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My kids are grown now. Here are some things we do to help home stay home for them

1. Make your home a sanctuary for your adult children to visit
They have enough battles to fight on the outside. We want our home to be a refuge they get to flee into.

2. Give your home a familiarity they will remember and cherish
Have some consistencies that they can depend upon.

3. Welcome them home when it is best for them
This is part of making home a refuge; don't make them feel guilty for not coming more often.

4. Make home be home even if it can't be the same house
I am fifty four years old. My mom and dad don't live in the house I grew up in but I can still go to there place and be home. There are pictures I remember as a kids growing up. I can eat out of the same plates I ate from as a kid.

5. Enjoy your home even when they aren't home.

What Do You Want Your Family To Be Like?

1. Have a written idea of what you want your family to be like.

Share it with your family and tweak it with their input.

2. Regularly evaluate what are your children's strengths and weaknesses.

How can you help them capitalize on their strengths and improve their weaknesses?

3. Plan time alone with each child each week.

4. Realize that your children are more important than your occupation.

5. At all costs, win and keep the hearts of your children.[1]

They must value your relationship with them above anyone else’s.

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[1] S.M. Davis has a great help for this called “Changing the Heart of a Rebel” at www.solvefamilyproblems.com

Raising Kids On Purpose

1. Raise them with an end in mind
2. Raise them with God in the lead
3. Raise them as a team with your spouse
4. Raise them refusing to let your emotions rule you
5. Raise them the best way and not the easiest or most pleasurable way

Building Modesty

Modesty is important both in makes and females. Our boys should be trained to be modest as well our our daughters. The target, however, will be primarily on the girls. The older our girls get the more pressure they will be faced with to dress in ways that are immodest.
Forcing dress rules will only work so long. There has to be a strategy that is more solid than merely, "Because I said."
1. Teach what modesty is
Dressing modestly is to dress in a manner that does not entice another lustfully. It is very possible to dress in an attractive manner without dressing to cause lust.
2. Teach why modesty is important

It has a bearing on our relationship with God.
It has a bearing on our relationship with our friends
It has a bearing on our relationship with the opposite gender
3. Teach what is and is not modest
This is especially important for the girls. She may not realize what entices a boy unless she is told. If parents wait until she gets it on her own she will very likely already be hooked with wearing those clothes.
4. Protect them from the wrong peers
To place a child in a room five days a week, six hours a day with people his or her own age and who do not have convictions about dress is to teach your children to dress like the class and not like you have told them.
5. Lead them to the right peers
Children should spend the majority of their time with mature men and women who have proper convictions of modesty. This means that most of their time is spent with their parents, some of their time is spent with their parents' peers or other mature mentors, and all time with their own age peers is supervised.
The goal isn't to make our kids conform to what is acceptable in the church you attend. Your goal should be to teach your children to dress in a manner that is pleasing to the Lord, appropriate for the occasion and respectful of those men and women present.

Reaching for Righteousness

I found a worthwhile article on children and righteousness at http://www.kidsofintegrity.com/blog/post/reaching-righteousness

Training Your Children to Act Rather than React

Every day life situations either force us to react or give us opportunities to act. Reactions are usually emotional and seldom thought out. Far better is to develop in our children (and in ourselves) certain auto-pilot type actions to life's situations. For instance when someone offends us our "auto-pilot" action should be forgiveness.
I have attempted here to give some suggestions to help train actions rather than reactions in our children:

1. Teach them God's Ten Commandments 
Every Christian should have a firm grasp upon all ten and how they apply today. These become the moral compass for all action.

2. Teach them Christ's greatest commandments 
Jesus summed up the Ten Commandments in just two. No, I am not giving the excuse to just learn these two; I am saying that we need to have both Jesus greatest commandments and the Ten Commandments down pat. We ought to be able to spurt them out so clearly that even in the most pressure riddled situation, we can make choices based upon them.

3. Teach them your faith
I am convinced that every Christian should be able to write out concisely what it is they believe and how they believe what they believe impacts their daily choices.

4. Teach them your expectations 
It is only right that our children know what it is we want to see in them. Don't leave them guessing.

5. Teach them to trust God for outcome 
Once our children are guided by the above four they will need that final step which is to obey their guiding principles, knowing they are right, and trust God for whatever outcome He pleases.

My Goal as a Parent

They say the dream of every parent is that their children will have it better than they did. I have grown to have a slightly different take than that. I want my children to have a more abundant entrance into heaven than my own.

2 Peter 1:10-11 teach us that a person's entrance into heaven may be either barren or abundant. Many Christian parents train their children to be nominal Christians at best so long as they have worldly comfort. In doing so they have given their children an eternal curse.

1. An abundant entrance requires Christian growth

• Faith
• Virtue
• Knowledge 
• Temperance
• Patience
• Godliness
• Brotherly kindness
• Charity

Do not come accidentally. They must be developed

2. An abundant entrance involves suffering
We are to fill up the suffering of Christ in this world. If we would be conformed to the image of Christ we must expect that we will suffer in this world as He did

3. An abundant entrance will be personal
Our children must know the Lord themselves. They must experience His life for themselves.

4. An abundant entrance means service
"Well done though good and faithful servant" can only possibly be spoken to those who have been servants of Christ.

5. An abundant entrance involves death to self
Paul said, "I die daily." It's a painful but essential truth to teach our children.

Become a Good Listener

1. Make eye contact
2. Ask questions
3. Do not overreact
4. Complete the whole conversation before making a judgment
5. Never ridicule
Listening is a skill. It takes practice and training. Consider taking a course on listening.

At the very least, get a good book on the subject and study it.

Teaching Obedience

A child's obedience in the home should not be optional. Obedience is an essential skill if your child will grow to

• Have social acceptance 
• Benefit from education 
• Succeed in the work place 
• Possess a saving relationship with Christ 

Obedience is a parent's top priority for their children
1. Begin early
Your child should know that you expect obedience from the very first. We started as soon as we came home with our kids. If another parent wants to wait six months, that's fine. But begin quickly.
2. Spend lots of time with your kids 
I don't mean just be in the room with them but engage them. Speak to them. Teach them. Hear what they say. Explain why obedience is important and why you want them to obey a particular thing.
3. Give them age appropriate responsibility
Don't expect them to do more than they are capable at their age but give them responsibilities and expect them to fulfill them. Teach them how. Do them with them and then expect them to complete the task.
4. Tell them once
Once you are sure they are capable of the responsibility and know how to complete it, tell them to do it and walk away. If they do not complete it administrator an appropriate and predetermined consequence so they know you are serious about obedience. Leave again. Repeat until obedience is achieved. Don't grow angry.  Just teach obedience.
5. Encourage obedience.
Recognize obedience and reward it often. Sure, you want to be consistent with the rod for discipline, but you'll get great results from being equally consistent with reward.

Raising Your Children to Be a Godly Influence

A few years ago, just before my youngest son finished high school, he was in a local super market and witnessed a man beating up a woman. Seeing her on the floor with the man kicking her repeatedly, my son forced his way through the crowd of onlookers and shoved the man away from the woman, warning him not to touch her again. The angry man lunged forward whereupon my son shoved him once again and warned him not to touch her. At this, the man huffed away toward the door but was met by the police who had been called by a store worker.
When I heard what happened I warned my son of the risk of what he had done and then lavished praise upon him for doing it anyway. It was a brave influence for right.
Not everyone should do what my son did, but every parent should raise their children to be a Godly influence.
Below are some hints to that end.
1. Be an influence yourself.
Reach out to others in an effort to lift them and encourage them.

• Teach a class at church
• Sing in the choir
• Hand out tracts

2. Train your children to possess godly principles. 
Influence can only happen if a person has godly principles
3. Teach the value of faithfulness.
Real influence happens over a lifetime.
4. Teach your children to shun the spotlight.
Rarely is a celebrity type influence either godly enduring. You will need to avoid watching those in the spotlight if you want to convince your children not to seek it. Conversely, let them observe you taking notice of and giving honor to men of true godly Influence, such as quietly speaking with and being a blessing to a pastor or Sunday school teacher.
5. Praise marks of godly influence you notice in your children. 
Developing a power of observing your children and responding positively to positive character and correcting quickly negative character is key to raising children.