It’s hard for a five-year-old to stay quiet for any stretch of time. It’s also challenging to help children stay on topic while sharing their thanksgiving and requests during prayer each evening. So it’s another level of difficulty altogether to guide my youngest son in the silence of contemplative prayer when we pray together. I aim to practice silent, contemplative prayer before God for at least 20 minutes each day. With my son, I’m lucky if I can even get... Read more
It’s summer! Many families experience a change of routine as school is out and warmer weather beckons activities beyond regular programming. However, unfundamentalist parenting continues even through the summer season. With a little extra time and a little extra mental capacity released from the school year, this is a great time to make a big stride towards raising children with progressive values and parenting forward. Here are 9 suggestions: Image: Unsplash 1. Read Diverse Books. Do your children need to... Read more
We unfortunately do not have many stories about Jesus’ childhood in the Christian Gospels. Only two of the four Gospels, Matthew and Luke’s, mention anything about Jesus’ birth. What they do mention turns our expectations about God upside-down: Jesus the God Child is born not to a royal family, not into a family of wealth, and not even in the luxury of a home; rather, Jesus is born into a poor, unknown family of no status and in a stable.... Read more
Robert Coles, a Harvard professor and student of children’s lives, sees “children as seekers, as young pilgrims well aware that life is a finite journey and as anxious to make sense of it as those of us who are farther along in the time allotted to us.”[i] Just as adults want to know the whats and whys and hows about life because they are human, so, too, do children want to know. Children want to know because they are just... Read more
I went back to school for a master’s degree in counseling psychology in preparation for the empty nest. I was looking for something significant to do with “the rest of my life” after being a stay-at-home-parent, something I could enjoy while helping others live healthier, happier lives. I wasn’t looking to be a better parent; I thought that part of my life was winding down anyway. But it turns out that even though my kids are young adults now, I’m still a parent,... Read more
When I read the article, Are We Raising Persecution Ready Kids? I remembered with a shudder, how much of my own evangelical upbringing was gearing me up to be “persecution ready.” The piece began with a story of a boy being tortured to death for his faith, while his mother watched him die, urging him to stay true to his path of unflinching loyalty. The rest of the article lamented how lukewarm Christian parents have become in raising children, sidelining... Read more
*Spoiler alert* What kind of an unfundamentalist (read: feminist) parent would I be if I do not rush to the first showing of a movie featuring a female warrior directed by a woman? Four days before the June 2 release in America, I got to see Wonder Woman on the big IMAX screen here in Taiwan. The movie carried heavy expectations to shed the stigma from a string of ill-reviewed DC comic book movies as well as to represent feature... Read more
What do people mean, exactly, when they refer to ‘biblical parenting’? The Bible isn’t a parenting manual. It was never written or marketed as such—it’s a collection of books written by various authors, from different time periods, in a variety of genres, with ambiguous and often conflicting narratives. So what does it mean to parent according to the Bible? Image: Unsplash Does it mean we follow the example of parents in the Bible? Should we emulate Lot the father who... Read more
Lately, I’ve been struck by the power of names. I’ve been struck by the courage it takes to be inquisitive enough to ask a stranger their name. Struck by the difference it makes when we work hard and commit to memory the thing most important to a person: their first name. Struck by the way knowing a name changes our relationships with ourselves, with each other and with the world. Image: Harper Collins And I can’t help but acknowledge that... Read more
Whenever the topic of corporal punishment comes up, it seems inevitable that someone will argue that, while some forms of corporal punishment are abusive, not all forms are. “A little smack,” the argument goes, “is innocent enough.” Just a little sting to get the misbehaving child to obey is sometimes necessary. This is an odd argument because we never split hairs on other issues of abuse. We wouldn’t say it’s ok to scream at your child as long as you... Read more
Unfundamentalist Parenting
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