Advent

I love Christmas, I start putting the decorations and lights up as soon as my husband will get them up from the basement, which is usually the day after Thanksgiving. Some of my friends think I'm a little bit (okay a lot) off my rocker, but I get as excited as child as Christmas approaches. What I don't love at christmas is the “ I wants”. You know, “Mom, I want this new toy that just came out “ or “Mom, I need to write my 200 page list to Santa telling him what I want.” As parents we have to put extra effort in to combat the commercialism and materialism that abounds at christmas. We need to make sure that our children throughly understand that “Jesus is the reason for the season”.

Make (or buy but making is more fun) an advent wreath. This can be a fun way to start the season. The word “Advent” as defined by Webster means “arrival”. By observing advent the four sundays before Christmas we are looking forward to the arrival of Jesus' birth.

One fun activity for the first advent Sunday is to make a prayer chain for the number of days until Christmas and write a name or a character trait we pray for each day until Christmas.

See also: parenting

Little Eyes

Little eyes sometimes seem to notice everything that you don't want them to notice. At the mall, they notice the store with scary items in the front window or the store with the beautiful woman posing in underwear. There are so many things these days that are inappropriate for little eyes to see that it gets exhausting having to tell them," Don't look at that!". Isaiah 33 :14 & 15 says,
"He who walks righteously and speaks what is right, who rejects gain from extortion and keeps his hand from accepting bribes, who stops his ears against plots of murder and shuts his eyes against contemplating evil- ¹⁶ this is the man who will dwell on the heights, whose refuge will be the mountain fortress. His bread will be supplied, and water will not fail him."

We need to teach our little ones to shut their eyes from contemplating evil. At this year's homeschool convention I heard a speaker talk about how she taught her children an "eye bounce". An eye bounce is simply bouncing your eye from the inappropriate sight to something else, quickly. This is an easy way to teach your kids ( especially useful for boys as they get older) to eye bounce away from things that God doesn't want in our mind's eye and our heart. I also taught my children the little song " Be careful little eyes what you see, be careful little eyes what you see, For the Father up above is looking down in love so be careful little eyes what you see." This helps them to remembe that God does care what they see and what they put into their little innocent hearts.

Use the eye bounce this week as you go to the mall or anywhere in public that you can quietly remind them to "eye bounce" away from things that are not appropriate. Make it a game and have fun with it, just beware of funny looks as your children (if they're anything like mine) yell "Eye bounce" in chorus.

See also: parenting