is stifled, beaten down, and forced out.

Because of all these things, it can be easy to let fear overtake our hearts. We wonder how our children can deal with so much that is wrong and twisted, and we want to shelter them from it as long as possible. But the truth is God has brought our children into this world for such a time as this! It is His truth that will give them the Christian foundation they need for their faith to be anchored and strong. In a world where “truth” is constantly changing and emotions dictate right and wrong, God’s trustworthy promises are the anchor of our souls. So as parents, it’s our job to train up our kids and make sure they know the truth about God’s truth!

5 Truths That Provide a Christian Foundation to Anchor Your Kids’ Faith

At first, the task of teaching our kids the whole counsel of God might seem overwhelming and discouraging. There’s so much important truth—where do we even start? Though the Bible is full of truth that every Christian needs to know and learn, certain truths lay the groundwork for a Christian foundation and worldview for our kids’ lives. So what are these foundational truths our kids need to know?

1. God’s Truth Is a Connected Story

When I was in college, I had to write a LOT of papers. And while I enjoyed the writing process, I hated the researching process. Especially when every rubric required “10 or more 10+ page sources” which I had to read “in their entirety.” But what I despised about paper research is what I am thankful I know now—books, papers, journals, and scientific studies must be read as entire works. Because the author had a purpose in how he or she presented the facts or opinions they wrote in their work, I cannot pick and choose parts of someone else’s work and make them say what I want them to say. Is it easy to do? YES! But it doesn’t preserve the whole story the author was trying to tell.

With God, the author whom all other authors imitate, it’s the same way! His Word, which He preserved for us in the form of the Bible, is not just a huge volume of work that we get to pick and choose from, like a dictionary or encyclopedia. Though it’s especially easy to only go to the New Testament or famous stories from the Old Testament about Abraham, Moses, or David, God’s Word is an entire story that He wrote to reveal Himself and His work to us. It’s not meant to be broken up into little snippets we teach to our kids while ignoring the genealogies, law, and minor prophets. For kids to have a solid Christian foundation, it’s important to teach them the story of the Bible instead of just Bible stories.

2. Jesus Proved God’s Promises Are True and Gave Us Access to God

The next thing your kids need to be sure of to have a strong Christian foundation for their faith is that Jesus proved God’s promises are true. For a long time growing up, I looked at Jesus almost like the “nice one” in the Godhead. I saw God as wrathful and angry and Jesus as the one who would be nice and loving. But that’s not quite true. Yes, we see consistently through the Bible that God is angry with sin and must judge it because of His holiness. But we also see—everywhere in the Old Testament—His overflowing love and promise of mercy and grace to any who will simply repent. And because of that overflowing love, God the Father sent Jesus. Not because Jesus could handle us and God couldn’t, but because God was willing to sacrifice His own Son and pour out His wrath on Him instead of us.

The New Testament shows us how Jesus fulfilled the promises of God and changed the world! Then it also shows us how we fit into God’s story. We no longer have to be separated from the holy and righteous God of the Old Testament because He made a way to bring us to Himself! When we come to Him by faith in response to the gospel’s story, God changes our lives and gives us a full-time mission as disciple-makers. For kids to personally experience this, it’s important to teach them the comprehensive, full story of the New Testament.

3. God’s Truth Is the Foundation Your Kids Need to Build Their Lives On

In June of 2021, America was shocked and heartbroken to hear about a Florida condo building that collapsed in the middle of the night, killing and injuring dozens of people. Unbeknownst to anyone around, the supporting structure had been gradually decaying until it resulted in tragic devastation. That heartbreaking story reminds us of how important it is to have a strong, healthy foundation.

To have a strong spiritual foundation, our kids have to accept God’s Word as truth through salvation. No amount of behavior modification or moral instruction can save them from the ultimate punishment for their sin. However, while all Christian parents want their kids to put their faith in Jesus, knowing how to have conversations about the subject can be difficult.

Maybe you have young kids who haven’t professed salvation yet. Or maybe they have, but it doesn’t seem to affect their choices or character. Where do you begin talking with your kids about what it means to accept Christ? This can be difficult, but there are some practical tips to make talking about salvation with your kids easier! Ultimately, praying a prayer doesn’t matter if our kids haven’t decided to personally believe that what God says is true. But once they have accepted God as their Rock of Salvation and believed His Word, they have a Christian foundation to build their lives on.

4. God’s Character Will Change Your Kids From the Inside Out

Have you ever turned a laborious chore into a game for your kids so they would love it (and actually do it)? Imagine if you were to tell your kids, “I want you to spend the next hour picking up the toys in your room.” You can probably already hear the groaning and complaining that would come next! But if you were to say, “I’ve hidden $500 in your bedroom, and you’ll find it by picking up your toys,” that chore would get really exciting really fast!

Sometimes kids view spiritual disciplines as laborious chores. They HAVE to go to church, they’re MADE to read their Bible, and they’re FORCED to pray when they would much rather be doing something else. But a relationship with God and the pursuit of His kingdom is portrayed in Scripture as a great treasure to find (Hebrews 11:6; Matthew 13:44). When kids view God as a treasure to find, all of a sudden, pursuing Him is something they do willingly and volitionally. And the wonderful result is that by pursuing God as a valuable treasure, they learn who God is, which helps them grow in godliness. It’s important to teach kids the riches of God’s character from His Word because knowing the attributes of God changes everything. The fruit of their behavior will stem from the root of their belief about who God is.

5. God’s Love Will Make Your Kids Emotionally Strong

I’m not much of a gardener, so I do my best to keep as few plants in our flower beds as possible. It’s always amazing to me how resilient certain weeds and flowers are! There has been foliage in our yard that I have pulled up, dug up, chopped up, and sprayed down with weed poison, and yet in just a few weeks, it’s back again as if nothing had ever happened. That’s a strong root system!

In life, there will be so many things that try to beat up and tear down our kids. Mean bullies, disappointments, personal insecurities, fake friends, and impossible social media expectations consistently make kids anxious and tell them they’re not good enough. But in the midst of all that, kids can continue bouncing back and thriving if they are rooted in God’s love. God’s love meets us in every situation and empowers us with spiritual strength. It is something we can count on no matter what else happens to us in this life. It’s important to help kids learn how to sink their roots into God’s unconditional love, acceptance, and forgiveness so they can be spiritually strong.

Something to Help

We know how hard it is to find resources you trust to teach your kids. That’s why we have written 5 brand-new Bible studies tackling each of the truths we just talked through! Our Foundations Collection consists of God’s Story: Old Testament, God’s Story: New Testament, Rock of Salvation, Immeasurable Treasure, and Strong Roots. Each of these studies will help your kids build a Christian foundation for their lives. Through studying God’s Word, your kids will see how God’s truth is all they need.

It’s the most exciting thing ever, but how do you talk about Salvation with your Kids? Read more to find out ideas and tips.

One day I was observing a kids’ rally at a summer VBS, and the speaker unintentionally gave an unclear call to respond. During the invitation, dozens of kids “responded” to salvation, thinking it was snack time! If there hadn’t been some discerning adults there to sort and redirect, we could have had a lot of false conversions that day.

That story is one of many that makes me realize how easy it is to persuade kids to say a salvation prayer. Many times, the “sinner’s prayer” is pushed on kids before they’re ready, or the gospel is presented to them as a way to go to heaven instead of hell. Unfortunately, professions of faith like these can lead to doubt or false confidence later.

Even though you want your kids to put their faith in Jesus, you are probably cautious about the issues mentioned above. When your child reaches an age where they begin asking questions about salvation, how can you thoroughly share truth with them without forcing them into a false profession?

How to Talk About Salvation With Kids

1. Have conversations without expectations

We often want to present salvation to kids as a nicely packaged box of information, hoping they’ll listen to it and pray right away. You may be tempted to say, “Would you like to pray right now and ask Jesus to save you?” But this could pressure them into doing something they don’t really understand or honestly want to do.

As difficult as it is, wait for your kids to show interest in salvation on their own. Let them ask their questions, and provide your answers without demanding a commitment in return. If they don’t respond or their attention span runs out, move on to the next thing! Be willing to have short or infrequent conversations with no expectation of time, response, or frequency. You could share Scripture to answer their questions and say, “These are some verses for you to think about. You can talk with me again later if you have more questions.” If they initiate a conversation later, you’ll know it’s because THEY want to!

2. Ask open-ended questions to gauge understanding and sincerity

Imagine you sit down with a child to talk about what they want to be when they grow up, hoping they’ll become a firefighter. You show them pictures of cool fire trucks and firefighters dressed in uniforms. You tell inspirational stories about firefighters saving people. Then you ask, “Do you want to commit right now to being a firefighter one day?” You could probably convince just about any child to say yes to that. But when they get older and the novelty wears off, they may realize they don’t actually want to be a firefighter after all.

When we present salvation this way to kids, we get similar results. Rather than giving a promising sales pitch that demands an immediate response, ask them questions like “What do you think sin is?” “Who do you think Jesus was?” “Why do you think Jesus had to die?” Open-ended questions like these will help you gauge their understanding and sincerity. If they’re not ready to get saved yet, that’s OK! Continue to share Scripture with them and let God work in their heart.

3. Share the full beauty of the gospel

I like to say that salvation is SIMPLE but not EASY. While there are depths of salvation that theologians study and debate, the core principles of the gospel are simple enough for even a child to understand (Matthew 18:3). But even the most simple gospel presentation requires a challenging response because salvation means repenting of sin, trusting Christ as Savior, and committing to follow Him as Master. That’s a huge, life-long commitment!

When we present salvation as an easy prayer to go to heaven, we share a partial gospel that leaves out the cost of being a disciple (Luke 14:26–33). Don’t ask your kids if they want to “ask Jesus into their hearts.” This wording is never used in the Bible and can be very abstract and confusing to children. Instead, explain what salvation is, why it is necessary, and what accepting it means.

On a similar note, remember that you have the opportunity to parent in a manner that models the beauty of the gospel. Kids’ interest in what the Bible says may depend on what they see at home! In everyday life, show your kids their NEED for grace while also demonstrating what it feels like to RECEIVE that grace. Exemplify what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, and build your family’s values on the foundation of the gospel.

4. Show acceptance regardless of their response

A coerced decision is not an authentic decision. I remember praying a salvation prayer as a kid because I thought it would make other people happy. That led to a lot of doubt later on. When we talk to kids about salvation, our goal shouldn’t be for them to pray a prayer. Our goal should be for them to authentically place their faith in Jesus.

As you discuss salvation with your kids, help them understand that becoming a follower of Christ is their personal decision. You can’t and won’t make it for them, and they shouldn’t make it because of you. It can be heartbreaking when your kids hear the gospel over and over but don’t respond. However, as you talk with them, be careful not to show any frustration or desperation. Assure them that you love and accept them regardless of whether or not they immediately trust Christ.

5. Don’t assume you know what God is doing in their heart

Often, a child asks questions about salvation even though they already “prayed a prayer” when they were younger. One of the most dangerous things a parent could do in that situation is to try to convince a child that the child is already saved. Saying things like “I know you’re saved; I was there when you prayed” can give a child false confidence. You may think they’re saved (and maybe they are). But if THEY don’t think they’re saved, they need help finding assurance in God’s Word instead of in your opinion.

6. Rely on the Holy Spirit to do the work

This is the most crucial point because none of the other steps matter without it. It’s important to remember that the only one who can save your child is God, and the only one who can draw them to salvation is the Holy Spirit. Any amount of human coercion or pressure to “do” something to receive salvation will rarely result in authenticity or spiritual fruit. As difficult as it may be, ask God to help you allow the Holy Spirit to draw your child to salvation in HIS timing.

Resources for you

I’ll be honest—sharing the gospel with a child is one of the scariest things in the world to me! I want them to get saved, but I don’t want to be responsible for misleading them (Matthew 18:6). Maybe you feel the same. Even though you want to have gospel conversations with your children, it can be difficult knowing where to start or what to say. But the good news is we’ve made it easy for you! We wrote Rock of Salvation: The Foundation of a Christian Life to teach kids what salvation is, why they need it, and how it can change their lives. This study gives them a thorough explanation of salvation without pressuring them to respond, and it would be a great resource to help you begin discussing salvation with them.

Want your kids to stand firm when life threatens to blow them around? See how they can be rooted in God’s love so they can be firmly planted.

I spent five years living in the desert of California, and one of the things I vividly remember is the tumbleweeds! It was not uncommon at all to see those scrawny bushes blowing across your path or piling up against a wall. When I think about tumbleweeds, I think about how different they are from trees like the sequoias of Northern California. While a tumbleweed is listlessly blown about by the wind and puts down shallow roots wherever it finds itself, sequoias put their roots down into nourishing soil, where they intertwine with the surrounding trees and safely thrive in the same place for hundreds of years.

Sometimes we can be a little bit like tumbleweeds in the way we live our lives. Emotions and hard times can easily blow us around if we don’t have strong roots to keep us steady. No parent wants their child to be an emotional tumbleweed, but for kids to be secure, brave, and successful, they have to learn that acceptance, love, and security can only come from God. Like a sequoia tree, they can be rooted in God’s love and stand strong even when life feels lonely, unfair, overwhelming, or scary. God’s love is solid ground because it anchors them in a relationship with someone who unconditionally loves them, fully accepts them, constantly forgives them, and endlessly pursues them. When they learn to rest in this, they can feel secure, brave, confident, and joyful no matter what.

Why do kids sometimes become tumbleweeds? Here are some things you can be sure of:

• Kids will make mistakes.
• Life will hurt them.
• People will fail them.
• People will criticize them.

4 Ways to Help Your Kids Be Rooted in God’s Love

1. When they make mistakes, teach God’s forgiveness

If you had any idealistic dreams that your children would be perfect, I’m sure you gave up on that fantasy very quickly after they were born! Children will inevitably make mistakes, like forgetting to turn off the bathroom sink (AGAIN!). When kids mess up, it’s an opportunity to point them toward a forgiving God. You have the chance to help them see that God, as a compassionate Father, is patient with their struggles and loves them no matter what (Psalm 103:13–14). You can also demonstrate God’s forgiveness and patience yourself. Even though you can’t love your kids as perfectly as God does, you can ask for God’s help to show His grace to your children when they fail.

Imagine that in a moment of anger, your child says something hurtful to you and disobeys. Rather than just rebuking and disciplining them, consider doing something like sending them to their room until you both can calm down. Then (after you’ve had a chance to pray yourself), sit down with them and discuss what happened. Point out that even though their response was sinful, you love them anyway (just as God does). Choose an appropriate punishment and explain that consequences for our failures help us not make them again. However, once the sin has been dealt with, you don’t have to bring it up anymore.

2. When life hurts them, teach God’s goodness

Unfortunately, no matter how much we try to protect them, children will experience hurt and disappointment from things like having their pet die or not getting the present they wanted. Although situations like these are painful, they are also opportunities for kids to learn about God’s plan for their lives. As a parent, you get the chance to teach them that although circumstances can be painful, they have a God who loves them and works everything out for their good and His glory (Romans 8:28–29). Even in the most difficult times, they can learn to trust Him.

For example, maybe you had to make changes to your family’s vacation because of financial constraints. Now your child is disappointed that they don’t get to go on the trip they were looking forward to. It would be easy to feel like a bad parent and get angry out of guilt at your kid’s response. Instead, you could try to discuss the situation with them and empathize with their feelings. Let them know you’re disappointed too, but explain that God has a plan for why He allowed this to happen. He is still taking care of your family, and you can choose to have a good time with whatever you do.

3. When people fail them, teach God’s faithfulness

Children will probably learn very quickly that other people make mistakes. (By the way, this is one of the reasons it’s important to show your children grace—at some point, they will have to show grace to you too!) When kids get hurt over broken promises or hurtful friendships, it’s an opportunity for them to learn that their confidence cannot be placed in people. However, even though people they trust and admire will fail them, God never will. They can confidently put their security, hope, trust, and confidence in God as the only one who will never let them down.

Let’s say your child is deeply disappointed because their friend broke a promise. It may be tempting to dismiss this or teach them to just “get over it,” but this is an amazing learning opportunity! You can take a minute to ask how it made them feel, discuss whether or not what their friend did was right, and consider what may have led their friend to do it. Explain that it’s OK to feel hurt and that people will, unfortunately, hurt them many times in life. Then you can point them to the comfort of knowing that God will never fail them. Since God forgives them for failing Him, they can forgive a friend for failing them.

4. When people criticize them, teach God’s acceptance

Kids are constantly being made to feel that they’re not good enough by peers, advertisements, and entertainment. Few things bring a parent pain like hearing that their child is being bullied or made fun of. Although there’s no excuse for this happening, the truth is that it’s inevitable. At some point, every child will be criticized by someone else. Although it’s easy to try to avoid or ignore these painful times, viewing them as learning opportunities could set your child up for lifelong success. God wants to use these painful experiences to show that He accepts them. They can find their confidence in Him because He loves them unconditionally and is always on their side.

Perhaps your child comes home from church one day and says that someone there is bullying him or her. Usually, our first response as a parent in that situation is to rush to our child’s defense. “How dare they make fun of my child!? I need to call the pastor and set up a meeting with the other parent at once!” While steps like those may be necessary, there are also other things you can do to help your child grow through the situation rather than just fixing it. Give them a chance to tell you how it made them feel and discuss whether or not that person was right to say what they did. Find out if your child had any responsibility in the situation. Then help them learn what to do with their emotions. Explain that even though what the other person said was hurtful, we can’t control what other people say about us; we can only remember what God says about us. God made your child the way they are, and He doesn’t make mistakes! He loves them just the way He made them, so they can be confident in how God feels about them instead of caring what someone else says about them.

Resources to help:

In addition to looking for opportunities to teach and demonstrate God’s love in everyday life, it’s important to study these truths in the Bible as well. All of these reminders about God’s love, along with many others, are taught in our Bible study Strong Roots: A Biblical Study of God’s Love. We’ve made it easy for you to help your kids be grounded in the love of God so they can be secure, confident, and successful. Together, you can study how to be rooted in God’s love. Look for opportunities to apply what you’re learning in everyday life as your kids encounter things like peer pressure, failure, anxiety, and doubt.

Have you ever considered that behavior problems are actually belief problems? Read more to find out how knowing the attributes of God will help!

When I was a kid, I grew up in the state of Florida, which is famous for its oranges. In our yard, we had a massive orange tree with a massive problem. Although the tree looked healthy, much of its fruit was sour. In fact, my mom used to make lemonade from the oranges it produced! We could have tried to “fix” the tree by duct-taping new fruit on or sugar-coating the bad fruit. But this tree produced bad fruit because a freeze had damaged its root system. The only way to fix the fruit would have been to fix the root.

This same principle is true spiritually. The Bible compares our behavior to fruit and teaches that the behavior we produce comes from the root of what we believe about God. Growing up in church, it’s extremely easy for kids to believe God is real while knowing very little about who God really is. This leads to a vicious cycle. If we don’t know who God is, we won’t think He’s a valuable treasure. If we don’t think He’s a valuable treasure, we won’t seek Him. If we don’t seek Him, we won’t know Him. And if we don’t know Him, we’ll produce bad fruit.

As you lead your family spiritually, it’s important to be belief doctors instead of behavior police.

How can you help your kids learn the attributes of God so that biblical beliefs produce biblical behavior?

4 Ways to Help Kids Learn God’s Attributes:

Present God as a treasure to value instead of a rule book to follow

When we view God incorrectly (as though He’s an angry deity trying to ruin our lives), we’re not very motivated to seek Him. That’s why Hebrews 11:6 tells us that to seek God in faith, we have to believe that He is a rewarder. Just as the reward for seeking diamonds is finding diamonds, the reward for seeking God is finding God. When kids view God as an oppressive obligation, they only go to church and read their Bible because they’re forced to. But when they view God as a treasure worthy of their pursuit, they will seek Him out of desire instead of duty. We were created to need God because only in Him can we have a content heart. Presenting God as a treasure to value will inspire your kids to seek Him and find the reward their hearts are longing for.

Anchor their identity in God’s character

We all constantly talk to ourselves about ourselves, and outside voices speak into our lives, telling us what to say. Many kids live in a cesspool of mental negativity that causes anxiety, depression, or insecurity. But a Christian is defined by what God says about them, not what anyone else says about them. Furthermore, what God says about them is a result of who He is (not what they do or how they look). Whether a child is overconfident or insecure, they need to be anchored in who God is to know who they are. Developing an understanding of their biblical identity will help them overcome negative or inaccurate self-talk.

Connect behavior problems to belief problems

When kids are misbehaving, it’s easy to jump into behavior modification solutions. But more important than WHAT a kid is doing wrong is WHY they are doing it. Whether the wrong behavior is an emotion (anxiety, depression, worry, anger, etc.) or an action (rebellion, disrespect, lying, etc.), everything we think and do is a result of what we believe about God. So if you can identify a wrong belief that is driving their wrong behavior, you can then help them fix the wrong belief and come up with a much longer-lasting solution. (By the way—the best strategy for doing this isn’t to preach a sermon! Ask questions to help them identify the wrong belief and plan a solution on their own. That will be much more successful!)

Teach attributes of God in everyday life

Learning God’s attributes is a lifelong study! You can help your kids on this journey by looking for opportunities to teach God’s character in ordinary life situations. From small things (like not getting a toy they wanted) to big things (like a grandparent passing away), we can teach our kids to look for God in our daily lives. One of the most difficult but basic things children need to learn is how to trust God each day. Much of the worry, disappointment, and frustration they experience in life can be helped by knowing who God is. When they learn that a good God with their best interest in mind is working everything out for their good and His glory, it will help them trust Him as they learn to navigate the difficulties of life.

Resources to help

God’s attributes are one of the most important and rewarding things to study, and we’ve made it easy for you to do! We wrote Immeasurable Treasure: A Bible Study on God’s Character to help you make exploring God’s attributes a habit. You can go through this as a family and begin discovering who God really is so you can learn to trust Him with your life. This study examines an individual attribute of God each day that you can talk about as a family and apply to your lives. You’ll be amazed at how situations in your life will match up perfectly with what you’re learning together in the study. (But if your oven breaks on the day you learn “God is good”—don’t blame us!)

Help your kids understand the New Testament by teaching the full story of God. Check out these easy and practical ways to help them.

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to coach an elementary soccer team. Coaching that age group is very entertaining because most of them have no idea what’s going on! To teach them about soccer, I didn’t start with intense workouts or drills. Instead, I started with the basic things (like “Don’t touch the ball with your hands!”). But even though they were learning a very simple version of soccer, they were still learning soccer.

For kids, getting saved can be similar to this. While their understanding of the gospel may be very basic when they get saved, it is still salvation (Matthew 18:2–3)! But just like children need to grow in their understanding of sports, they also need to grow in their understanding of the gospel to understand the riches of their new identity in Christ. Salvation is so much more than a prayer to go to heaven. Salvation is a call to courageous, audacious faith in Jesus that changes us from the inside out every single day.

For kids to understand the meaning and beauty of the gospel, it’s important for them to understand the New Testament. The New Testament reveals the coming of the promised Messiah from the Old Testament, tells about His life, death, and resurrection, and invites us to be part of His kingdom.

How to help your kids understand the New Testament

1. Read and study each verse in context

If you opened Netflix one day, picked a show you’d never seen, and started on episode 14 of season 6, you probably would have no idea what was going on! Sometimes that’s how kids feel when they learn individual Bible stories. While they may master the facts in the stories, they don’t always understand how those stories fit together. Without an understanding of this, the Bible can become a book of names, places, and events that contain morals to just make us better people. But the Bible isn’t a compilation of random stories to guide us through life—the Bible is a book that tells us about God. As you study the Bible with your kids, ask questions to help them understand the context of each verse and show them how everything points toward God.

2. Show how Jesus fulfilled the promises of the Old Testament

Imagine if you went on a mission trip to people who had never heard the gospel. If you said to the first person you met, “Jesus died on the cross for your sins, so would you like to be saved?” they would be so confused! Without background information, that question doesn’t make any sense. When we teach the New Testament without the Old Testament, we can cause similar confusion. How does blood forgive sin? Without knowing the answer to questions like that, Jesus’ sacrifice can sound confusing at best and ridiculous at worst. As you read the Bible with your kids, help them understand how Jesus fulfilled the promises of the Old Testament. Creation had been longing for a Messiah since the fall of Adam, and by fulfilling the Old Testament promises, Jesus proved He is the Messiah we’ve been waiting for (Luke 24:27).

3. Explain how each book of the New Testament is about the gospel

Just like the Old Testament, the New Testament is not a random compilation of stories that give us great behavior modification strategies. The Bible is a library of sixty-six books that all tell one story of Jesus redeeming a sin-cursed planet and bringing it back into harmony with its Creator. The layout of the Bible is similar to a book series that uses a variety of characters and events to tell one cohesive story. (Except the Bible story is true and the most important story you’ll ever read!) The Old Testament prophesies that the Messiah is coming, and the New Testament declares that the Messiah has come. As you study the New Testament with your kids, look for opportunities to show how fitting Scripture together points toward the gospel on each page.

4. Teach where we fit in God’s story

When we understand who Jesus is and what the New Testament is about, we learn who we are and why we are here. The Bible isn’t about us, but it is written for us. It tells us how the everyday, life-changing reality of the gospel speaks into the hearts of people struggling with things like sin, apathy, depression, insecurity, anxiety, and rebellion. Because many Christians view salvation simply as a “get out of hell free” card, they have no idea what the gospel means for their everyday life.

Without the gospel, no amount of social reform, behavior modification, or charity efforts could ever accomplish real change in us or the world because we can only find lasting victory, hope, joy, and purpose in the message of Jesus. As you read the New Testament with your kids, explain how the gospel defines who they are, how God sees them, and what God is calling them to do.

Resources to help you

Too many kids believe salvation is only about heaven, but it’s not! Heaven is PART of salvation, but it isn’t the POINT of salvation. The gospel is a spiritual miracle that changes us right now, and the New Testament tells us how we can experience that miracle.

When you try to study the New Testament through this lens, knowing where to start can be challenging. But we’ve made it easy for you! We wrote God’s Story: A Study Through the New Testament to help your family learn the redemptive story of the gospel in the last twenty-seven books of the Bible so they can understand who they are in Christ, how they fit into God’s story, and how they should live according to God’s plan. Click the image below to find out more!

The Bible isn’t a book of inspiring stories that help us be better people.
Help your kids see how Scripture fits together to tell ONE story—the gospel.

As a kid, two of my favorite church activities were review games and Bible drills. Every Sunday, we had a review game of boys versus girls, and, as a competitive boy, it was my greatest joy to try and crush the girls’ team! Even though I knew a lot of information and could do well in those competitions, it wasn’t until much later in life that I learned how all those individual Bible facts fit together.

Many kids growing up in church are just like I was. They can tell you all about Moses and the burning bush or Daniel in the lions’ den . . . but they can’t tell you why those stories were written or what they are really about. As we teach our children the Bible, it’s so important to help them understand how Scripture fits together. The Bible isn’t a book of inspiring stories that help us be better people. The Bible is a library of sixty-six books that all tell ONE story—the story of the gospel. If kids don’t have a proper understanding of this, the Bible may become a random compilation of ancient, magical tales they don’t understand and don’t feel compelled to believe when they get older.

When explaining the redemptive story of the Bible, it’s usually easier to use the New Testament than it is to use the Old Testament. But the Old Testament is so important in helping kids understand the full story of the gospel!

4 steps to help your kids understand how the Old Testament fits together:

1. Read and study Bible verses in context

I remember watching a popular Marvel superhero movie once with zero context about where it fit into the overall plot. Needless to say, I was very confused when the movie ended!

Sometimes we read the Bible in a similar way. If we open Scripture and begin reading a story without understanding the context, it can be very confusing. As you read the Bible with your kids, explain the verses or passages before and after what you’re studying. Ask questions like “who,” “what,” “when,” and “where” to understand why the story was written and what is happening. As we’ll see in a minute, the stories in the Bible aren’t meant to just make us better people. The stories are meant to point us to God, so look for Him in the context!

2. Show how each Bible story fits into the gospel story

The Bible is similar to a TV series or movie trilogy that uses a variety of places, characters, and events to tell one cohesive story. The big difference between the Bible and those examples is that the Bible story is TRUE. It is the most important thing you could ever read. The Bible is a library that contains sixty-six books that all tell one story of Jesus redeeming a sin-cursed planet and bringing it back into a relationship with its Creator. As you read the fascinating stories in the Old Testament with your kids, look for opportunities to point toward Jesus and the gospel on each page.

3. Make each story about God instead of the characters

We all love heroes, and it’s easy to read the Old Testament looking for human heroes to emulate. We try to find the champion of a story (like David, Joseph, or Daniel) and live our lives like them so our story works out like theirs. But there are a lot of problems that come with this. First, all of those characters were flawed humans. Second, the Bible isn’t about people. The point of each story in the Old Testament isn’t “Look at [David, Joseph, etc.].” The point of each story is “Look at God!”. As we read Scripture with our kids, it’s important for them to understand that God is the hero of the Bible. The whole book is about Him, and each story helps us know Him better so we can trust Him better.

4. Apply the gospel story rather than moralizing the Bible story

When we make the Bible about human heroes, the next logical step is to try to act like those heroes. We teach kids to “have faith like David so you can kill your giants” or “do right like Daniel so God will protect you.” While these applications have their place, they are not always true. Many times, these Old Testament moralizations fall short because God doesn’t deal with every situation the exact same way (compare Daniel in the lions’ den to Jeremiah in the pit). What if I have faith, but my problems don’t go away? What if I do right but still get persecuted? Is God no longer good? Furthermore, these moralizations fall short because they’re not the main focus of the Bible. Each Bible story demonstrates an attribute of God that relates to the gospel. As we read the Old Testament with our kids, it’s important to point them to a good God instead of just trying to make them good kids.

We’ve made this easy for you!

I’ll never forget being shocked when a teenager who had grown up in church asked me, “Who are the Jewish people?” That teenager knew all the Bible stories, but they didn’t know what the Bible was about. As your family studies God’s Word together, it’s so important that kids learn the story of the Bible instead of just Bible stories.

Teaching the Bible this way to your kids can be difficult, but there’s good news—we’ve made it easy for you! We created God’s Story: A Study Through the Old Testament for this very reason. We want families to learn what each book of the Old Testament is about and how each book tells the redemptive story of the gospel. We’re confident that studying this together can help your family become more grounded in your faith and more obedient to God’s work in your lives. Click the image below to find out more.

Scripture for anxiety and worry is exactly what you need when life threatens to consume you. We’ve got a FREE printable to encourage you!

You know that feeling when your hands are shaky and your palms are just a bit sweaty? You’ve rehearsed it in your mind 100 times, and there’s NOTHING to worry about, yet you can’t help but feel just a little anxious.

As ridiculous as we feel looking back, anxiety and worry feel so urgent in the moment. The impending helplessness of not being in control can so easily consume us. But once the moment has passed, we look back and wonder how something so silly could have caused us to lose sleep, lash out in stress, or not be able to eat.

Is there a way to keep this from happening? I’ll be honest and say that it’s impossible for fallen humans to NEVER worry about anything. The world is full of unknowns that threaten our hearts. But you and I both know that God has something better for us. That means we CAN get a handle on these feelings and keep them from controlling us.

Scripture for Anxiety or Worry: 3 Things to Remember

God Is Sure

Uncertainty is a thief. Not KNOWING rocks most of us to the core and robs us of the stability we need. When my 6-year-old son was diagnosed with a brain tumor, uncertainty became my reality. I remember a friend once asking, “How do you wake up each day knowing that your son might die?” It was a fair question, but I had to turn it back to her. How do YOU wake up each day knowing that your son might die? You see, the truth is we all face the uncertainty of life. None of us knows what might happen next. Sure, no one wants to live through something like a cancer diagnosis, but if you do, you can still bank on the SAME God who is fully in control.

You can’t be sure of anything in this life, but you can be SURE about God. He is in control even when we are not. Whether it’s a bad day or a bad diagnosis, this fact remains the same.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:15–17 ESV)

God Is Steadfast

Most things in this world can’t be trusted. People fail. Things wear out. Faithfulness has become something that surprises us. It’s unexpected. To be honest, it’s easy to have trust issues in today’s culture, which makes it difficult to have relationships free from worry and anxiety. We keep people at a safe distance and draw “healthy boundaries” in an attempt to protect ourselves.

But the Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against the evil one.
(2 Thessalonians 3:3)

But again, God has another way. He is steadfast. In a world where nothing seems trustworthy, He can be trusted. And this isn’t a Sunday school answer. You can count on God every time. His plan will be perfect!

This God—his way is perfect; the word of the LORD proves true; he is a
shield for all those who take refuge in him. (Psalm 18:30)

God Is Your Anchor

I absolutely love being out on a boat. There’s just something about salt water splashing in your face that has become my happy place over the years. But you won’t find stability on the ocean. Those waves will rock you into places you don’t want to go. That’s why boats have anchors. Without the anchor, a boat will drift into trouble.

This is true for us too. Without God as our anchor, we are sure to drift into trouble. No one wants trouble, but trouble in and of itself is not the real problem. An anchored boat still hits the waves. The difference is an anchored boat doesn’t get lost at sea or crashed into the rocks. That’s what we want for our lives. We can expect some waves, but with God as our anchor, we will still be secure.

More Scripture for Anxiety and Worry

• Isaiah 26:3 You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.
• Psalm 9:10 And those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O LORD, have not forsaken those who seek you.
• Psalm 18:1–2 I love you, O LORD, my strength. The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
• Psalm 27:3 Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war arise against me, yet I will be confident.
• Psalm 103:2–5 Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
• John 1:5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
• 1 Corinthians 1:18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
• 2 Corinthians 3:5 Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God.
• Hebrews 6:19 We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain.
• Colossians 2:6–7 Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

Maybe that list of verses surprises you. Shouldn’t I have mentioned 1 Peter 5:7 and Matthew 6:25–33? While these two Scripture passages do address worry and anxiety specifically, the bulleted list of Scriptures above serves more as a foundation to change our thinking!

For example, before anxiety and worry even start, I know from Isaiah 26:3 that I need to keep my mind focused on God and His Word if I want to avoid anxious thinking. I have to intentionally turn my mind to the things of God when I start to sink into the chaos that is clamoring for attention in my brain. But if I can direct my focus toward God, I can rejoice in His protection (Psalm 18:1–2) and how I’ve seen Him provide before (Psalm 103:2–5)!

This is why it’s so important to know God’s Word and be memorizing it. Scripture actually changes how we think and how we handle the things that make us worried and anxious!

When we put things into perspective, Christians realize that we have hope that steadies and anchors our souls—Jesus Christ! This hope found in His Word holds us steady when the things around us are uncertain and threaten to make us anxious and fearful. And because we love you and want to help you remember this truth, we have created a FREE art print you can frame to display somewhere or use as your phone wallpaper to see it throughout the day.

Advent activities for families—you either love them or hate them, right? While some moms are crafty, cute, and always on top of their Advent plans for the year (and if that’s you, I’m so glad!), I tend to be more on the well-intentioned but rather last-minute side. I want to do meaningful things, but planning is a struggle. Plus, budgeting the time and intention you need to celebrate Advent just makes me kinda overwhelmed.

With all the things happening during December—Christmas parties, school and church plays, recitals, seeing family, and alllllll the sweet goodies given and received—the crazy doesn’t really stop. To me, Advent can seem like just another thing to add to the checklist or make us late for bedtime . . . again. And honestly, it’s hard to find Advent activities that are fun, deep, AND manageable. Considering all this, is it really possible to find meaning in our Christmas preparations instead of just stress?

Advent Activities for Families: Finding a Meaningful Christmas Countdown

What’s the Point of Advent Anyway?

Though we often think of Advent as simply a “countdown to Christmas,” the origins of Advent are way deeper! The word “advent” literally refers to an anticipation of the coming or arrival of someone notable and important. Early on, Advent was a time of new year preparation that early Christians used to celebrate and look forward to Christ’s second coming! Eventually, though, Advent became specifically tied to the four weeks leading up to Christmas and celebrating the anticipation leading up to Jesus’ birth.

Finding Meaning in Advent Activities for Your Family

Despite the fact that Advent has always been connected to deep biblical truth, Advent activities for families seem to have lost much of their significance for us today. Even unbelievers pick up Advent calendars to incorporate into their holiday celebrations.

Of course, there’s no problem with chocolate, fun crafts, or excitement leading up to Christmas. But there can be a problem if the focus is all on us. The thing is that this can happen so easily before we even realize it. But Advent can’t be about us! We can’t save the world from sin. We can’t bring ourselves peace and joy and hope—no matter how many advent chocolates we eat and Christmas movies we watch. Unless it’s all about Jesus, Advent is as meaningless and empty as the boxes and wrapping paper littering the floor on Christmas day.

Instead of just celebrating Advent, let’s teach our kids the truth about its meaning. Let’s get deeper and actually talk about why we do what we do. Let’s turn our eyes toward the beauty of what Jesus did for us!

What to Look for When Choosing Advent Activities for Your Family

Truth-Filled

To show our kids the meaning of Advent, we have to start with truth! So many things, from nativity scenes to kids’ Bible storybooks to Christmas carols (yes, I’m serious), don’t actually give us an accurate description of what the Bible tells us about Jesus’ birth. Now, I’m not saying to throw out your nativity scene that includes wise men. And I’m definitely NOT saying you should quit listening to Christmas carols. These are still good things! But I challenge you—look for activities and countdowns that are rooted in and filled with Biblical truth.

If this sounds overwhelming, please know it doesn’t need to be! You don’t have to read a 45-minute sermon to have a truth-filled Advent activity. Even just one or two verses or one passage of Scripture is enough to point your family to the truth about Jesus AND encourage meaningful discussions. Don’t know what verses or passages to pick out? Well, hang around . . . we just might have what you’re looking for!

Christ-Centered

How do we know Advent activities for families are filled with truth? Easy—you’ll find Jesus at the center of EVERYTHING. Not us, not fluffy feelings, not watered-down Bible stories. In fact, if our Advent activities don’t center around Jesus, we’ve missed the point. Meaningful Advent activities will teach our kids the truth about why and how Jesus came to save us!

If you think about it, what does chocolate or lighting candles have to do with Jesus? Maybe they had candles in the “stable” in Bethlehem? Maybe the wise men brought Mary chocolate when they brought Jesus’ gifts? (KIDDING!) But think about it—in and of themselves, these things really don’t mean anything. The fact that they mean something deeper keeps us coming back to them. So instead of getting lost in the symbolism, we should choose Advent activities that will teach and directly remind our kids of Jesus!

Simple and Manageable

As much as Advent activities for families should be truth-filled and Christ-centered, they also need to be manageable. Unless you have some unusually focused kids, they won’t sit through a solemn 45-minute-long, deeply symbolic ritual every day leading up to Christmas. Our Advent activities won’t teach our kids if they’re struggling to stay focused!

Instead, pick an activity that you can complete in 15–20 minutes each morning or night. Maybe you can read a couple of verses and have your kids share or draw what they learn. Or you can try learning a new Christmas carol each week leading up to Christmas and talking about what the words mean. Advent calendars are awesome as long as we’re reminding our kids each day about why we count down to Christmas. Short, engaging activities like this without too much prep or cleanup will help YOU not get overwhelmed or give up halfway through, and it’ll help your kids stay focused too!

The Perfect Christmas Countdown and Advent Activities for Families

It’s hard to find advent activities or Christmas countdowns that check all the boxes! If you want pretty and engaging, it might be fluffy. If you want deep, it might be hard to keep your littles’ attention. That’s why we wrote Uncovering Mercies at the Manger, our 25-day Christmas countdown Bible study for kids!

Discover the why behind Christmas joy and hope by uncovering the mercies of God leading up to and at the manger. By setting aside just 15 minutes a day to study individually or as a family, you can learn the truth of why Jesus came to earth and discuss it together! With Primary, Junior, Youth, and Parent Guide levels, this study takes biblical truth, makes it manageable for each of your kids, and allows you to get involved too!

Our coordinating Christmas Countdown Cards are a beautiful reminder of truth and go right along with the study or can be used on their own! There are so many ways to use these cards—just pick what works best for you or come up with your own way!

Tips for Using Your Christmas Countdown Cards

• Hang them up in order with the numbers showing, and turn around one card each day to reveal the symbol and truth for that day.
• Hide the card for the day around the house somewhere and have your kids search for it. When it’s found, everyone can have a special treat to eat while you read the truth and verses aloud together.
• After you read each day’s card, hang them on your Christmas tree for extra decoration and a continual reminder as you get closer to Christmas.
• Have each child take turns reading the Scripture and card or explaining the symbols they see on it.
• Place each day’s card in a bag or box with goodies for each of your kids that go along with the theme of that day’s card!

However you decide to use them, our Christmas countdown study and cards will help you have a meaningful Christmas countdown with your family this year!

As moms, one of the most important things we can teach our children is to serve others. Not only does Jesus call us to do so, but we are blessed and grow closer to Christ in the process! However, this can be a huge challenge for families with small children. It’s easy to think we’re just in a season when serving with kids isn’t possible, but truthfully, we just need to think outside the box.

Serving with kids—especially with little ones in tow—will look different from how others may serve, and that’s okay! It’s even a good thing. There are ways you can serve and meet needs that others cannot. But sometimes, it’s hard to know how to serve or where to start.

Serving with Kids: 5 Practical Tips and More Fun Ideas!

1. Serving With Kids Can Be Simple

As much as we might be tempted to think the ways we can serve might be too small or unimportant, this is not true! Anything we do in serving with kids is serving God first of all and others second of all. Jesus said even those who give a cup of water in His name are serving Him! We don’t have to do elaborate acts of service or amazing things to serve Jesus.

Serving with kids doesn’t need to be larger than life—simple acts of kind service go a long way! It may be as simple as a smile and “Can we take your cart for you?” to a fellow mom struggling to get her groceries AND children into her car after a shopping trip. The smallest things like this can make a huge difference to someone else!

2. View Serving as an Opportunity to Teach

Because they have limited experience and a smaller perspective on life, kids are very self-focused. It comes naturally to be focused on ourselves—why would we worry about other people? Part of serving with kids is teaching them to look around them and see the needs of others. Until they start realizing what’s going on around them, our kids won’t understand why we should be serving others!

We can start by teaching them to notice small things, like when someone seems sad and might need comfort. But as we continue serving with our kids, we can also teach them to notice as we drive through town how some people seem to live outside all the time or stand on the street with signs. As they start to see people with needs, we get the opportunity to teach them about meeting those needs! For example, we will get to share how the homeless man under the bridge does NEED food. But is a cookie or milkshake going to be the kind of nourishment that is most helpful? A better way to meet that need is probably with bottled water and protein bars.

Once your kids have started learning to think this way, ask them to look around and tell you what needs they see. Encourage them to think of ways to meet those needs and tell you their ideas. You may need to guide their thinking A LOT at first. But keep encouraging them—soon they will be telling you about ways they served without your prompting!

3. Serving With Kids Means Giving Them Achievable Tasks

It kind of defeats the purpose of serving with kids if we are the ones doing everything! Getting our kids involved personally by giving them kid-sized tasks and responsibilities will help them take ownership of their ability to serve. Kids are so creative—you might be surprised how much they can do or what problems they can solve when they are involved in tasks they can handle on their own.

Don’t burden yourself by feeling like service has to look like a perfectly curated four-course dinner delivered to someone’s home. Serving with kids never looks perfect and often involves a mess—but it will be a sweet mess because you served together. Tell your kids you’re going to write notes or make drawings or paintings for an older lady in your church who can’t get out on her own very much. Ask them for suggestions of snacks or small, comforting things to cheer up a friend or family member who is in the hospital. When we ask for their input or make them responsible for age-appropriate tasks, kids will enjoy getting to serve!

Serving with kids never looks perfect and often involves a mess—but it will be a sweet mess because you served together!”

4. Intentionally Make Valuable Memories

Make serving valuable—these moments can stick in your child’s mind for a long time, so make it something they remember as important in their life!

Some of my most detailed memories are of the many opportunities to serve that my parents involved me in from a young age. Whether it was visiting the nursing home weekly where we sang, played the piano, and talked with the residents or keeping an eagle eye out for visitors at church so we could welcome them and show their kids to their classes, my earliest memories include my parents encouraging me and leading me in serving.

When we intentionally and habitually serve with our kids, they will make memories that stay with them for the rest of their lives! These early memories will become valuable parts of how our kids view serving and, consequently, how they view life. They will value our teaching and guidance when they have their own families someday and are teaching their children to serve as well!

5. Prayer Is a Crucial Part of Serving With Kids

It’s so important that we continually direct the focus of serving back to God. We don’t serve to make ourselves look good or to feel like we have done our duty. We serve to honor God and bring glory to Him by spreading His love! This is why praying that God will give us opportunities to serve is a great place to start. Then we need to keep praying when He shows us needs so we can have the wisdom to meet them in a helpful way! Finally, after we serve, it’s a wonderful practice to direct our hearts to God by praying He blesses our service and brings forth fruit from it. It’s pretty hard to be selfish or proud about serving when we continually direct our hearts to God in prayer!

More Ideas for Serving With Kids

Maybe you’ve heard principles about serving your whole life, but no one ever talks about what it looks like. We may get all energized to serve, do one big day of service, get completely burnt out, and let serving fall by the wayside. The best way to make something a part of our everyday lives is to make it a habit! So here are some ideas of what serving with kids actually can look like as you seek to make it a habit in your family:

• Fill a gallon ziptop bag (or several) with toiletries, protein bars, socks, etc., and give it to a homeless person.
• Ask your kids to pick two or three items that would cheer them up if they were sick (a teddy bear, crayons and a coloring book, a blanket) and deliver them to a child who is in the hospital.
• Write notes to send in the mail or deliver to elderly people in your church or community.
• Make “get well soon” cards or pick up medicine, tea, and snacks for a family struggling with sickness.
• Pull weeds or rake leaves for a neighbor who can’t do it themselves.
• Find one new family at church to greet, be kind to, and establish contact with throughout the week.
• Ask your kids what they would like to say to a friend and text the parent with your kids’ encouraging message.
• Bake cookies to give to families in your neighborhood.
• Bring extra snacks to the neighborhood pool or community playground to share with the kids there.

Discipling Them at Home

Ultimately, learning to serve starts right in our homes! Because we believe this is incredibly important, we have written Becoming a Servant, a Bible study for all ages on serving like Jesus. In this study, your kids will learn why we serve, what a servant truly looks like, and how they can start serving. Whether you have pre-K kids who can’t read yet or older kids who need encouragement in learning to serve, we have something for you!

Need some ways to help your child serve others? Read
more on how to encourage your child to become a servant!

A couple weeks ago, I was talking to our teen group at our church. As we discussed Jesus washing His disciples’ feet shortly before He gave His life on the cross, the conversation took a turn I wasn’t expecting.

What about when we just don’t feel like or care about serving others?

Everyone wants to serve when it’s fun and exciting! But service that looks like caring for the needs and concerns of others is genuinely hard. And, as I’m sure you know, serving our families or our church FAITHFULLY often means putting off what we want to do and making sacrifices.

For kids, this feels WAY harder—many times, they struggle with long-term goals and internal rewards. Often, their focus is on things that will make them happy right NOW. As far as they are concerned, serving others may seem like a waste of time.

How do we help and encourage our kids to serve when they don’t seem to care?“

Things to Remember When Your Child Doesn’t Care About Serving Others

Serving Others Is Not Natural

Before we go any further, we need to set something straight. NONE OF US naturally wants to serve others! We are self-focused, selfish humans whose first concern is for ourselves. In this state, we may serve, but mainly for a benefit coming our way. Jesus didn’t have to tell us to love ourselves. In fact, He told us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves (Matthew 22:39) because He knew we already know how to love ourselves!

We naturally care about ourselves, not others. This is especially true for those who have not trusted Jesus for salvation. If your child is not a believer, their lack of desire to serve is simply an outflowing from an unchanged heart. Of course, this is not an excuse to show no concern for others. We still have to hold them accountable to be kind to their siblings and friends.

But if your child who professes to know Jesus still doesn’t care about serving others, here are a few things to bring up with them and keep in mind yourself!

Serving Others Is Modeled in Scripture

None of us likes to be the “bad guy” in expecting hard things from our kids. Maybe serving seems like a battle that you just don’t want to fight or have the energy to encourage. But the good news is that the command to serve others doesn’t come from you!

There’s no question about what Jesus thinks of serving others. Just by coming to this earth as God in human form, Jesus humbled Himself and served. He met our greatest need for a Savior to take away our sin! When we look at this amazing act of service, we know we could NEVER serve in a way as great and wonderful as this. But Jesus does tell us how He desires for us to serve!

Jesus made the idea of serving others real and tangible for His disciples and those who follow Christ today. In John 13, Jesus explains that if He, the Lord and Teacher of these disciples, washed their feet, should they not wash each other’s feet (John 13:14)? But then Jesus goes further. He commands them to follow His example of service and “do just as I have done to you” (John 13:15).

Serving others isn’t just a good or nice thing to do. Jesus calls all Christians to follow His example of service. So when we get pushback from our kids about serving, we can point them to a higher authority. Jesus says to serve!

Serving Others Starts With Conversations

Have you ever assumed something about your kids? Sometimes our assumptions are 100% accurate. But sometimes, when we finally talk to them, we realize something completely different has been going on. Just like a fear we don’t understand or an attitude that comes out of nowhere, the apparent lack of desire to serve others may take a conversation to get to the heart of!

This conversation might involve asking questions about what they personally believe about service. Ask if they have studied what God tells us about service in His Word. If they need a good place to start, suggest they read about Jesus’ example in John 13. Then you can even discuss what they observe in that passage and any others they study!

Another benefit of having a conversation with our kids about serving others is the openness it brings. When our kids know they can come to us about things, it helps us help our kids! These conversations reach their hearts—the whole point of serving in the first place. So before assuming your child doesn’t want to serve, have a conversation about it. You never know what you’ll learn!

It’s Reinforced by Your Joyful Example

Something I have noticed in my life is that I may serve, but I don’t always do it joyfully. I get flustered when I feel like I’m the only one who sees the crumby floors and overflowing trash. I feel like I’m the one always serving at church and others could be jumping in. Of course, this is not really the case. But despite my best efforts, this discontent or anger at the “slackers” definitely shows up in my service.

If this is what serving others looks like, why would my kids want to serve?

Our response to serving others tells our kids about the importance and value of service. If “serving” puts Mom in a bad mood and brings frustration that she takes out on her husband and kids, serving doesn’t look like something good anymore. It looks like an expectation you are guilted or forced into instead of a joyful, voluntary outlet for the love God puts in our hearts! True service will be joyful and loving because it comes from a heart full of love.

If serving puts you in a bad mood, full of frustration, you are sending the message to your kids that serving isn’t a good thing.”

Serving Others Is a Different Way of Seeing

A huge part of serving others is learning to see the needs around us! More often than not, kids don’t have the life experience that helps them realize when there is a need. Plus, they’re just more used to someone taking care of THEIR needs. They probably won’t figure out this new perspective on their own. We have to teach them—just like we teach them *almost* everything else that makes them decent humans (haha!).

Some kids really are naturally better at observing and seeing where service is needed. But others need a little push in the right direction or suggestions to get them started. Our kids may not be good at seeing where they need to serve yet. Or they may even be afraid to jump in and serve. But we can help them!

Serving Others Is Easier When We Start Small

We all know the daunting feeling when there’s a task that seems too huge or overwhelming to tackle. It’s like the feeling when you’ve had paint supplies sitting in the corner of your kitchen for months. You truly want to repaint the walls and cabinets! But it’s ridiculously hard to just. get. started.

The same is true for serving others—especially if your kids don’t really care about serving. If they’re hesitant or just don’t want to, finding small ways to get them started can help! The goal is getting them involved in the physical action first. Then the discipline of serving will naturally lead their hearts to get in step too.

Small Ways to Help Your Kids Start Serving Others

Younger Kids

If you can, starting young will help your kids learn a serving mindset early! Small, attainable actions of service for young kids may look like:

• helping their siblings clean up their toys
• wiping the table after dinner
• feeding your family pet
• emptying the clean silverware from the dishwasher
• picking up trash at church
• collecting or passing out papers or worksheets for their teacher
• putting away supplies in their classroom.

Kids who are a little older can handle bigger tasks such as:

• sweeping up crumbs
• wiping down the bathroom sink
• collecting laundry and carrying it to the laundry room
• helping younger siblings to get dressed
• looking out for younger kids while they play
• straightening chairs or collecting items left in seats at church
• joining and helping older siblings in how they are serving.

Maybe you’re already thinking of ways these or similar things will work for your family. This list doesn’t even cover all of the ways your young kids can serve—the possibilities are truly endless!

Teens

Teens are capable of so much, but we often don’t expect much from them. Giving them responsibilities in our homes communicates that they are an important part of what goes on! Don’t worry—you aren’t ruining their lives. You’re actually helping them in one of the kindest ways possible.

One great way to get teens thinking about serving others is to encourage them to start where they are. Challenge them to look around the room they’re in and look for one way they can make it better for the next person who enters the room, like:

• taking out the trash
• cleaning the toilet
• straightening pillows on the couch
• cleaning up games, books, blankets, or toys that have been left out
• vacuuming and mopping the floor when it looks dirty
• putting away food
• cleaning up the kitchen after meals.

Though the home is where we start, serving others should spread to outside our homes too! Some ways to start are:

• helping elderly people out to their cars after church
• setting up or tearing down chairs, tables, or equipment at church
• assisting in the nursery or kids’ classes at church
• putting away the shopping cart for a mom with young kids
• cleaning or doing yard work for a neighbor who is unable.

Of course, there are so many more ways than this that our teens are equipped to serve, but having the mindset of “making it better” will help them learn to see needs and know where to start!

How to Make Serving Others Easier

No matter how you end up encouraging your kids to start serving others, all of you need to be on the same page about serving! This is why we have written Becoming a Servant, a Bible study for kids about serving like Jesus. This four-week study dives deep into what servants truly look like. Starting with the example Jesus gave and working through other passages that show us true servanthood, this study challenges you to make serving personal in your home, church, work, and friendships!

When it comes to conflict resolution for kids, one of the first images that pops into my head is a referee blowing a whistle. From little league soccer games where kids couldn’t care less but parents yell at referees anyway to World Cup games where grown men bite each other or flop over on the ground to get penalties, the referee has a crazy and sometimes frustrating job.

Maybe like me, you start to empathize with the referee when you’re in the middle of breaking up fights and dishing out penalties at home. It can seem very attractive to be able to deal with conflicts by blowing whistles and “banning” people (haha!). But a referee can only resolve so much conflict. A red card can shut up a player or a parent and even ban them from the league, but it can’t bring what we truly want—peace.

Though it is exhausting and discouraging, the fact that conflict surrounds us almost constantly is not surprising. God has created our kids as unique people with different priorities, likes, and dislikes! They’re bound to get in the way of each other as they pursue what’s important to them. But here’s the shocker—conflict isn’t the problem. Nope, it’s not the conflict causing the endless fighting or the tense atmosphere in our homes. It’s their responses to the conflict. And THAT is something our kids can absolutely have control over!

5 Ineffective Ways To Handle Conflict Resolution for Kids

Picture it with me. You’re having a bubble bath and eating bonbons cooking dinner and loading the dishwasher peacefully when war breaks out.

Emily was carefully collecting materials so she could do an art project at the table. Scott saw her, which reminded him that he also wanted to do an art project. So he gathered his things quicker and raced to the table, consuming the space Emily needed.

When Emily gets to the table and finds Scott already there, she begins to throw his stuff on the floor. “You knew I was going to sit here. How could you?” she screams frantically.

Sounds familiar, right? Just insert different names and circumstances, and you’ve got a glimpse into every Christian home. Yep, I said “Christian.” Sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking that Christians would never have conflict. Ha. Everyone has conflict. The difference is in the resolution.

So how can you master conflict resolution with your kids? Let’s look at some ways we might be doing it all wrong!

1. Escape the Conflict

If we are being honest, this is typically our first response as parents. We walk in on an Emily and Scott situation and tell everyone to go to their room. That will solve the conflict, right?

Wrong. Sometimes our desire for peace can make us forget what true peace looks like. If we ONLY separate fighting kids or ONLY forbid them to speak, we may actually be trying to escape the conflict rather than resolving it. Does silence = peace? I would say no. Like a fire that burns whether we’re next to it or run away from it, angry and hateful hearts, grudges, and bitterness can all still exist even when our homes are quiet and our kids are separated into their own rooms.

Though this response might start with how we, as parents, deal with our kids’ conflicts, they will quickly learn this escape response too. Refusing to speak to someone or secluding themselves in their rooms may be signs that your kids have learned the “escape” response. But this will not lead to conflict resolution—in fact, like ignoring a fire, it will undoubtedly make it worse.

Make it right—> Is there ever a time to escape a conflict? Yes! Teach your kids to recognize when it’s the right thing to do. For example, if your life is in danger (or you might be physically hurt), ESCAPE quickly! Another reason to escape could be for kids who need a minute to cool down. Just remember not to leave it there! Once emotions are under control, the conflict needs to be resolved.

2. Avoid the Conflict

Let’s say Emily sees what Scott did and just goes back to her room. We might initially praise her, but that’s because we don’t see that she went to her room to pout for the rest of the day, collecting yet another tally on her list of wrongs against Scott. This behavior is toxic and will only increase sibling rivalry, causing a bitter root that will one day rear its ugly head.

Does this sound like one of your kids? Maybe you have a child who hates conflict and would rather ignore a hurt or offense in an effort to avoid conflict and make “peace.” But avoiding the person or even a conversation about the offense doesn’t bring true peace either! It only prolongs a conflict without resolving it and laying it to rest. Though they might mentally dismiss it or say, “It doesn’t matter,” they aren’t actually dealing with conflict. They are only avoiding what will inevitably come up again and probably in a worse way next time.

We, as parents, avoid conflict by ignoring it or refusing to deal with the situation.

Make it right—> Should kids ever walk away from a problem? YES! In fact, the Bible is super clear that we should be overlooking the offenses of others. Proverbs 19:11 says, “Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.” Just remember that “overlook” means to forgive. When we avoid, we often hold the offense against the person privately, not overlooking and forgiving.

3. Lashing Out and Attacking to Resolve Conflict

It’s pretty obvious that attacking isn’t a good response to conflict. (This includes us, parents!) Though angry outbursts where we yell at people, call them names, or physically attack them can feel justified or right in the moment, they don’t resolve conflicts.

It can be hard to know what to do and very overwhelming when our child’s first response is to lash out in this way. If we don’t help them learn to control their response now, it will be so much harder one day when they get older. Kids who continue to respond to conflict by lashing out in anger will become adults who cannot maturely handle conflicts in their job, friendships, marriage, and with their own children.

Make it right—> One of the most effective ways I’ve found for helping kids with this is role-playing. It sounds silly, but it works. Have your kids practice offending the other and then role-play a correct response. The more you practice things, the more they become habits, and we want the right response to be a habit! Another trick I’ve used is when walking into a conflict my kids are having, I’ll yell, “Freeze-frame!” They know this means to literally freeze. Sometimes just these words are enough to “knock” some sense into them because it takes them out of the moment. If not, this gives me a second to say, “Is this really the way you want to be responding?”

Note that a biblical response to conflict comes from a heart that wants to please God. If your kids aren’t saved, pray for that first! We can’t please God if we don’t want to.

4. Playing Judge Judy in Conflict Resolution With Kids

It can be tempting to think that if we can just hear all the sides and make a judgment, the conflict will go away. But the point isn’t to be Judge Judy and make rulings on who is right and who is wrong. No matter how well and wisely we discern right and wrong, we will not have peaceful homes until we deal with the real problem of wrong responses. If our kids never learn how to control their responses and achieve conflict resolution on their own, we will play Judge Judy at every family gathering for the rest of our lives!

The point is to help each of our kids see what they themselves could have done differently to prevent the escalation of a conflict. There is always something they can do—whether it’s walking away from a situation so they don’t explode in anger, speaking calmly to an angry person, or humbly letting the other person have their way—to defuse conflict and make resolution possible.

Make it right—> Is there ever an opportunity for a hearing of sides in conflict resolution? Nope. I don’t play “he said-she said.” But if you have a child who needs to be heard to process their own thinking, do it! I often listen to my kids without passing judgment, so they can “be heard” and talk themselves into the right response. Just remember to always focus on helping the kids see what they can do to resolve the situation versus listing the wrongs of the other person.

5. Playing the Blame Game Hinders Conflict Resolution for Kids

If your home is anything like mine, as soon as you walk into the room of a screaming Emily and crying Scott, the fingers start pointing.

The response to conflict we see from the beginning of time in the garden of Eden and still today is the very human tendency to blame other people. At the first sign of trouble, we deflect responsibility from ourselves and place it on others. Surely it is always their fault. We would never have responded how we did if she or he hadn’t done ____.

Of course, this comes naturally to our kids just as much as it did to Adam and Eve. But when we allow our kids to play the blame game, we’re actually hindering them from resolving conflict. Instead of always blaming someone else or believing it’s not their fault, our kids need to learn to look at their own responses and identify what THEY could have done differently. As they learn to take responsibility for their own actions, our kids won’t need to look for others to blame.

Teaching kids to look at their own responses and actions is one of the key steps in biblical conflict resolution! We’ve got excellent resources to help!

Resources for Teaching Conflict Resolution for Kids

The wonderful thing is that we don’t have to choose between false peace and continual fighting. We can teach our kids to resolve conflicts and make peace with their responses. Thankfully, we don’t have to figure out how to do this on our own—God has shown us what biblical conflict resolution looks like in His Word!

Check out Making Peace, our Bible study on conflict resolution for kids. As your kids work through this study, they will see what the Bible says about why we need peace, where we find peace, and how to resolve conflict by working things out and planning peace.