A Single Sentence from a Season Ahead
The inner lives of kids are a lot like a garden🪴 and with you as their gardener 🧑🌾 one of the great things you should hope to see grown in them is gratitude.
How To Become A Person CampIf summer break hasn't hit your home yet, it's only a few days away. When our kids were at your family stage my emotional state was always a mixed bag heading into summer. Yeah for flexibility and Nah for chaos. My wife and kids made fun of me for years for my big summer plans and goals. June 1st might as well have been January 1st with all the overcommitments and promises I made to myself that fell apart over the summer. A few years ago, way too late for me to use it on my kids, I learned about an idea I wish I had known during our family summers. Enter: "Become a Person" CampWhy do I wish I had known about it? Because it makes a fun game out of growing up. I know in your home right now there are so many things you wish your kids were able to do for themselves. The problem is, kids growth arrives in stages. You also know that someday they are going to need to know a ton of things in order to function as an adult. If you want your kids to gain skills, abilities, and independence, the summer is a great time to level them up. With all the hours and daylight that you have, it's a great way to put some purpose into your days. Calling it Become A Person Camp throughout the summer does several good things:
When it comes to your young kids, they do want to grow up. Often though they want the privileges and freedoms that come with it more than the effort and process to get there. So take them to Person Camp in your home throughout the summer. Tell them you're excited to help them learn about being a big person one day and see how many boxes you can check off before school starts back. Person Camp Abilities By AgeFeel free to print these off, write them on a whiteboard, turn each into a sticky note to pull off as you complete it, whatever approach you'd like!
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Helping propel moms & dads of 3 to 13 year-olds to invest in their power-decade of parenting. Father of 3 teenagers and pastor of 20 years turned digital writer.
500 Fridays Newsletter - 3 min read Season: The Springtime (2 of 11) Big Expectations When we were raising young kids, I'll admit that I had unrealistic expectations when we spent time together as a full family of 5. It happened in small doses when we ate dinner or worked on projects around the house together. But if I had abnormal sized dreams on a regular Thursday night, they were exponentially higher when we went on family vacations. I have been accused by my wife of being too much like...
500 Fridays Newsletter - 3.5 min read Season: The Springtime (1 of 11) Tell Them The Truth As I’ve written about the power-decade over the past few years, I often ask young parent friends for relevant topics or situations. A while ago, my neighbor asked me to write about how we responded when our kids asked hard questions. It had me stumped at first, but I know that we did it. When I stopped to think about it, I realized our kids never seemed hesitant to bring hard questions. I am thankful...
500 Fridays Newsletter - 4 min read Season: The Cold Days (12 of 12) The Dilemma "Discipline" is a complicated subject for power-decade parents. I was texting a friend the other day about the gentle parenting movement that has landed in our culture today. So many of today’s ideas are a reaction to what was broken about yesterday’s approach. While disciplining children is a polarizing topic, it is a critical part of raising kids. My wife and I were young parents and both came from families...