Parenting Archives | The Sparrow's Home

Nurture your child’s head, hands and heart

October 29, 2018 by Susan

Young children learn best in gentle ways. Making crafts, telling stories, cooking together. Even more than the fun of the experience, they build memories with your child. How wonderful would it be if someone did all the legwork, laid it all out, and you could just choose what would work with your family?s

I am being compensated for my time in reviewing Rooted Childhood. As always, all opinions are my own.

Teenage boys don’t particularly like doing crafts. Nor do they like to read poetry or snuggle, for that matter. Thankfully, although my boys are getting older, I have some delightful littles in my life that I can do all this fun stuff with.

I thought of them immediately when I discovered Rooted Childhood. Well, first I thought how much fun it would be to have had this collection when my boys were young…then I thought of my little friends. I invited them over right away.

Where to draw the boundaries on media content? That’s up to you. How to do it? We’re here to help.

October 1, 2018 by Susan

Resources to help parents control what kids watch, play, and do online. Every family has different boundaries on media content and screen time for kids. Regardless of where you set your boundaries, we’ve got resources to help you do it.

As parents, it’s hard to draw the lines regarding what tv shows, movies, video games, or apps we allow. I’m not here to tell you where to draw those lines today. (Let’s have that discussion another time, I’d love to know how you make those decisions).

For today, let’s agree that being intentional in setting boundaries matters. Because honestly, if you’re not…well, you’re choosing open your child up to anything. And that’s not cool. Or responsible. Or loving.

This boundary setting is an ongoing process. Clearly as our kids get older the boundaries change. And by the time they are older teenagers, our job is more in apprenticing them in how they can set God-pleasing boundaries for themselves as adults.

At every stage, however, we need tools that can help us to know which media is a yes, let’s watch, which is when you’re older, and which is our worldview prohibits this.

Let your geek flag fly. Dragon Con for families.

September 10, 2018 by Susan

How many places can you see Thanos, the Dread Pirate Roberts, Tinker Bell and zombies all at once? Not many, I’ll tell you that.

Something called Dragon Con is not something that would garner my attention normally. Even though I live with three guys who are into games with lots of orcs, wizards and superheroes, and we watch movies with…well, lots of orcs, wizards and superheroes….I can handle only so much of the nerd-dom.

I’ve known about Dragon Con for a long time. Some of the organizers are friends of ours and Greg went a couple of times when we lived in Atlanta. Still, not something I ever thought I’d be interested in attending myself. I mean, a sci-fi convention is a bit much for me. Little did I know…

Food for Thought #38

July 16, 2018 by Susan

Parenting is one of those topics that you just can’t read enough about. Not that you’re usually seeing new or revolutionary information. But the nature of humanity is to forget. Reminders about parenting priorities, methods, ideas and practices are important…I’d even say necessary…in making us the best parents we can be. I’ve especially had parenting on the brain as I recently read a fantastic book on Christian parenting, and used it to teach a couple of workshops. One of the things I have enjoyed the most is hearing parents speaking into each others’ lives in the course of our discussions.

Here’s what I’ve been reading…

Parents, we may miss the mark sometimes, but we should at least know where the target is.

July 9, 2018 by Susan

Are you worried that you’ll do everything you can raising your kids in the faith and yet when they’re an adult they’ll walk away from it?

There’s no more important mission field we face than raising our children to adore God. You could be a hero of the faith, but that’s meaningless if you neglect to parent well. No pressure, right.

What’s the secret to family trips with more learning, more memories?

June 18, 2018 by Susan

Summer is often the time when families hit the road. Whether it’s a vacation, visiting family, or heading off to camps and conferences… we are on the move.

The first really long road trip we made as a family was from Minnesota to Louisiana for a wedding when the boys were just about 2 and 3 years old. This was before ipads and other devices so we did what we could: We wedged a tiny TV between the front two seats and made a 6 hour video tape of Dora the Explorer and Bob the Builder episodes to entertain the troops.

Before you say, “What were you thinking…6 hours of Dora?!” We weren’t totally crazy, we also brought The Wiggles videos.

Oh, wait. Nevermind.

As kids get older, though, there is so much that you can do to make family trips more enjoyable, more memory-filled, and more intentionally filled with learning.