Habits of a Child's Heart by Valerie Hess

Author:Valerie Hess
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Navigators

MIDDLE CHILDHOOD (ages 8–11):

Again, work toward a daily time of quiet, and when you are talking with your kids about their day, stop doing other things and give them your focused attention.

Teach your children the Jesus Prayer, mentioned earlier in this chapter. Help them to realize it can be a comfort to them when they feel frightened, uncomfortable, or confused.

Try a time of silence during bedtime prayers with your kids. Help them to understand that like any conversation, prayer includes talking to God and listening to God respond.

Insist that your children turn off the TV when doing their homework. Watching TV and doing homework are two activities that are mutually exclusive—one requires total engagement (homework) and the other is a passive, slow-the-brain-down, very disengaged activity (TV watching). Television, by its low cognitive demand and its power to mesmerize, will interfere with homework in a way you perhaps never expected: it will help turn your kids’ brains off—literally. Conversation, reading, and writing never do this, but TV does. Talk with your kids about the art and skill of concentration and of deriving energy from one’s own willpower.

If your children are used to studying with music on, work out a compromise. For example, tell them that music can be on if they are coloring a geography map but that it must be off when they are doing their math or English assignment. In other words, wean them gradually.

Don’t allow your children to ride their bikes or walk around outside with earphones on. Besides the obvious problem of not being able to hear approaching cars or other dangers, children who constantly wear earphones never learn to listen to what is around them because they have learned to tune out everything around them, including you. If they are used to tuning us as parents out, could they also be tuning out God’s voice?

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