Podcasts

How to Fight Well with Your Kids

/ Sarah Janisse Brown / Leave a comment

This content originated from David Morris over on X

Parenting is hard. Parents have to choose their battles. Here are 8 fights worth picking with your kids:

The Reading Fight:

Make your kids read. Because reading is tied to everything from cognitive development to the ability to focus.

The Outside Fight:

Make your kids go outside. The natural world teaches us things. Plus, outside there’s sunshine, fresh air, and exercise waiting for them. Most importantly, nature is full of things in short supply in our world: Discovery, wonder, peace, joy.

The Work Fight:

Make your kids work. I’m saddened by how many parents don’t require their kids to lift a finger at home. There are priceless life principles you can only learn with a mop in your hand. Let sweat be their teacher.

The Meal Fight:

Make your kids eat as a family. Our lives are a blur of incessant activity. Meals together are a physical pause to recover a truth so easily sacrificed at the altar of busyness. Nothing’s more important than family.

The Boredom Fight:

Make your kids live with boredom. Don’t show a DVD on each car ride. Kids need unscheduled time. And, odd as it sounds, boredom is a skill. It’s hard as a parent to deal with the assault of boredom complaints. But if you give in and fill up their time with external stimuli, you’ll raise an activity addict. Make them learn how to be.

The “Me First” Fight:

Make your kids go last. Not every time for everything. But enough to remember that the world doesn’t revolve around them. Take the smallest piece. Give up the remote. Do someone else’s chores. Get their least favorite choice. They won’t like it, but they need it.

The Awkward Conversation Fight:

Make your kids have uncomfortable conversations with you. Sex, dating, body image, values…Your kids will roll their eyes and resist. You will stumble and stutter. They need and want your perspective, lessons learned, and wisdom.

The Limitation Fight:

Learning to live within limits is a valuable life skill. In fact, many adult problems arise from an inability to accept them. Screen time limits, dietary limits, activity limits, and schedule limits are all good.

As a parent, you have to pick your battles. They’re not easy, but they’re worth the fight.

Click here for the full discussion.

The Inspiration Behind Dyslexia Games (Try For Free!)

/ Sarah Janisse Brown / Leave a comment

Written by Ella Bundy from podcast content

When it comes to parenting, you never quite know what challenges you’ll face. For me, one of the biggest surprises came in the form of dyslexia. My oldest daughter, Anna, is the first one that we discovered is dyslexic, and it’s really an amazing story!

My first son, Isaac, was a natural when it came to letters and reading. He was already reading by age five, so I figured I’d use the same approach with Anna. But Anna was different – a free spirit who could never sit still. At four, she showed zero interest in reading, so I decided to step back and let her explore her own interests, like drawing and nature.

By the time Anna turned six, I felt it was time to focus on helping her learn to read – but it quickly became apparent that something wasn’t clicking. Phonics made no sense to her. She would get upset, she would get angry, she would cry. She would get one word correct one day, and then, the next day, she’d forget it. We tried again when she was seven, even bringing in a teacher, but the struggle continued.

As Anna approached eight and still couldn’t read, I started to worry. With five or six children at that point, my in-laws began suggesting that I might be too busy with the younger ones to teach her properly. It was heartbreaking when, at nine years old, Anna told me she didn’t care about learning to read because it was too hard for her to differentiate between letters. She declared she’d just be an artist and a mom instead.

I remember sitting there, stunned by her words. After a moment of reflection, I gently told her, “Anna, God wouldn’t have given us the Bible unless he was going to give us the ability to be able to read it.” It was then that I realized we needed a different approach. Anna was a real problem-solver, so I decided to try and outsmart her reluctance to read by creating something that turned reading into a problem-solving challenge.

Click here to find out what Sarah did next (and access some free resources)!

Pages: 1 2