As moms, we want to do so much with our kids – make cute crafts, play with trucks or dress baby dolls, bake cookies together, or read stacks of books,
It’s easy to get discouraged about all that we want to do, but can’t fit into our schedule. We often have to pick and choose what we squeeze into our day and need to prioritize our activities to make the best use of our time.
I’ve come up with three things we can do now that we’ll never regret having done. They only take a few minutes of your day, but they can have long lasting results.
1. Teach your children about God. Whether it’s a scheduled sit down time or a teachable moment that presents itself during the day, talking to your children about God is important. Here are a few ideas for making that happen.
- Pray at bedtime and meals.
- Sing Scripture songs.
- Memorize a verse together.
- Review what they learned in Sunday School or another church children’s program.
- Read a Bible story book.
2. Look into your child’s eyes and say “I love you.” I’m working on this! While I tell my girls that I love them every day, I don’t always connect and say it while focusing directly on them at that moment.
3. Say a sentence of encouragement to each child. “You were thoughtful when you shared your candy with your brother.” “Thank you for putting your plate in the dishwasher.” “It took lots of diligence for you to finish cleaning your room like I asked.” “You waited patiently for me to finish what I was doing.” As I’ve mentioned before, we often see the negative aspects of our children’s behavior. While that needs to be corrected, we should encourage them in their good moments as well.
What else could we do with our kids today that we’ll never regret?
These are great suggestions! I try to "catch" my children doing something good so I can praise them for it. And I also try to teach them about God all day long, as we're instructed to do in the Bible.
Here are a couple of other things I try to teach my children, maybe not every day, though: they are not the center of the world and they aren't always going to win. Of course, these are negative things, and you were focusing on the positive.
Those are certainly important things for our children to learn, too!
YES! I am *big* on the encouragement!