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
The Hidden Enemy of Families by Dieudonné Tamfu, Desiring God. “If we want to guard our families from the attacks of the devil, we will find our shield in the church.”
How Psalm 139 Made Me a Mother (Not Just a Parent) by Harriet Conner, TGC. “I am no longer aiming to become interchangeable with my husband. I have become joyfully reunited with my female body, and now I simply aim to live and relate to my children in accordance with that.”
Rose, Thorn, Bud: Cultivating Dinner Conversations With My Children by Jason Chao, SOLA Network. ““Rose, Thorn, Bud” helps me not only to see that God is active every day in my own life, but it gives me the opportunity to articulate that journey to my kids.”
Comfort For Christian Parents of Unconverted Children by Jim Elliff, Christian Communicators Worldwide. “Every Christian parent is inconsistent in some way and is in a process of sanctification that leaves the parent short of perfection. This has never been a barrier to God if He desires to save your child.”
How to Keep Christmas by Caleb French, Growing Fathers. “Our family has found it edifying to think of Thanksgiving as the first in a grand trilogy of holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the New Year) in which we annually celebrate the goodness of God to us. This celebration is made all the sweeter by remembering Christ as God’s greatest gift, through whom we enjoy all the rest to their fullest.”
Helpful Things You Can Say to Grieving Parents by Tim Challies, challies.com. “I recently consulted with a few other parents who have experienced the loss of a child and want to offer a few things you can say to grieving parents that may prove an encouragement to them—a flicker of light in their time of deep darkness.”
5 Questions with Family Studies: Stephen Kendrick on Healing From Our Father Wounds by Alysse Elhage, Institute of Family Studies. “it ought to be that any fatherless child or any single mom can walk in the doors of the church, and they see a whole army of fathers that will step in and work together to take in those fatherless kids, to sing happy birthday to them, to invite them into their home, to take them fishing. You know, let them interact with their own children and to see what a loving, happy home looks like…”
Youth Culture
Why Are More Black Kids Suicidal? A Search for Answers by Christina Caron, Yahoo News. “Despite the racial disparities — and the fact that suicide is the second leading cause of death among all adolescents — there has been a dearth of research examining the racial and ethnic differences in youth suicidal ideation, plans or suicide attempts.”
How Smartphones Stifle Childhood Creativity by Trevin Wax, TGC. “Parents, for the sake of the art the world is waiting for, for the sake of the mental and emotional health of the next generation, for the sake of fun-filled imaginations that make the years of childhood a delight, please limit your kids’ access to the phone.”
To Share With Your Teen
Are You Treated Like a Child During the Holidays? By Shelby Abbott, New Growth Press. “You feel mocked and belittled by the reminder of your past self, and contrary to the spiritual growth you’ve experienced, you respond to your family in a way that plays right into the old stereotype of the former self you believed was long gone.”
On Rooted
Hope And Helpful for the Fearful Parent by Anna Meade Harris
A Gift For All Your Favorite Teenagers by Rooted
Weary, But Not of Doing Good by Becky Paynter
Our Favorite Christmas Hymns and Carols for Parents by Rooted
Dear Parent of a College Freshman Home for the Holidays by Melissa Powell
Our Christmas Movies Series:
Hallmark Movies and the Real Romance of Christmas by Rebecca Lankford
Christmas Vacation: The Holiday That Wasn’t Enough by Ben Birdsong
Elf, Iran, and the Good News of Jesus by Mark Howard
Finding the Gospel in The Star by Joey Turner
The Promise of the Gospel in The Grinch by Mark Rector
Doubting Thomas and the Polar Express by Carolyn Lankford
What “A Charlie Brown Christmas” Can Teach Teenagers by Steve Eatmon
“But I’m Inviting You Anyway!” Loneliness and Belonging in The Grinch by Anne Sanford
