How to provoke your children to anger

As fathers, we don't need any help coming up with ways to make our children angry or resentful. It sort of comes naturally to us. Mark Altrogge offers a pretty inclusive list of what some of those things are. We can provoke our children to anger:

• By constantly criticizing them and not encouraging them. When they feel they can never please us enough.
  
• By having double standards – Do as I say, not as I do. Expecting them to do things we don’t do, e.g. ask forgiveness, humble themselves, etc.
  
• By anger and harshness
  
• By a lack of affection
  
• By telling them what to do or not do without giving Biblical reasons (e.g., Do it because I said to do it, or because it’s just wrong).
  
• By being offended at their sin because it bothers us, not because it offends God.

Take a moment to read the rest here. And remember that we fathers are sinners too.

Anti-family planning propaganda, courtesy of Disney

"All of us have a responsibility toward the family of man...including you."

How to give fairy tales a more Christian ending

Psalm 127:3

Whether it was intentional or not, the anti-abortion message is loud and clear:

Reason #4,273 Why We Homeschool

This is one of the many reasons why my wife and I decided not to send our children to a government school:


The only surprising thing is that the father in the video was so shocked this was going on. As a father of three, I'm glad I didn't have to learn my lesson the hard way.

In America, the State Is God

Sure, in an ideal world the police shouldn't be able to abduct a child from his loving parents, but who are we to question the state?


Come on, church. Stop hiding behind Romans 13 and speak up.

Just Say No to Drugging Kids

According to a recent article in The New York Times, 11% of school age children, and nearly one in five boys of high school age, have been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder:

These rates reflect a marked rise over the last decade and could fuel growing concern among many doctors that the A.D.H.D. diagnosis and its medication are overused in American children.

The figures showed that an estimated 6.4 million children ages 4 through 17 had received an A.D.H.D. diagnosis at some point in their lives, a 16 percent increase since 2007 and a 41 percent rise in the past decade. About two-thirds of those with a current diagnosis receive prescriptions for stimulants like Ritalin or Adderall, which can drastically improve the lives of those with A.D.H.D. but can also lead to addiction, anxiety and occasionally psychosis.

"Those are astronomical numbers. I'm floored," said Dr. William Graf, a pediatric neurologist in New Haven and a professor at the Yale School of Medicine. He added, "Mild symptoms are being diagnosed so readily, which goes well beyond the disorder and beyond the zone of ambiguity to pure enhancement of children who are otherwise healthy."

Don't worry. The American Psychiatric Association is planning on changing the definition of A.D.H.D. so that even more kids will be diagnosed in order to receive proper "treatment." Call it an economic stimulus for the pharmaceutical industry.

As a father of three, I am thankful that we are able to homeschool our kids. I'm sure many of you parents will know exactly what I'm talking about when I say that there is a strong likelihood that each one of my children would fall under some government school definition of A.D.D. or A.D.H.D. But have you ever met one kid who didn't have trouble sitting still or focusing, especially when they had little or no interest in the subject being taught?

Gary North has a simpler, drug-free solution:

If your kid is squirming in public school, a solution is to pull him out of public school. Kids who are not in public schools usually stop squirming.

There are two main solutions: homeschooling or doing chores around the house. Teenage kids facing this choice usually stop squirming.

Homeschooling works. But when it's either prescribing drugs or chores, I recommend chores. It's cheaper. Also, parents avoid extra chores.

So simple, and yet so difficult for today's two-income families to manage.

Study Reveals What Christians Already Knew: Babies Are Wicked

Ephesians 2:3 points out that, as sons and daughters of Adam, we are all born "children of wrath." A recent University of British Columbia study confirms what we Christians already knew from scripture:

They might look all cute and bubbly on the outside, but a new study suggests babies have a hidden mean streak – and even wish harm on people who they identify as different from them.

A University of B.C.-led psychology study found that infants as young as nine-months-old embrace those who pick on individuals who don't share their preferences.

Study lead author Kiley Hamlin said the findings reveal that babies are constantly busy assessing their surroundings, trying to determine who their friends and enemies are.

Hamlin said almost all of the 112 test babies acted the same during testing.

During the study, babies aged nine to 14 months chose a food they preferred to eat, either graham crackers or green beans.

The youngsters were then shown a puppet show where the character demonstrated the same food preference as the baby. Another puppet demonstrated the opposite preference.

The puppets harmed, helped or acted neutrally towards the puppets with different or similar food preferences.

Results showed that the babies far preferred the puppets who harmed the puppet with the opposite food preferences to their own. One baby even planted a kiss on the puppet she liked.

How to Explain "Glorify" to a Child

From Sally Lloyd-Jones's book Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing.

(via Desiring God)

Signs and Wonders Camp

This summer, forget Bible camp. Why not send your kids to Signs and Wonders Camp?


Or you may want to take a more radical approach and try actually equipping them with the gospel.

No Children Allowed?

This was printed in the program at a church I visited in San Diego...

Childhood Conversion

As one who is in the process of adopting three kids, I have been thinking long and hard about presenting the gospel to my children -- especially since learning that Philippe, at age 7, professed his belief in Christ. Now, I know that he and his sister are in a Christian-run orphanage in Haiti and are taught from scripture on a daily basis, but I wasn't there when this happened, so I really don't know what was said to him before or after that profession.

As you can imagine, all sorts of questions have been running through my mind: How can Christian parents know that they are getting through to their kids? What do they do when their young children make a decision to follow Christ? How can they be joyful about such a decision while remaining cautious that they don't foster deception?

Jim Elliff has written an excellent article on the subject. What follows are some of the highlights. On the topic of conviction, he writes:

Conviction is the work of the Spirit in bringing sin and the necessity of Christ home to the child's conscience. Jesus said that the Holy Spirit convicts of sin, righteousness (that is, that there is only one righteousness and it is found in Christ), and judgment (see Jn. 16:8-11). In looking for conviction, we should avoid any preconceived ideas about how many tears or how much agony is appropriate and keep in mind that conviction is God's tool to bring your child to a hatred of sin. God alone knows what it takes. That there must be conviction in the preparation for salvation is, however, a bedrock truth. It is in the development of conviction that the parent can play a most significant part. By carefully laying out the law (the demands of God on the conscience), by explaining the consequences of breaking that law, and by continually emphasizing the exclusivity of Christ in delivering the child from those consequences, the parent cooperates with the Spirit in this special preparation of the heart.

On revelation:

Young Samuel ministered before the Lord (1 Sam. 3:1), but did not yet know the Lord (vs.7) before the Lord "called" him. The reason is that the Word of the Lord was not yet revealed to him (vs. 7). Eli in this case did help Samuel to know that it was the Lord who was calling the boy, and gave him the proper response, which might indicate a place for the parent's intervention in interpreting events. When Paul preached Christ's cross in Corinth he said that to some it was foolishness and to others it was a stumblingblock, but it was the power of God unto salvation to the called (see 1 Cor. 1: 22-24). Here he is speaking of the effectual call of the Holy Spirit rather than the broader call of the preacher (i.e. "Many are called, but few chosen" Mt. 20: 16). This is another way to discuss this issue of revelation. One convert said, "Christ became as irresistible to me as my sin had been before." Observation and counsel are important here, but you cannot play God's part. Your child is not just signing a contract because he wants to close a good deal, but is meeting a person who has the power to reveal or not reveal. "Seek the Lord while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near..." (Isa. 55:6)

On regeneration:

We have put a paradigm of exact dating on most conversions so that we tend to force whatever is happening in the child into a moment in time which he or she can remember, but the reality may be far more difficult to ascertain. For instance, my child has often prayed at night about his soul. I encourage this and often remind him and the other children, "Don't forget to talk to God about your soul before going to sleep." What I am looking for is not whether or not he has said some words in the right way that supposedly "bind" God to give him salvation. No, what I am looking for, and what he is looking for, is a changed life. He is looking for the signs of being made a "new creature" in Christ.

When we speak of assurance, we are speaking of that which we know because the evidence is clear. This is the heart of First John and the other passages dealing with this subject. The way to tell if you are a Christian is not to look at the sincerity of a decision, but to look at the change in the life. As far as I can tell, there is no teaching in the Word which says that you can be sure that you are a Christian by looking back at an historical conversion experience. "These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life..." (1 Jn. 5:13, emphasis mine). What things? Those tests which make up the content of the epistle. In other words, one's assurance should be based on discernible factors which can be tested.

On correcting our mistakes:

Leaders and parents must consider the benefits of returning to a better method of dealing with the souls of our children. To give assurance on the basis of praying a prayer or some other outward, immediate sign is sealing many in deception and makes them harder to reach in their adult years. Any casual look at the disparity between the rolls of our churches plus the numbers of supposed converts who do not even find their way on to our rolls against the actual changed lives being produced, should cause us to do some very serious thinking. In the manner of our great grandfathers who often exhibited such reasonableness and biblical wisdom, we should return to a method that both allows our active and vigorous pursuit of our children's salvation, while at the same time protects against large scale deception.

Every Christian parent will want to check out the entire article.

Feel free to share your thoughts on this weighty issue. Training up a child in the way he should go (Proverbs 22:6) is a frightfully important task, one that should not be taken lightly.