Raising Great Kids for Parents of Preschoolers Participant's Guide : A Comprehensive Guide to Parenting with Grace and Truth

by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend

• ISBN13: 9780310232957
• ISBN10: 0310232953
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-05-01
• Publisher: Zondervan

Summary

It takes tender strength to raise children of character and faith. What does it take to raise great kids? If you've read any books on parenting, conflicting opinions have probably left you feeling confused. Get tough! Show acceptance. Lay down the rules. Lighten up, already! There's got to be a balance between control and permissiveness. And there is. Drawing on the expert insights of counselors and award winning authors Henry Cloud and John Townsend and on the parenting wisdom of MOPS International (Mothers of Preschoolers), Raising Great Kids shows you how truth and grace go together. They are allies in your most challenging and rewarding task: raising children with character that can withstand life's rigors and make the most of its potential. Using principles described in Raising Great Kids, the Raising Great Kids Workbook for Parents of Preschoolers will guide you through those first, formative years in your child's life from infancy to age five. It's filled with sound Biblical information and expert advise. But most important, it supplies tools you can begin using today, from thought - provoking questions and self-assessments to an abundance of practical applications. Each chapter begins by introducing three or four key parenting principles, and ends with hands on exercise and a prayer that crystallize the concepts dealt with in that chapter. The Raising Kids Workbook for Parents of Preschoolers will help you start sowing the seeds of character early in your child's life for good fruit that lasts a lifetime.

Table of Contents

Foreword	5	(2)
Preface	7	(2)
Raising Children of Character	9	(10)
Ingredients for Growth: Grace, Truth, and Time	19	(10)
Developing Connectedness and Responsibility	29	(18)
Developing Reality and Competence	47	(16)
Developing Morality and Spirituality	63	(12)
When in Doubt, Connect!	75

Excerpts

Session One
Raising Children of Character
OVERVIEW
The parent’s task is to develop a little person into an adult. The issue along the way is not simply about the child’s being good, but about having good character.
Character is the sum of our abilities to deal with life as God designed us to.
As a child grows up, parents transfer more and more freedom and responsibility from their shoulders to their child’s.
Growing character in children always involves the elements of development and internalizing.
VIDEO SEGMENT
FOUR FUNDAMENTAL FACTORS IN EFFECTIVE PARENTING
• We provide a road map for creating character in our children—the ability to function as God designed them to function in the world.
• There are four fundamental factors in effective parenting:
• The value of love. Relationship is central to parenting. To develop, your child is going to need to be deeply related to you and others, and you are going to have to keep relationship as a goal of her development.
• The value of truth. Children cannot be loved too much, but they can be disciplined too little. As a parent, you are a dispenser of truth and reality. The goal is to have your child become a person of truth, living in wisdom.
• The value of freedom. You must require responsibility from your children. Then you’ll be helping them grow into free people who have learned how to use their freedom to choose good things—things like love, responsibility, service, and accomplishment.
• The role of God. Character is never complete without an understanding of who one is before God. God gave parents the assignment of bringing up children to understand him and to take their proper place before him.
• Because children have free will, there is no guarantee that children will turn out right. You are responsible for the process, but God is in charge of the results. This series is designed to help you with the process.
•God’s plan for parenting is outlined in the Bible. If you violate any of God’s principles, both you and your child will pay.
• Pray hard, get lots of support, implement suggestions you’ll find in Raising Great Kids, and enjoy your kids.
“WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT?”
• Who is responsible for our child’s maturity and readiness for the world—us or our children?
• Responsibility lies on a ____________________ between child and parent, and its position on the continuum ______________ over time. As a child grows up, parents ______________ more and more freedom and responsibility from their shoulders to their child’s.
• Even though responsibility shifts, both parents and children still have their own unique and distinct ______________. Parents provide ______________ and ______________, and they also structure experiences to help the child mature. The child responds to these experiences, takes ______________, ______________, and learns ______________. Parents and children can’t do each other’s jobs; they must each do their own.
• ______________ must bear the ultimate __________________ for their lives. Children always need to be moving toward full responsibility for their lives and souls.
LEARNING TOGETHER
ENCOURAGING RESPONSIBILITY
Directions
The three questions listed below are designed to help you start now to teach your children how to take responsibility for their lives. Turn to two or three people near you (ideally not your spouse so that you’ll have more ideas to share afterwards) and spend the next 10 minutes answering these questions. If you have time, there is a fourth question for you to discuss.
1. Children must bear the ultimate responsibility for their lives. What experiences can you structure to help your preschooler take on greater responsibility? For example, what kind of schedule and system of rules for doing chores—and what consequences for not doing them—could you establish?
2. The child’s tasks are to take risks, fail, and learn lessons. What risks have you seen your young one take? How have you responded—or how do you want to respond—to your child’s risk-taking and failures?
3. To both keep good limits and stay emotionally connected with your child when she disobeys, what will you do and say? Imagine, for instance, that your heartbroken child has temporarily lost a much-loved toy to time out because he or she misused it.
If Time Allows
4. What, if anything, did you learn before first grade about the fact that you are ultimately responsible for your life?
VIDEO SEGMENT
THE ASPECTS OF CHARACTER
• Connectedness—the most basic and important character ability—is the ability to form relationships. Children need to learn to need, trust, depend, and have empathy for others. When your child falls down and skins her knee, your comfort helps her to experience and learn the value of reaching out.
• Responsibility is the second important aspect of character. Your child is born thinking her life is your problem. But part of growing character is helping her to take ownership over her life and to see her life as her problem.
• Reality is the ability to accept the negatives of the real world. You need to help her deal with sin, loss, failure, and evil, not only in herself, but in others and in the world.
• Competence is key to character. Children need training to develop their God-given gifts and talents. They need to develop their skill not only in specialty areas such as art, sports, or science, but also in everyday matters, such as decision making, judgment, and work ethics.
• Morality is an internal sense of right and wrong. The development of a conscience is a process.
• Worship is essential to being a person of character. Created in the image of God, children need to learn that God loves them and is in charge of life. They also need to learn to seek God on their own, apart from their parents.
• These character aspects are attributes of God’s own character. The difference is that while God has always had these character traits, your child is in the process of developing them. So your first, last, and best goal is to be a good agent of developing mature character within your child’s life and soul.
• Growing your child’s character always involves two elements: development, or training through experience and practice; and internalizing, or taking those experiences inside to become a part of his personality.

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Excerpted from Raising Great Kids for Parents of Preschoolers Participant's Guide: A Comprehensive Guide to Parenting with Grace and Truth by John Townsend, Henry Cloud
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