Love is patient, love is kind

Teaching our children to be kind and patient with one another is a difficult teaching and one that takes many gentle reminders and prayers. Raising children is really another window into seeing God and appreciating him as our Heavenly Father. The Bible teaches us that God expresses his grace to us through his kindness (Eph. 2:7) and He is the God of patience (2 Peter 3:9).

A good memory verse for our family is 1 Cor. 13: 4 "Love is patient, love is kind".

Whenever the kids get impatient with one another (especially in sharing toys) or say something unkind to each other, I remind them of 1 Cor 13 by saying "Love is...." and they fill in the blank. It immediately causes them to stop and think and to take a minute to quickly apologize and do the right thing instead.

God's word is truly powerful and penetrates the heart (Heb. 4:12). It is awesome!

Sweet and Sour

Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones. Proverbs 16:24

Teaching our children to be kind to each other using their words is not an easy task. But using scripture and consistent reminders definitely will produce a change of heart and action.

In our home, the children are at an age where they can easily demand for things ("I need some water!") or not be polite to each other about their requests (pulling a toy away from each other). Please and Thank You are some of the first words we taught them at around 15 months old. It was more like "Peas" for Please and "Ta Ta" for Thank you.

This is a fun devotional idea to try. Have some honey and lemon juice at hand. Have the kids practice saying kind words to each other. Every time they do that, they get a taste of honey. Unkind or demanding words and tone of voice will get them to taste some lemon juice. I think they will get the point pretty quickly.

Ideas taken from "The Tender Years" book written by Geri Laing and Elizabeth Laing Thompson

Jesus calms a Storm

My 2 1/2 boy and 5 year old girl loved this devotional we did this week. We read the story of Jesus calming the storm (Mark 4:35-41) using the Play-and-Learn Bible. After reading the story, we acted it out. The kids have recently been using the pillows in our living room area to build forts and tents. It was the perfect opportunity to ask them to build a boat, and they were very creative with it. We acted out the story, taking turns to play different roles. First, daddy was the wind and waves and as he knelt by the boat, he had a spray bottle in his hand that he would occasionally squirt water at them. The kids were in the boat - one pretending to sleep like Jesus and the other acted as a disciple rowing the boat. The story enacted out went like this:

Daddy: pretending to be a storm all around the boat

Child 1: Pretending to sleep in the boat

Child 2: Rowing the boat and gets scared because of the fierce storm (and not to mention getting wet). He wakes up Jesus and says "Wake up! Wake up!"

Child 1: Stands up and says "Quiet down! Sshhhhh"

Daddy: Stops.

Child 1 looks at child 2 and says: "Why are you so afraid?" Do you still have no faith?

Child 2: Still looking scared says: Who is this man. Even the wind and waves obey him.

Child 1: Don't be afraid.

As a family, we took turns playing different roles and reaffirming the lesson of how even nature obeys the words of God and how we don't need to be afraid because God is always with us.

Extra fun: We ended the night by having a game of flashlight pumpkin hunt around the house. We had a cute little toy pumpkin. The kids took turns hiding it using their flashlight, because we turned off all the lights in the house. Then the other kid used his flashlight to search for the pumpkin.

Family Devotionals Link

I recently received a link from a friend of another blog site that provides free family devotional ideas. http://www.familyblueprint.org/Family.htm

There are so many ideas out there already that we can take and use for our family and even adjust according to our kids ages.

The goal is teach God's word using methods that are fun and that will help us apply it to our daily lives.

Sunday School Follow Up

Our children are so blessed to have great kids programs (a.k.a. Sunday School, Kids Kingdom) where they are weekly learning the different stories of the Bible, lesson applications, crafts and learning new songs. We find that it's useful and beneficial to use the reinforcement method by talking over with them the lessons that they learned on Sunday. This is something fun to do with each kid individually before bed by asking them what they learned and taking a few minutes to talk it through with them. If they made a craft that day, maybe they can show you what they did and how that related to the lesson. Some children programs also send home a follow up sheet. Use the ideas and tips given to reinforce what they have learned and use it as an opportunity to bond with your child. We find that bed time is a good down-time to talk so it's another easy way to incorporate talking about Jesus in our lives.

For example, our daughter has been attending Vacation Bible School this week. Every day she comes home with a craft and a Family Page that tells us what she learns and gives us practicals and ideas of things we can do as a family to reinforce the message for the day. It gives us parents something to focus on daily, rather than just having family devotionals once a week.