love to paint

I have really been encouraged by a lot of ideas and thoughts that Susie Larson shares in Growing Grateful Kids. One of the ideas that she shares is this: They wanted their kids to be friends with believers and non-believers, but they set this rule for them.  If their friends didn't believe in God, they told them that they could be friends with someone they could stand up to, but if what their friend thought was more important than their convictions, then it wasn't wise to be friends with that person. I thought that was wise advice for adults and children alike.  I do desire my children to be friends with other kids who know the Lord and children who don't, but I wasn't sure how to go about it wisely.  So, I appreciated this advice and I thought I'd share it on this blog.   This story was shared in the chapter about restraint.  That chapter has really stuck in my head ever since I read it.  She articulates several thoughts I've had but hadn't put t...

I remember when I was in high school, my dad once told me that he could tell me who to be friends with and who I couldn't be friends with.  As you can imagine, that didn't sit with me very well.  Not very well at all.  At that point, I was a teenager who's father hadn't been around until high school.  It felt like a little too late most of the time.  He wanted to know every detail, but he hadn't been around.  He wanted to know what was going on in my life when it was things that he could brag about.  Even though I grew up in the 70s and 80s, I was a child in many ways who was to be seen and not heard. I don't want that for my children.  But, I find more and more that I want to influence my children from the beginning in how they relate to other children and become friends.  I remember a mom telling me when Autumn was 6 months old that sharing is the hardest thing to teach a child.  It turned out that Autumn was a natural one for sharin...