Boldman's Weekly Parenting Blog

This past week my wife and I attended the ERLC 2017 Parenting Conference.  If you look it up online you can watch pretty much all of the sessions we were blessed to take part in.  There were many good speakers who were pointing parents back to staying the course in their parenting as well as keeping the focus on the Gospel.  There was a general admission that our World is getting more wicked by the day, and that the availability of evil at the fingertips of the kids is almost overwhelming.  While we were gone we also visited our second oldest son in Athens, Tennessee.  We were blessed to attend church on Sunday and were almost more blessed by the sermon we heard then the prior three days at the parenting conference.  I would like to share the information that would allow you to listen to the sermon we were blessed to hear.  If you get online and look up Cornerstone Church of Knoxville, and go to sermons, find the one for 8/27/17 it was a guest speaker...

Today I would like to encourage you with a section of Scripture that has seen me through many a tough time, as well as just in the day to day repetitive prayers for the young men that I work with.  There are so many times that I find myself praying for one of my children, or for your son, and I just don't know what to say.  I feel as though I have said it all, and it frustrates.  My heart hurts for the situation, but I am at a loss for words.  This is the time when I find myself truly falling onto a resource that has been promised in Scripture.  If you look at Romans 8:26-28 you will see hope beyond what you could ever imagine was possible.  Romans 8:28 is a very popular verse, and rightly so, but when taken from it's context I think it loses its real power.  This verse quickly turns into neat Christian slogan or maybe t-shirt design, but it is so much more than that.  Verse 26 talks about what we are to do as believers when our hearts are so hea...

Just a quick follow up to the blog the other day.  When I was talking about a dad discipling his son in a "lifestyle" manner, rather than a "event" manner it sparked a couple of questions/responses.  I would like to discuss some of these here briefly.  A theme that seemed to run through some of the comments was "where doe the time come from?"  This is a great question.  In today's world the answer to that question really isn't going to be very popular.  The time comes from you, as a dad, dying to yourself.  When we, as men, chose to have kids we in essence set our lives aside for anywhere from 20ish years to maybe 40+ years (in my case!).  This is tough.  I think this is why it is called "dying" to self.  In Matthew's Gospel he talks about "taking up our cross daily" and following Christ.  Parenting is following Christ.  In order to parent you must die to self.  God tries to break us in quickly by giving us a helpless, cr...

Well here we are at another blog time.  We will be getting back to the idea of consequences and how to structure and implement them.  For now however I want to address a comment I heard recently from a parent at a parenting class we are teaching.  I was discussing the idea of pornography with a dad in regards to his 15 year old son.  The son had been caught in some pretty heavy pornographic habits and it devastated the family.  When I was talking to the father he was obviously angry, frustrated and disappointed.  The response that surprised me however was that he was caught off guard about it.  His response to me as he was telling me the story of what happened was "but we had that talk."  He went on to discuss how his church had a seminar on pornography and that he and his son had attended and even followed it up with a meeting of their own.  Then several months later...the sin is discovered.  Let me encourage you to view your job of di...

Sorry for the lack of blog posts.  I have spent the last two weeks in doctor's appointments having MRI's done on my spinal chord.  I have had several neck surgeries in the last year, and we thought (think) I may need one more.  I had my final MRI yesterday and they are supposed to give me the results early next week.  I would appreciate your prayers and patience in this area.  I am still teaching a bi-monthly parenting class and am looking forward to including much of this information into the blog!  Thanks again for caring and I hope you are busy reading through the material on our resource page.  One of the best "big picture" books on our page is Child Training Tips , by Reb Bradley.  If you are not already reading this you need to!  There is another great read titled Sacred Parenting , by Gary Thomas that is also an amazing resource.  Use them!

Before we get into dealing with the bigger sins and some options for consequences I want to address one other area of concern...the heart.  If you go back and read previous posts you will see where I have addressed some various aspects of heart change.  My point today is what to do when you have obedience, but their heart is far from you. This is a BIG deal.  If your child is still having a hard time just obeying (or he is actually enrolled just to keep him safe since his obedience is so far off the mark!) then for now you have to just focus on getting him to comply, but eventually you will need to work on the attitude that goes along with obedience.  We all know when they are giving outward obedience, but they are standing with a fist raised in the air on the inside.  God calls us out on this type of "obedience".  Isaiah 29:13 talks about a people who "...honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me."  God considers this disobedience at b...

I want to talk today a little bit about setting up some discipline methods that can be set up in your home that will allow you to succeed as a parent.  If a kid doesn't know the boundaries, or what the consequences are for crossing a boundary, then you will just keep having unexpected fights and making disciplinary moves that look vindictive and knee-jerk.  So, where do we really start?  Most people reading this blog will have teenage boys, so we will start there.  To be honest rethinking your parenting style when a son is in his teenage years is tough.  It can seem hopeless and overwhelming.  One of your reasons for trying to come up with disciplinary methods should be for the future generations that will come in the form of grand kids.  I am going to assume most of you either no longer spank your son, or possibly never did, so that method of instruction is taken out.  If by some chance you do/did and you want to use that method as a correction ...