Are your kids spending way too much time on their screens this summer? Do you tell them to get off electronics, but then find yourself at a loss as to how to help them fill their time? And does all this make you feel like a terrible parent?
Yeah, me too.
So here are some ideas I came up with to help our kids unplug from electronics and actually plug into real life for a change!
This milestone got me thinking about those mile markers along the interstate. I often think of them as telling me how much farther I have to go, but really their purpose is to remind us of where we are and how far we’ve come. That little number on the side of the road is the sum of all the miles we have travelled so far.
Most of the time, I get caught up using that number to determine how many miles I have left on my journey, but when I do that, I miss the whole point.
I forget to celebrate how far I’ve come. I miss out on the landscape of that particular part of the path. And if I’m not careful, I may even end up overlooking an opportunity to take a better route.
Friend, are you partway along a path, in need of a mile marker to give you perspective? (Keep reading…)
The past few months, and the last week in particular, have made it difficult for many of us to know how to move forward.
We don’t want to move on too quickly.
We don’t want to be insensitive to others.
We don’t want to act like nothing ever happened.
We don’t want to say the wrong thing or not say the right thing.
We want to make a difference, but we’re not sure how.
We find ourselves paralyzed, not sure when or how to move forward.
And yet, life continues on around us. Family and children and work await our attention. For just a little while, the world seemed to hold its breath, but at some point it needs to exhale and start breathing again.
And that’s okay.
It’s okay to move forward.
You don’t have to forget, and it doesn’t mean you didn’t really care. Your emotions may still be all over the place, or you may be confused about what to do next.
It’s okay- in the words of Elisabeth Elliot, “Just do the next thing.”
I thought I’d share a few ideas from our homeschooling days of ways you can use those colorful plastic eggs after Easter as part of your “crisis-schooling”- or maybe just to keep the little people in your house busy for awhile. (And if your little people have turned into big people, I have a few ideas for teens, too, so skip to the end!)
Friends, it finally dawned on our kids last weekend that we would not be able to go to church this Sunday. “Wait, you mean we’ll be stuck at home on EASTER SUNDAY?? Mom, it won't be Easter if we're not at church! That’s never happened before! This is not okay....
CONGRATULATIONS!! If you’ve made it this far, you deserve a milkshake or something! The posts in this series have been quite a bit longer than I usually write, but the information on this topic is just so important, I couldn’t figure out how to shorten it. So thanks...
It is the year 2020. The coronavirus has taken over the world.
School is cancelled. Church is cancelled. Birthday parties and weddings and doctor appointments- all cancelled. You know what isn’t cancelled?
Science Fair Projects…
I will never forget the first night we brought Sarah home from the hospital. She was screaming her little head off and then doing this weird gagging thing, like a cat with a hairball. As her face turned purple, we panicked and called the nurse line, and all I could think was, “How in the world am I supposed to keep this little person alive?!”
Parenting teens in the technology age can feel a lot like that.
It’s scary and dangerous and there are so many unknowns. It can be hard to know where to start and even harder to control. We want to protect our children and give them independence at the same time, all without causing World War III in our homes. Is that even possible?
In Part 1 of this series, we covered some things you can do before your teens enter the digital world. Today I want to share some things we have learned as we’ve navigated this challenge with our teen girls over the past few years…
I should be honest with you. If it were up to me, our kids would never have gotten phones or texting or social media. Ever. Between the danger and the drama and the addiction, I would have been happy to pick us all up and move to the Amish country. Fortunately for our kids, Jeff is way cooler than I am, and he was able to convince me that technology- and social media- are likely going to be a part of their lives forever.
“We have a choice,” he told me. “We can deny them access now and risk them sneaking it behind our backs or having to figure it out on their own in a college atmosphere, or we can choose to navigate this road alongside them, allowing them to make their mistakes with us by their side to guide them, and if necessary, protect them.”
Yeah, I married a good man. I think I’ll keep him.
So anyway, here are eight things we recommend you do BEFORE you give your teen access to social media…
I wish I had a dollar for everyone who has said to me, “Oh, I could never homeschool my kids. I don’t have the patience!” or “I couldn’t do that; I would kill my kids!” The truth is, NO ONE has the patience to homeschool, and all of us get frustrated with...