Welcome to this month’s Rooted Parent Top 10 – a list of parenting articles from across the web for the Rooted community. This list represents ten articles we believe will encourage and equip you as you parent your kids. At the end of the list we have included several of the pieces that ran on Rooted Parent over the last month. If you have an article you’d like to contribute to the next edition of the Top Ten, please email Anna at anna@rootedministry.com.
Gospel Centered Parenting
How to Talk to Your Kids About Mass Shootings by Josh Weidmann, TGC. “How should parents and children respond to such a loveless act as a mass shooting? With love.”
Two Stones in My Pocket by Amy Medina, amy-medina.com. This is not strictly speaking a parenting article but there are helpful insights for parents here. “Now I watch my own children. The most secure one is also the friendliest and happiest. The most insecure one can be the most irritable and mean.”
The Sacred Life of a Mother’s Mind by Abigail Dodds, Desiring God. “Some days, when we’re tired or spent, cultivating our minds may mean setting aside watching or listening and simply keeping our minds more aware of God — his goodness, his love, his holiness — not necessarily trying to learn anything new, but resting our minds, savoring what we know of him, and receiving his care for us.”
Kids As Idols… What Does Social Media Say? By Walt Mueller, CPYU.org. “Sadly, I think social media has served to create a world where we not only curate, fabricate, and exhibit ourselves, but we are doing the same things with our kids. We even have a word for it these days: ‘sharenting’.”
5 Ways to Help Kids Engage Politically by Melanie Rainer, TGC. “Is it possible to cultivate an understanding of political engagement in our kids that’s built on kingdom theology—on the knowledge that Jesus reigns over every square inch of this world?”
Trust God With Your Kids by Mike McGarry, Youthpastortheologian.com. “Never give up on praying for your kids’ spiritual development, regardless of how fruitful or unfruitful they appear right now. Pray diligently, but not in a fearful way (“what if they fall away?!”) but with confidence that the Holy Spirit is at work in their lives.”
Parenting
The Squiggly Line of a Successful Life: Our Q&A with psychologist and parenting expert Madeline Levine, mbird.com. Not a gospel centered parenting article, but an extremely wise secular one; nothing here contradicts the gospel, and there’s a lot of grace. “The kid-parent relationship is also important, because when it comes to anxiety, kids and their parents co-regulate. So when your kid comes home from school, you’re not standing at the door saying, “How was it? Are you okay? Did everybody wear their mask today?” That’s not a good environment to come home to. Because your anxiety will become your kid’s anxiety.”
Youth Culture
Ongoing New York Times series: “Inner Pandemic,” mental health in teens written by Matt Richtel. A Sample: “They have too much screen time, they’re not sleeping, on phones all the time,” Dr. Melissa Dennison, a pediatrician in central Kentucky who sees many unhappy adolescents, told Matt. Dennison regularly encourages her patients to take walks outdoors or attend church. It’s true that the decline of in-person interactions has had a few silver linings. Today’s adolescents are less likely to use tobacco, drink alcohol or get pregnant. But the net effect of less socializing is negative. Most human beings struggle when they are not spending time in the company of others.”
Meet the Parents Who Refuse to Give Their Kids Smartphones by Ellen McCarthy, Washington Post. “As Stacey [a child psychiatrist] sits with young patients who are grappling with anxiety or depression or lack of focus and can’t fathom cutting back their smartphone use, a single thought tends to run through her head: ‘This is so stupid, that these little devices are controlling these kids’.”
To Share With Your Graduate
Where Do You Go From Here? A Letter to Those Graduating by Will Ryan, mbird.com. “…what counts in God’s eyes is not our accomplishments, however grand or pitiful they may be, but Jesus’ action on our behalf.”
On Rooted
Helping Kids Prepare for Goodbyes by Kaila Thomas
Gospel Truth For a Mother’s Pain by Tracey Rector
God Isn’t Looking at Your Parenting Resume by Dawson Cooper
Parenting With An Eternal Perspective by Katie Polski
Six Ways Parents Can Care for Youth Pastors by Anna Meade Harris
Ask Rooted: How Do You Demonstrate Faith to Your Child’s Unchurched Friends?
Rooted Recommends: The Race-Wise Family by Anna Meade Harris
5 Quotes from ‘The Jesus I Wish I Knew In High School’
Thoughts on Prom, Exams, and the End of the School Year for Busy Parents
Parents, Teenagers, and Devices: Rooted Recommends a Webinar With Jonathan Haidt and Andy Crouch
Rooted Recommends: Two Podcasts About Parenting Pastors’ Kids
For Parents Near the End of Senior Year
