Distrust

 Question:

My 4.5 year old distrusts everything we say although we never lie to him. He argues every time we say anything, insisting that we are lying.

Answer:

That’s a very smart 4.5 year old. Sounds like he’s been lied to before, not by you but by someone else. And that he was hurt, and that caused him to distrust anyone. It sounds like he is scared and confused, and doesn’t know what to believe anymore because he’s trust has been betrayed. 

Perhaps try telling him that some people do lie, but not mommy and daddy, and not this family, and see whether he can argue with that. Perhaps he will, and show you instances of the time when someone did lie to him. Then you know where it came from and deal with it.

If nothing comes up, you can continue with statements that ‘Christians are not supposed to lie either’. And see if anything comes up then.

Bedtime

 Question: 

6 year old weaning off melatonin. Takes 2 hours to sleep. Help. 

Answer:

My theory has always been early to rise, early to bed. Can you get him to wake up at 5 or 6am? 

If the house is noisy, I usually play wave sounds to drown the noise. If you have a Google Home with you, that’s easily done. Other than that, any phone will do. You can either get a sound app or play it on YouTube.

Also, just make sure he has had enough for dinner which means some healthy carbohydrates (not the bleached ones). Healthy carbs are like potatoes and brown rice. If your child is on a strict veggie and fruit diet, he might be too hungry to sleep.

Another way is try praying or worshipping really long. After praying about an hour, he should be sleeping. If that still doesn’t work, then play some Jesus Image worship. They usually go on for 2 hours. If you can find one session that makes him sleep, make sure to remember which one it is!

If not, just hold him to sleep every night for at least a week or two until he is cold turkied off the meds.

Taking 2 hours to sleep is normal I think. My 7 year old needs some time to unwind as well. Try a long and warm bath as part of a good bedtime routine. And part of that bedtime routine is to reflect upon what he has done that day, etc. I usually play with the kids before the bedtime stories and prayer. That’s our family time.

Expressions

 Emotional Expressions are really expressions of the heart and not the head.

For example, the more we try to hold back a tear, the more gushes down.

And the most genuine of smiles come without you even noticing until much later.

Laughter are like tears, which burst the very moment you try to hold it in.

And arrows that pierce the heart is what you get if you don’t express anything at all; while the underlying truth is that the world itself will fail to contain the entirety of what you really feel in your heart.

Favoritism

Question:

Grandparents practicing favoritism towards kids and grandkids — to run away or get close anyway? What if one is a step-dad?

Answer:

Wow. That’s a lot to take in. 

I don’t know if a step dad is considered a parent and therefore if the ‘honor your parents’ applies to him. Hmmm.. food for thought. My guess is that he is technically not, so I wouldn’t be so worried? That being said, I do think it is great if we can all be a happy family. At least for the honoring your mom part. And I guess honoring him is how you honor your mom? 

It’s really sad to experience favoritism in your family and more sad to be the less favored. However, how your mom treats your younger siblings have many reasons. It’s always easy for parents to be mushy with the youngest but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you more. Different people express love to different people differently. That doesn’t measure love accurately at all. Love carefully hidden is worse than open rebuke. Proverbs 27:5

Personally, I would have two reactions myself so I can’t really say. It really depends on the children’s ages as well.

If the kids are really young and won’t notice anything, and therefore won’t be affected, I’d say, go for it and spend time anyway. It’s not like we can do so forever. One day your mom will be gone. Treasure all the time you have left.

On the other hand, when things get too awkward and if the kids are old enough to notice the difference, and if they truly practice favoritism, I’d say take them as far away as possible. But then again, these are grandparents and not parents. The effect on them would not be so great as parents themselves were practicing favoritism. So nothing much to worry about. I would only worry if it gets out of hand, and your kids are emotionally affected, or could get emotionally affected.

The third scenario is when your kids are much older, like upper primary or teens. I guess by this age, if you raised them well enough and they are mature enough to handle it, they will be able to. So it depends on the kids.

Whatever it is, go to God because He knows the future and only He will be able to assess your future situation to advice you to get close or run away. There is no fixed answer. Only God knows their hearts.

Love and Blessings.

Learning to Read

Question:

How to teach kids to read?

Answer:

Two common ways: Phonetics and Word Recognition. Just do both and you’ll be fine. YouTube ABC Phonetic songs for the Phonetic part. Teach him to write his name and pronounce it by alphabets. Then work on Word Recognition: start with easy words like articles, “a, an, the” then conjunctions etc.

Jewish Feasts - To Celebrate or Not To Celebrate?

 Question:

I'd like to hear from those of you who keep the Jewish feasts. What denomination are you, what are your reasons, do you still celebrate the "regular" holidays? Also interested in any resources you might have on the topic.

Answer:

Yes, we celebrate both Jewish and mainstream, except Halloween. We are interdenominational, apostolic and prophetic. Also, we celebrate Passover and Resurrection Sunday instead of Easter.

The reason is because God says so. Exodus 12:14, 17, 24. Leviticus 23:41

New Testament:  https://www.ucg.org/bible-study-tools/booklets/gods-holy-day-plan-the-promise-of-hope-for-all-mankind/gods-festivals-in-the-new-testament

And the reason why the Jewish feasts were removed was because of Constantine. He removed all the Jewish feasts because he blamed the Jews for murdering Jesus and wanted nothing to do with them. Today, we know that is so wrong. Jesus Himself is a Jew.

I’m sorry it’s a wiki but it sums up everything:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_the_Great_and_Judaism

Church Mess-age

 First off, Children Ministry is not a baby sitting service. It is a children’s church, and therefore do not need to be the same time as the service. I prefer my kids to be in the church with the congregation. 

Having said that, younger children need to be nursed. And personally I prefer to nurse in a separate room myself. A lot of churches’ nurseries are still incompatible unless it is a mega church. But if you go to a mega church for the sake of their facilities and programs, you will feel very dry, and will feel like there is no point going to church either. 

 The teenagers could help out with the younger kids if you have a large family. A youth group is not the answer. If anything, can only make things worse. A lot of youth who go to a youth service at the same time as the main service never fit in again once they are too old for the youth group. And they drop out of church. 

If I were you, I’ll put all my kids in the main hall throughout the service. That’s where the real anointing and presence of God is and that’s what they need. I usually take a playmat and toys that don’t make noise, along with me, and food that don’t make a mess, like biscuits. Once there is food in their mouth, they can’t really make much noise. Once a kid reaches 6, they can learn to take notes. Each have their own note books. At 6, they can tick off certain words that is mentioned regularly by the preacher in that particular sermon. They can also draw a picture of what they think the preacher is preaching about. Some take notes using emoticons on the handphone using the Notes App. I refused to go to Children’s Ministry myself since I was 10. I wanted to take notes like the adults. I wanted the Word of God that had more substance and revelation than just Bible Stories I’ve already heard over and over again, in different forms. 

Children who are involved in inter generational worship know the presence of God and their lives are very different. Soak them in. Programs is just doing church, to be honest. They need to see and feel the power and presence of God.

Here’s a suggestion: ask the pastor to give you the notes to the sermon ahead of time so you can prep some activities and worksheets for the kids based on that sermon. Some can even watch a Superbook with headphones on during the sermon if it is sermon related.

So have them all with you in the main hall at all times, and if you need to nurse, have the 14 year old take charge. If necessary, give the 14 year old authority to reward them with points on a point chart that they can use after the service to “buy things” like snacks or screen time. They get points for behavior, including being quiet the whole time and for taking down excellent notes, etc.

Baby Wrap

Question:

My Catholic mother-in-law asked me to read Matthew 28:19-20 because she is concerned that my last 2 babies haven’t been baptized with Holy water. She made me question what happens if something should happen to my babies when they aren’t baptized 😔

Answer:

Baptism is about leaving the old life behind. Romans 6:4 Babies don’t have a past, so there is no need for baptism yet.

Secondly, real baptism means being fully immersed in water. John 3:23 (much water was needed). Matthew 3:16 (Jesus arose from the water.) Acts 8:38 (They went into the water). Not sprinkled. Babies are too young for that. And Jesus himself was 30 years old when he was baptized. And the Bible never mentioned baptizing babies. 

Thirdly, baptism is about dedicating one’s life to God which means that a child must acknowledge this and willingly and consciously make such a decision. Watch Jesus Image baptisms, especially of children, to understand how this is done.

Nevertheless if she still insists, feel free to have your baby fully immersed in water 😁 I understand they can be trained to naturally hold their breath? 😆 

But what we do as a family is to dedicate them. We have dedication ceremonies for each of our kids, that means we dress them in a beautiful gown because a present has to be wrapped, and we are giving them to God. Yes. We take it seriously.

Non-Santa Christmas

 

Question:

As a Christian mom who is not doing “Santa” with her kids, how do you approach the topic with young children?

Answer:

The truth. Santa was a good guy many years ago who just wanted to give children presents, especially those who could not afford it. But after he passed away, instead of following his example to give unfortunate children presents like he did, children became obsessed with receiving presents from him instead, and plenty of folktale followed as if he lived in the North Pole with a bunch of elves, etc. so we must not get distracted with Santa during Christmas but remember that it is Jesus’ birthday, and don’t forget Santa’s example in giving presents to underprivileged children. Also, all the kids in my family give presents to each family member. So there’s a ton of presents every Christmas. Don’t need one from Santa. The best presents are from mommy and daddy or grandpa and grandma.

Church Dilemma

Question: Can a Christian not go to church?

Answer:

Do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together Hebrews 10:25

The cross is a picture of the horizontal and vertical relationship that we have: our vertical relationship is our relationship with God, the horizontal relationship is our relationship with one another.

The church is a spiritual family. There is power when the generations come into alignment with each other. There is power in inter generational worship. Do not hold back your kids from the corporate worship and the presence of God and the power of God. If you are not experiencing the presence of God in the church you are in, I suggest you find one that has the presence of God.

Where are you located?

Daddy Education

I have always believed that parents are also mentors in the real world. That means, expose them to Daddy’s job. Use this opportunity to take them to his workplace and see firsthand how things are run. Take this opportunity to expose them to the area that he is involved in, that is his passion, and also other areas that touch on his skill and hobbies, whatever he is interested in, be it in fishing, fixing the car, etc. Dads love to be heroes, so let him bring them into his world.