Recently I have been reading through a newly released book for Christian parents by Natasha Crain titled, “Keeping Your Kid’s on God’s Side–40 Conversations to Help Them Build a Lasting Faith.” It’s not often you find a book on Christian apologetics written specifically with kids in mind, so this book has me intrigued. I hope to post a thorough review in the near future. At the end of the book, she gives “10 Tips for Having Deeper Faith Conversations with Your Kids.” I found these to wise and practical—something every parent can be working on. Here are the 10 tips, along with a few quotes:
- Commit to continually deepening your understanding of Christianity.
- Make spiritual space in your home.
- …[a]dedicated time for your family to engage together in growing your understanding of and relationship to God.
- Study the Bible with your kids. Really. Simply reading the Bible helps kids learn key stories and events. But studying the Bible helps them learn what it all means and introduces them to the importance of interpretation.
- Proactively and regularly ask your kids what questions they have. …pull your kids’ questions to the forefront of conversation. You don’t need to have all the answers, but you do need to provide the forum.
- Ask your kids the tough questions they don’t ask of you. …we can’t just react to the questions they happen to have. We need to proactively put all the questions we know are important…right in front of them.
- If your kids are struggling with faith, become a detective. …find out (1) what exactly they mean when they say what they say, and (2) why they’ve come to that conclusion.
- Emphasize critical thinking skills. …teaching them how to objectively evaluate the validity of what someone else is asserting and how to draw logically appropriate conclusions themselves.
- Work with your kids on how to seek answers to faith questions online. Giving your kids research challenges and discussing their process of finding answers can lead to enormously valuable conversations that will benefit them for life.
- Teach your kids about religions and worldviews other than Christianity. …study and compare the actual beliefs. In addition to other religions, be sure to study the atheist worldview in-depth, given its significance today.
- Start today.
(Copyright©2016, pages 249 – 255)
(Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.)
