Partnering with Perplexed Parents

01/06/2025

So there are a lot of groups and pages that parents can go to for encouragement and instruction. We don’t claim to have all the answers, but if you know someone who may be encouraged by our daily posts, take the time to invite them to like our page or our group. If you’re not part of our Facebook group, feel free to join us! The more people that know about us the more we can encourage!

12/23/2024

More than pre-natal stress, “socioeconomic woes,” or even lack of sleep—of all the factors that lead to behavioral problems in five-year-olds, excessive screen time tops them all.

A new Canadian study reveals that “Kindergarten-aged children who spend more than two hours a day in front of screens are at least five times more likely to be inattentive and seven times more likely to display the symptoms of ADHD than their peers who spend 30 minutes a day or less entranced by tablets” or screens of any sort.

And unlike pre-natal stress or family finances, excessive screen time is easy to fix—as long as we can stand up to the fit-throwing and foot stomping.

Set rules. Even more, find alternatives. Crayons, story Bibles, basketballs, a family hike—all will do more for your child’s mental, physical, and spiritual development than screens.

12/20/2024

Good parents are always learning and growing, but there's one strategy to keep in mind as your children grow and change. When a child moves into a new developmental stage, you must make a parenting shift to meet the new developmental needs and abilities. ~ Scott Turansky

11/28/2024

It has been been said that those who tend to help the most are often the ones who need the most encouragement, so take time out today to thank someone who has made a difference in your life. You'll never know what a shot in the arm it may make for them.

11/20/2024

Don’t Get Down!

Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years; the one who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere child.
Isaiah 65:20

One elderly man said to another, “I’m so old that my blood type has been discontinued.” The other replied, “Yes, but you can’t let aging get you down. It’s too hard to get back up!”

Recommended Reading:
Isaiah 65:17-25

We laugh about getting older, and we take great comfort in God’s promise to care for us all our days. The Bible says, “Even to your old age and gray hairs…I am he who will sustain you” Isaiah 46:4.

Yet there are two things better than living to a ripe old age. The first is living to be hundreds of years old; the other is enjoying eternal life. Both blessings will be present during the Golden Age. When Jesus sets up His Kingdom, lifespans will return to the patterns we see early in Genesis—hundreds of years. Meanwhile, those who have been raptured and resurrected will have ageless, glorified, eternal bodies.

Today is only the most recent installment in a life that never ends. Enjoy it!

The Second Coming of Christ will be so revolutionary that it will change every aspect of life on this planet.
Billy Graham

TheRaineys.org

11/18/2024

Don’t Get Down!

Never again will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years; the one who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere child.
Isaiah 65:20

One elderly man said to another, “I’m so old that my blood type has been discontinued.” The other replied, “Yes, but you can’t let aging get you down. It’s too hard to get back up!”

Recommended Reading:
Isaiah 65:17-25

We laugh about getting older, and we take great comfort in God’s promise to care for us all our days. The Bible says, “Even to your old age and gray hairs…I am he who will sustain you”
Isaiah 46:4.

Yet there are two things better than living to a ripe old age. The first is living to be hundreds of years old; the other is enjoying eternal life. Both blessings will be present during the Golden Age. When Jesus sets up His Kingdom, lifespans will return to the patterns we see early in Genesis—hundreds of years. Meanwhile, those who have been raptured and resurrected will have ageless, glorified, eternal bodies.

Today is only the most recent installment in a life that never ends. Enjoy it!

The Second Coming of Christ will be so revolutionary that it will change every aspect of life on this planet.
Billy Graham

Dennis and Barbara Rainey have a lifetime of marriage and parenting wisdom and it is all available to you at The Raineys. They seek to empower men and women to live in courageous faith.

11/17/2024

From the book "How to Have a New Teen by Friday" by Dr. Kevin Leman:

Top 5 Requirements to Parenting Teenagers
1. A healthy sense of humor
2. Long-term perspective
3. The good sense God gave you
4. The ability to say it once, walk away, and then let the chips fall where they may
5. Some Excedrin . . . and a long nap

11/15/2024

The greatest thing you can do for yourself and your teenagers is to have a healthy sense of humor because. in these years, their development will resemble a seismography during an earthquake - all wavy, crisscrossing lines. You need to be the semi-straight line - note I didn't say perfect straight line - knowing where you're heading as a family. You're that steady guide who keeps them walking along the path, not the helicopter parent who hovers over their every move. In fact, the more you hover during these hormone-group years, the more likely you are to push your teenagers into rebelling against you and everything you stand for. ~ Dr. Kevin Leman

11/14/2024

One of the hardest things for us to do as parents is to sit back and watch our kids make poor decisions. As much as we want to jump in and give direction, in a lot of cases it's better to let them learn from experience and be there to help them pick up the pieces. Just be careful with the "I told you so" statements and use it as a means of teaching them.

11/13/2024

Words of advice from someone who's been there:
Someone struggling with their kids doesn't always need a scripture verse thrown at them for encouragement because you don't know what to say. The best way we can show God's love to them is to simply be there with a listening ear offering advice when asked. In a lot of instances we know what we need to do, but need to hear ourselves voice it to someone who is actually listening.

11/12/2024

Are You My Mother?

Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me.
Psalm 27:10

Many of us have read the old P.D. Eastman book Are You My Mother? to our children. But not many of us have had to grow up asking that question over and over again, to one person after another, growing increasingly convinced that no one was . . . or at least no one wanted to be.

Yet that was life for Mattie. Born to a substance-abusing, unmarried teenager, she fell out of the nest at an early age after police stopped her mom’s car and found drugs inside. Both Mattie and her sister were placed into state custody and deposited in foster care. When the last family decided they didn’t want Mattie and her sister anymore, she finally decided—somewhere between eight and nine years old—that the mother she longed for was nowhere to be found.

That was before Jenifer came into her life. With a family already bustling with two sons and a daughter, it would have been easy to ignore the nudge she and her husband were feeling from the Lord to adopt. Life was complicated enough without adding a new dynamic and personality type to the fold, with all the potential baggage the child would likely be bringing with her.

But somewhere a little girl was toughening her heart against a question she had grown tired of asking—”Are you my mother?”—only to be told no every time.

Mattie’s life is now filled with safety and stability and camping in the summer, with an extended family gathered around to give love and support to a young girl and her sister who once had neither. “I thank God every day that I was adopted,” she says, “because now I know who my mother is.”

Discuss
What could you and your church do to help orphans?

Pray
Pray for orphans in need . . . and for godly men and women who need to come to their aid.

TheRaineys.org

11/11/2024

Making children the centerpiece of life is not in their best interests. It can lead in some cases to overprotection, permissiveness, and dependency.
Emotional and physical fatigue produce what is known as parental burnout. Just as a battery cannot continually be drained, the human body must be recharged from time to time. Burnout is destructive to the entire family, especially to the children for whom the effort was intended in the first place. ~ Dobson

11/10/2024

Home Fires

We will not conceal them from their children,
but tell to the generation to come the praises of the Lord.
Psalm 78:4

Five grown siblings came together at the event of their parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. When the time came to express their thanks to each parent for the one thing that stood out above all in their memories, each of them—without consulting the others—thanked their father for his leadership in family worship.

One of the brothers said, “The oldest memory I have, Dad, is of tears streaming down your face as you taught us from Pilgrim’s Progress on Sunday evenings. No matter how far I went astray in later years, I could never seriously question the reality of Christianity. I had seen it in you.”

Whenever the subject of family worship comes up, you may feel guilt at your failure in this area. I understand that. Few things seem harder to pull off or easier to be put off. But when you consider the impact this one commitment could make on your own children for a lifetime, what could be more important?

It doesn’t have to be tightly preplanned. Take five or ten minutes before school to read a devotional with your children. Schedule one night a week when you’ll all be home to read a story and Scripture, sing (or make a joyful noise) and have some outrageous fun. Watch for those opportunities to practice “sandbox theology,” turning your children’s everyday events into spiritual training moments.

Don’t miss this: Your ultimate assignment as parents is to introduce your children to God, to His Son, Jesus Christ, and to His Word. It may be hard to start and a challenge to continue, but it will make a huge difference in how they finish.

Discuss
Talk about what each of you can do to be helpful and encouraging to each other in getting family worship started or in keeping it going.

Pray
Pray for priorities to firm up in your life, for incidentals to be seen for the waste of time they are and for God’s Word to recapture each of your hearts.

TheRaineys.org

11/09/2024

Passive Fathers, Angry Children

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
Ephesians 6:4

Look at the verse above again—it contains one negative command and two positive ones. From our experience, the three commands work together; if you obey the negative command, you are able to fulfill the others as well.

We have established a list of common things a dad does to provoke anger in his children. Many more could be listed, but here are our top five. Dads broke anger in their kids when they:

Show a dictatorial style of relating to his children, over-emphasizing authority without an underlying relationship of love, affection and fun times together.

Exhibit a critical spirit, consistently tearing down his children with the tone of his voice and the words of his mouth.

Are passive and neglect their children outright.

Fail to provide clear expectations about boundaries, limits and rules.

Fail to develop a relationship with each of their children, either rejecting or withdrawing from the relationship.

Fathers need to realize that they can provoke their children to anger or guide them to greatness. It’s interesting that the same Scripture gives fathers two practical ways of developing children into the men and women God designed them to be: discipline and instruction.

When a father cares enough about his children to enter their world and develop a relationship with them and, when needed, discipline them, he expresses love to his children. When we had four teenagers at one time, Barbara leaned on me a lot when it came to discipline. And I want to tell you, it’s during these exhausting moments at the end of the day that the easiest thing to do is nothing.

The same is true for instruction. Dads, you need to turn off the television or the computer and crawl out of your easy chair to formally engage your children’s moral and spiritual education.

Step on up and be the man!

Discuss
On a 1-10 scale (1 being poor and 10 being outstanding), discuss how you are doing with your children in each of the three commands of Ephesians 6:4.

Pray
Pray that God will grant you favor as you seek to be God’s man in raising your children.

TheRaineys.org

11/08/2024

We need to keep in mind that perfection isn't a requirement in parenthood any more than it is possible. The same goes with our kids, none of us can be perfect. That being said, we should cut ourselves some slack when either messes up and avoid overreacting. Making mistakes isn't the end of the world, it's an opportunity to exhibit how to overcome them.

11/07/2024

Conqueror of the Human Race

But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.
James 1:5

How often have you gone to a restaurant and noticed a couple or family eating but not enjoying one another? Instead of connecting with each other, they’re buried in their smartphones.

Since the smartphone was introduced in 2006 I’ve been astounded at how it has conquered the human race. And families are at ground zero of this cultural upheaval. It has changed the way people relate to one another, and that means profound change in marriage and family relationships.

Surveys show that parents think their kids are on their phones too much. And guess what? Kids say the same about their parents. As a 13-year-old said when asked about her plans for the evening, “I’m going to go home and watch my parents stare at their phones.”

For our book, The Art of Parenting, we asked for input from David Eaton, head of Axis, an organization that helps parents connect with their teens. Here are three steps he said he’s seen “great families do to limit the incessant beckoning of their phones”:

They limit which apps are actually on their phones and how each app’s notifications work. Some dads refuse to have email on their phones because it causes them to work at home when they should be enjoying their families. Some moms turn off notifications for social media and even texting because they know they check them enough already.

Families agree to a technology curfew for all devices in the evening and the morning. A helpful curfew is no devices from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m.

Great families never allow devices in the bedroom, especially at night. Instead they buy everyone alarm clocks and charge all of their devices in a common area while everyone sleeps. This helps the devices stay charged during the day, helps everyone sleep better at night, and helps the family avoid temptations.

What do you need to do to control the smartphone in your marriage, and your children?

Discuss
Look at the above list and discuss what changes need to be made in your use of smartphones. Call a family and discuss how you can be accountable to one another in their use.

Pray
Ask God to give you the wisdom and strength to set some clear boundaries for smartphones individually and as a family. Ask God to help you “catch” your kids if they are being unwise in their use of smartphones.

TheRaineys.org

11/07/2024

If we want our kids to grow up to be responsible adults we have to teach them to take responsibility for their actions. Too often, in our effort to spare them from the consequences of their actions, we're actually doing them more harm than good. Resist the urge to bail them out. Let them learn that there are consequences for their actions. It's a benefit to both, you and them. Responsible kids will grow up to be responsible adults.

11/05/2024

We don't have to be perfect parents, nor can we pass perfection down to them. They're fallen human beings, just like you and me. What we can do, however, is demonstrate how godly people handle themselves when they blow it. Authenticity is the goal, not perfection. Letting them see how we deal with failure is just as important as how we deal with success. We can demonstrate what it means to repent, to confess, to humbly accept responsibility for our mistakes, and to ask forgiveness. In fact, asking our child to forgive us for a mistake is one of the most powerful teaching tools we have. It's not about having it all together; it's about living out what we believe day by day and responding appropriately when we miss the mark. It's impossible for us to be perfect for our kids, but anyone can be authentic. ~ Chip Ingram