|
|
|
9 top tips for being a great dad Care for the Family believes every father has the potential to be a brilliant dad.
1. Stay calm!
2. Be silly once a day
3. Don’t take yourself too seriously
4. Honour their mother
5. Celebrate their differences
6. Praise your child
7. Choose your battles – and stick to them
8. Let them decide what to do with a day
9. Assume the best
|
|
Step Parenting Follow this link |
Creating Special MemoriesAn important part of having a successful family is ability to create special memories. Even in the most challenging times, special memories can be created with words, creativity, imagination and family traditions. Special memories help to create positive family stories that may be told for generations to come, and help to give the family roots and stability in an uncertain world. There are lots of different ways to create a memory. Think about some of these ideas and then adapt them to suit your own family. · Create special memories as a family, and individually between each parent and child. · Do some things routinely, such as every week on the same night, or every birthday. These can be very simple, such as lighting candles, reading a book aloud together, going for a walk to the same place, or writing a letter on each birthday. Simple things can create special memories, as well as the once-in-a-while unusual surprise! · Going to bed routines will change as a child grows older, but even these can create memories if you develop a special way of kissing or hugging each child as you say good night. You could sing a funny song, rub noses together, create your own hand-shake, say a special prayer, or offer a special good-night blessing. · Find things to celebrate. Some families are concerned about having celebrations, but God’s annual calendar for the children of Israel contained lots of celebrations, rituals and traditions. Find different things to rejoice about, from the smallest event, like a child passing a spelling test, to something big like Dad getting a new job! Then plan different ways to celebrate the successes and happy times in the family. · Think of ways to make even ordinary days special. · Try to do something special as a family once a month, and plan ahead so that everyone always has something to look forward to. · Involve the children in the plans for special events. Listen to their ideas and ask for their help. Accept whatever they make and do towards the event with love and gratitude, and find a way to give their work a prominent place in the activities. · Find lots of ways to laugh together as a family. Ideas for developing traditions and family celebrations: · Use the ideas and traditions that you’re comfortable with from your own culture as the basis of your own family traditions. This is an important heritage to pass to your children. Help them to feel good about their background and culture. · Often the traditions of your faith can be a source of ideas for family celebrations. · Ask the children for ideas, and let them create some traditions of their own for the family to adopt. · Talk to other people about their family traditions and special memories and find out what they do. · Borrow books from the library, or find other ways to learn about other cultures and their traditions, and have evenings where you eat food from other cultures, learn about their celebrations, and even dress up like them. · Think about the special memories you had as a child and try to pass these on to your children. · Think about some of the memories you would have liked to have had, and see if you can make them a reality for your children. · Write things down, take photos, or tell stories together to keep the memories that you make fresh and alive. Family Traditions · Do something special on your wedding anniversary, to show that marriage is important to you, and so that the children can see that their parents enjoy being married to each other. One couple invited their children to a dinner in their own home, and recreated the celebration meal on their anniversary. Mum and dad wore their wedding clothes, and served the children. They looked at wedding photos and told stories about when they were first married. · Create some special words for things that no other family has, and enjoy using them. You could even use the funny words that the children once used when they were little! · Make things together. You could make a garden, build a shed, redecorate a room, or learn a new skill together. · Prepare a meal together and eat it in an unusual place, or in an unusual way. · Have one night a week where the children decorate the table or the place where you eat, in any way they like. · Have some family fun days where only the necessary chores are done, and everyone is together all day, relaxing and playing together. · Make up your own games to play. · Light a fire outside, sit around it and sing, tell funny stories and cook simple food over the embers. · Plant a tree each time a child is born. Take care of the tree and visit it each year with the child. · Create simple and inexpensive gifts and treats for each other, like a bunch of wild flowers, a few favourite fruits, an unusual stone, a simple card or a letter. · Share the funny stories about your day at each evening meal, before you talk about the challenges of your day. Read funny books together and play funny games. · Find a catalogue or old magazine and let each person cut out pictures of the gifts they would like to give to each other, if they had an unlimited budget! Remember that it’s the thought that counts, and this can be a special activity to share together. A cheerful look brings joy to the heart, and good news gives health to the bones. Proverbs 15:30.
|
|
Building your children up with God’s love The most important gift we can give our children is the desire to love God and to follow and serve Him. Parents can help their children to become spiritually strong by setting positive examples. The children are encouraged by their parents’ faith. Here are some ways that parents can help to build spiritually strong children. Building spiritually strong children · Have a strong relationship with God yourself, taking time to nurture your own spiritual growth through Bible study and reading. · Talk to your children about your faith and your relationship with God. · Talk about how God has been there for you through the difficult times. Talk about the doubts you used to have, and how your faith has been strengthened. · Have an active prayer life and share your prayer experiences with your children. Pray for your children and with your children. · Help your children to look for answers to prayer, but also to understand that God knows best, and sometimes the answers come in ways that we’re not expecting, or even wanting. · Have regular and interesting family worship times. · Be positive as you talk about your church and its leaders. Be realistic, and help your children to understand that even church leaders may make mistakes, and encourage them to be supportive rather than critical. · Have a practical understanding of God’s grace. Grace is about God loving us no matter what we’ve done, but just because we’re His children. This is one of the most beautiful aspects of the Christian faith. · Collect stories of grace and share them with your children. One of the best messages you can give your children about God is that He is always there to love them and welcome them, no matter what they have done, just like the story of the father and the prodigal son in Luke. · Learn how to put grace into action in your family, offering forgiveness and acceptance when your children have made mistakes. · Deal with your children the way God has patiently dealt with you. · When you need to discipline your child, think first about the way God has disciplined you. Think about His tremendous love for you and for your child, and deal with your child gracefully rather than harshly. This is a powerful illustration of God’s love. A child that lives with harsh discipline may grow to think that God is harsh, and will fear or reject Him. · Above all, love your children as God loves them, following 1 Corinthians 13 as a guide to practical parental love.
|
How to handle stressToo much to do Jerry sat in his carpentry workshop and he didn’t know what to do. He badly needed to earn more money, so he had taken on a few extra jobs, but then his brother, who worked with him, had fallen and broken his arm. He had no-one to help him and so much work to do. Several big jobs had to be finished by the end of the week. One order was very important. If he did a good job he knew that he’d be given a much bigger order that would really help the business. But he felt that if he was behind with any of the orders, people wouldn’t trust him to do the work in time in the future, and he didn’t want to let anyone down. He was proud of his craftsmanship and he didn’t want to cut corners to get the jobs finished, because he knew that his reputation as a carpenter depended on the quality of his work. When he tried to work, he was so anxious that he made little mistakes and he found himself getting more and more frustrated.
What is stress?Stress is a normal part of everyday life for many people. Life is full of unavoidable stresses as well as avoidable stresses, which make our life more complicated and difficult, and prevent us from feeling happy, relaxed and confident. Some stress is good. It can be healthy and stimulating. A little bit of stress can keep us alert and aware and can even help us to do some things better. But too much stress can be exhausting. Often when we feel under pressure we don’t relate well to those around us. We may become irritable towards our children and perhaps resentful towards our spouse, because all that we feel we have to do may seem more important at that moment than our relationships with those who are closest to us. Stress causes tension in our bodies. We feel tight and our bodies may ache and tire more quickly. Stress seems to use up our physical and emotional energy. Difficulties seem to happen when we feel that we aren’t able to meet the demands on our energy and time, and when we start to suffer from the negative symptoms of stress.
Symptoms of stressWhen a person is overstressed, it’s like being ill, because they will often experience a range of symptoms. Some of the symptoms are things like: · Problems trying to get to sleep · Problems trying to wake up and get started each morning · Fatigue and feeling tired all the time · Headaches · General pains in the body · Feeling fidgety and finding it hard to sit still and just relax · Unhappiness and tearfulness · Being critical of self and others · Lack of concentration, · Frequently forgetting things · Problems making decisions · Quietness and avoiding contact with other people · Loss of self-confidence · Feeling that life is too difficult to manage at times
Some ways to manage stress· Stress can be different for different people. What will be very stressful for one person will be exciting and interesting for another person. We’re all different and what makes us stressed will be different too, as well as the ways in which we respond to stress. When we realize that someone is stressed it’s important not to expect them to behave the same way we would in the situation. One person may find it stressful being alone and struggling all by himself. Another person might find it stressful if there are too many people around. One person may respond to stress by being quiet and withdrawn, whilst another person may respond by being noisy and cross with everyone. · Some of the biggest causes of avoidable stress are expectations. It may be that we feel other people expect too much of us. Or it may be that we expect too much of ourselves. Expectations can be good. They give us goals to aim for, but when we don’t reach up to the expectations of others, and ourselves, we can feel as if we’ve failed. When we manage everything perfectly, it seems that nobody notices how well we are coping. It’s only when we don’t live up to their expectations that people begin to grumble and complain about us. · We can’t take all of the stress out of our lives. Unexpected things happen. There are natural disasters, babies get sick, people make mistakes from time to time, and have accidents. But there are some things we can do to minimize the extra and avoidable stresses in our lives. · We can try to set realistic goals for ourselves. If we set out to do three things in a day, and we only ever manage to complete one of those things, maybe we need to set ourselves only one goal for the day, and then feel good when we’ve completed that. If we’re putting the pressure on ourselves because our expectations are too high, we need to lower the expectations we have of ourselves. It’s better to do one thing at a time and feel good about what we’ve done, than to try and do too much and feel bad because we can’t do everything we planned. · Balance work with pleasure. Don’t just work all the time. After doing a particularly difficult task, reward yourself with something you enjoy doing, and have a break. · Get plenty of sleep. When we feel rested we are much more able to cope with the stresses of the day. If you’re a mom, try to nap when your baby does, or find someone to help you with the children so you can have your own rest. · Find some help. Challenging jobs are always easier and more enjoyable when the work is shared with a friend. · Plan ahead if you think there’ll be a challenge coming. Do one small part of the job at a time, and spread the load over several days or weeks. Find extra people who can support you and help you through challenging times, such as a friend or family member that you feel comfortable with. Don’t try to do as much as you normally do when you feel under pressure. · Learn to say ‘no’. Sometimes we suffer stress because we find it hard to say ‘no’ to people who ask us for help. Whenever we say ‘yes’ to others we are saying ‘no’ to our own family. · Find out what helps you to feel better. Some people find hugs relaxing. Others like to go for a walk on their own. Amanda found it helped when she took ten minutes a day to work on a sewing project, and Jerry liked to do some heavy sawing when he felt stressed. Think of a few things you enjoy doing that help you to feel more relaxed, and choose one to do each time you sense that you’re getting more stressed. Find time to laugh, because a good laugh always relaxes the body, or do something energetic to use up the extra stress energy in your body. · Remind yourself that you don’t need to know everything, and you don’t need to do everything perfectly. It’s all right not to be perfect, and it’s all right to make mistakes. · If something you do seems to make you feel stressed, ask yourself, ‘what am I doing this for? Am I trying to show someone how good I am? Is it making me a better person, or is it making me into a miserable person? When I do this, what effect does it have on those I love? Are they happier or sadder because of what I’m doing? What would they want me to do if they could choose?’ Cast all your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fail. Psalm 55:22. Top of page |
|
Helping your child to feel comfortable with his or her gender Harry’s Daughters Harry and his wife had six daughters. Six beautiful and healthy daughters. Harry’s friends would tease him because he didn’t have any sons, and they would ask him if he wouldn’t rather have six sons instead. But Harry wouldn’t let them tease him. ‘I’ve got six daughters,’ he’d say proudly, ’and they’re worth more to me than any sons!’ ‘But daughters will never work as hard as our sons!’ the friends would say. And Harry would answer, ‘and your sons will never be as beautiful as my daughters!’ Harry was a wise father who was determined not to let the attitudes of his culture damage his relationship with his children, or let his children feel undervalued. He decided to let his daughters know that he loved them just as they were. The daughters were strong and worked well, and he helped each one of them find something that they were good at, so that they would always be able to work to support themselves if necessary. He taught them skills that usually only boys are taught, not so that they would be just like boys, but so that they could have confidence in fixing things for themselves, and in understanding how things worked. His friends laughed at him, but Harry knew that his daughters needed even more of his love and acceptance in a society that tended to undervalue women. How can you be a wise parent, helping your children to feel good about who they are, and respectful of the opposite sex · Firstly, accept your children just as they are, whether they are a boy or a girl. Let them know that they are best being just who they are. Take special care not to let little girls think that they are not as good as boys, or that you wish they’d been born a boy. As soon as they are born each child needs to know that they are loved regardless of whether they are a boy or a girl. · Be gentle with their bodies, especially their genitals, and avoid doing anything that would cause them pain in this area. Clean their bodies gently when they are babies and show them how to keep their bodies clean and hygienic as they grow older, to prevent any infections and sores in the area. Help them to understand why boys and girls bodies are different, and why that is special. · Our differences enable us to have children and to share our skills in the home. A man cannot have children without a woman, nor a woman without a man, both have an important role to play, but in many ways the woman has the largest role to play when it comes to having children, because it’s her body that carries the unborn child, and then feeds the baby when it’s born. · Regularly reaffirm your child for being the gender that they are. If your culture tends to value one sex above another, then you need to work harder to help your son or daughter to feel good about who they are. Don’t let your culture pressure you into devaluing your children. When women are valued and respected, a community can be stronger. A mother who feels good about herself is more likely to nurture strong and happy children of both sexes, so if you want great sons, it’s important for them to have a mother who feels valued and loved, too. · Teach both children to value and respect the other sex. It’s important for girls to respect men, and this respect usually comes from the daughter being able to respect and love her father. If she can have a good relationship with her dad, then this will help her to develop the skills to have a good relationship with her future husband. · Likewise, boys who have a good relationship with their mother, and love and respect her, are more likely to treat their wife with loving respect when they’re married. Teaching your children to respect, love and care for other family members when they are young will help to ensure that your children have a strong and happy marriage. · Treat boys and girls equally in the home, and avoid giving either boys or girls special privileges. Share food according to age, not gender. Try to help all your children have as good an education as possible. Educated mothers learn skills that help them to be better mothers, and they and their children are often healthier than the children of mothers with very little education. · Encourage the children to spend time with their same sex parent. A mother is a good model for her daughters and the father for his sons. Help them to make the most of their masculine and feminine features, and to be the best men and women they can be. · Talk about differences in gender and show how each of their genders has special advantages. Men may be physically stronger, and able to work hard. Some men are very good at solving problems. Women are made to have babies, and that is also a very special privilege. Some women enjoy their close friendships and find comfort in talking about the concerns in their life. Women’s bodies are softer in shape and they have finer features. · Privacy and modesty can mean different things in different cultures. In some countries women must be totally covered. In other countries both men and women may wear very little. Whatever your culture finds acceptable, find ways to respect each other’s need for privacy within the home · Having a place where family members can change their clothes without being seen by others may show respect. Respect may also mean knocking at a closed door and being invited to enter, rather than opening a door without considering who may be behind the door, and whether they are doing something that they wish to do in private. · Tell your children ahead of time what will happen to their bodies as they grow older, and tell them how to deal with the changes. This information gives confidence to the child as he or she feels better able to manage the changes that come with growing up. Be positive about these changes and talk about them as facts. · Make the changes that happen as their bodies mature something to look forward to and not to fear. Give them accurate medical information about their bodies, and not folklore. If you’re not sure what is really true, ask a doctor or nurse to help you know what to say. · If you were given information by your parents, that was inaccurate or unhelpful, then give better information to your children. Tell the facts instead, and use words that will encourage your children and help them to be proud of their maturing bodies. · Teach your children how to keep their bodies safe. Teach them what is acceptable sexual behavior and what is not acceptable sexually, and teach them how to avoid being sexually abused. Let your child know that their genitals are private and not for others to touch and see. Teach the children that if someone is interested in touching and seeing their special places, then they should run away from the person and tell you what happened, even if the person is an adult they trust, or a friend. · It is especially important to protect girls from being molested and raped. Do all you can to ensure their safety at all times, and to teach them how to avoid situations where they could be harmed. · Make sure that your children understand about illnesses that are passed between people sexually, especially the HIV virus and AIDS. The best time and place for the first sexual encounter is in a secure and married relationship. This protects everyone against the spread of disease, and keeps the community and the children healthy. · Think about the different ways men and women live and behave in your community and find advantages for both the genders.
Some of these ideas may seem strange to you, because the ideas may be new, and may be very different to the views expressed by your community. But think about the ideas. Even those that may seem strange at first may make more sense when you’ve thought about them for a while. The wisest people don’t always follow the patterns of the past. They consider each pattern, each tradition, and decide for themselves which ideas are still helpful and good, and whether there may be some better ideas waiting to be discovered.
|