Kevin McCabe Posted July 1, 2019 Group: Members Followers: 0 Topic Count: 3 Topics Per Day: 0.00 Content Count: 26 Content Per Day: 0.01 Reputation: 9 Days Won: 0 Joined: 07/01/2019 Status: Offline Share Posted July 1, 2019 I'm going to be a father in the next few months. I want to raise a Christian family and this is my first child. Any advice on new arrival? Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Willa Posted July 1, 2019 Group: Worthy Ministers Followers: 68 Topic Count: 186 Topics Per Day: 0.04 Content Count: 14,228 Content Per Day: 3.33 Reputation: 16,652 Days Won: 30 Joined: 08/14/2012 Status: Offline Share Posted July 1, 2019 Pray a lot, asking God for His wisdom. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heybro Posted July 2, 2019 Group: Diamond Member Followers: 19 Topic Count: 12 Topics Per Day: 0.01 Content Count: 1,360 Content Per Day: 0.66 Reputation: 2,139 Days Won: 0 Joined: 09/03/2018 Status: Offline Share Posted July 2, 2019 Hi Kevin and welcome to WCF, Willa has given sound advice and I have nothing else to add, God bless. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BeauJangles Posted July 2, 2019 Group: Royal Member Followers: 44 Topic Count: 229 Topics Per Day: 0.06 Content Count: 10,900 Content Per Day: 2.93 Reputation: 12,145 Days Won: 68 Joined: 02/13/2014 Status: Offline Birthday: 08/14/1954 Share Posted July 2, 2019 Hi, Kevin. Congratulations! Welcome to Worthy, and God bless you. Shalom, David/BeauJangles Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. KJV Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
missmuffet Posted July 2, 2019 Group: Royal Member Followers: 34 Topic Count: 1,991 Topics Per Day: 0.48 Content Count: 48,689 Content Per Day: 11.82 Reputation: 30,343 Days Won: 226 Joined: 01/11/2013 Status: Offline Share Posted July 2, 2019 (edited) 12 hours ago, Kevin McCabe said: I'm going to be a father in the next few months. I want to raise a Christian family and this is my first child. Any advice on new arrival? Thanks 1. Love your children's mother. 2. Spend time with your children and bond with them. 3. Open your heard and mind to listen to your children and what they have to say. Tell them no matter how bad the issue is you will listen to them with interest and you will not judge them. 4. Discipline with a gentle spirit. 5. Be a role model. 6. Raise your children up with the Lord. Take them to Sunday School. 7. Teach your children character, integrity, morals and values. 8. Get up in the middle of the night if they are crying, read to them, bath them and when they are older do homework with them. 9. Show affection. Let them know you really love them. 10. What kind of a parent you will be will have a big impact on what kind of a husband or wife and parent they will be in the future. Edited July 2, 2019 by missmuffet 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Who me Posted July 2, 2019 Group: Royal Member Followers: 5 Topic Count: 17 Topics Per Day: 0.01 Content Count: 3,299 Content Per Day: 1.72 Reputation: 1,685 Days Won: 0 Joined: 01/27/2019 Status: Offline Share Posted July 2, 2019 Start now by actually practising what you believe and continue. One of the biggest influences on children is their Father. If Christianity is seen in your life as of the utmost importance in every, in every area of your life. They will see and take in this and will copy. If the Father practises Christianity the stats show the odds on children being Christian are better then 50%. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billiards Ball Posted July 2, 2019 Group: Diamond Member Followers: 3 Topic Count: 5 Topics Per Day: 0.00 Content Count: 1,502 Content Per Day: 0.66 Reputation: 662 Days Won: 0 Joined: 02/05/2018 Status: Offline Share Posted July 2, 2019 19 hours ago, Kevin McCabe said: I'm going to be a father in the next few months. I want to raise a Christian family and this is my first child. Any advice on new arrival? Thanks Welcome and congratulations! A few things in this book must be taken with a grain of salt, but this is a fabulous book on Christian child rearing: https://www.amazon.com/Child-Child-Training-Century-Updated-Expanded/dp/1616440724 Enjoy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GandalfTheWise Posted July 2, 2019 Group: Royal Member Followers: 24 Topic Count: 40 Topics Per Day: 0.02 Content Count: 1,459 Content Per Day: 0.60 Reputation: 2,377 Days Won: 2 Joined: 08/23/2017 Status: Offline Share Posted July 2, 2019 18 hours ago, Kevin McCabe said: I'm going to be a father in the next few months. I want to raise a Christian family and this is my first child. Any advice on new arrival? Thanks To put this post in context, I'm in my mid 50s, have been married for over 30 years, have adult children and a few grandkids in the toddler stage. Your life is going to turn upside down and a lot is going to change including your wife and your relationship. Some changes will bring awesome new things into your life. Some changes will be frustrating and painful at times. Keep your relationship with your wife alive and well. You will both change over the years and your relationship must change with you. A few decades from now, the kids will be heading out of the house, and many couples realize that they are left alone with a stranger. Take time to enjoy each moment; they will not come again. Life can become hectic and fly by in a rush. Each stage of a child's life has particular joys and novelties and frustrations. Don't let the frustrations stop you from enjoying the novelty and good parts. Truly, before you know it, you'll have gray hair and your kids will be grown and having kids of their own. Given the choice between doing things *for* your kids or doing things *with* your kids, opt for doing things *with* your kids whenever you can. Each child is a unique treasure of God. Indeed, I'd say that about everyone. This means each of your kids is going to have their own walk with God that needs to be uniquely theirs. Each will have their own personality, passions, interests, and strengths. The faster they gain confidence walking in life as the person God created them to be, the faster they will become who God intended them to be. They cannot live off of your relationship with God. They need to develop their own. You have to strike a balance between protecting them from some things but letting them exercise and grow and become strong enough to protect themselves. Too little protection and they can end up with serious lifelong injuries (be they physical, emotional or spiritual). Too much protection and they will remain weak and helpless. What works great with one child can stifle another. What encourages one might discourage another. You need to have a relationship with each child marked by love, compassion, respect, and confidence to help them navigate life. Such a relationship starts from the time they are little and takes years to build. Find some solid mature older Christian men in your life to hang around and learn from, especially those who have solid marriages after decades. You become like the people you hang around with. It's of course good to have people your own age range and family situation to fellowship with, but often you are all in the same boat with the same level of ignorance about life. Sadly, our modern western culture has largely lost the long-term stability that comes with multiple generations of families and neighbors and friends in close contact. We now grow up generationally isolated and often pick up much of what we know of life from our peers who don't know much more than we do. Take care of yourself and grow as a man and as a Christian. If you haven't read them, I'd recommend any man read the John Eldredge books "Wild at Heart" and "Waking the Dead". We live in a world where few men have really learned what it is to be a man. You will bring strength and stability to your wife and children and family relationships by being a strong good man. Your biggest influence on your family is who you are as a man and your relationship with each person in your family. Become a man of prayer and the Bible. Find that quiet place in the midst of the hubbub of the world around you that you can escape to for a time every day. That looks different in all of us. I know some for whom the first 30 minutes of every day is spent in devotions; some for whom this is at night. Others find prayer something best spread throughout the day. Some read 5 or 6 pages of their Bible every day; others might spent months slowly reading and meditating over one book. Some use the one-year Bible and read through the Bible every year. Depending on you and the season of life you are in, prayer, Bible reading, fellowship with other men who are Christians, ministry, and other such things can take different forms. Don't force yourself to do something because you feel guilt or obligation but figure out how God has made you to best walk with Him. Don't walk someone else's walk with Him but learn to walk your own. You'll then be in a much better position to help your children learn to walk their own walk with God. You'll have regrets. You'll make mistakes. You'll look back and realize there are many things you'd do differently. Apologize when you're wrong, fix what you can, and learn from it. Ideally, learn from other people's mistakes rather than making your own (hence my advice to spend some time hanging around with older mature Christian men who've made plenty of mistakes themselves and seen even more mistakes in others around them). In the long run, it is the quality of what kind of man and Christian you are and the time you have spent building a good relationship with each of them that has the biggest influence on your kids. You're in for a rollercoaster of fun, thrills, pain, worry, and satisfaction. Raising kids is a grand adventure in a wild world full of beauty and dangers. They'll pick up bruises and scars but smell flowers, climb trees, and see awesome things around them. It's not about being safe and secure from anything that can go wrong, but being free to live and breathe deeply and learning to navigate and enjoy the world around them. It's about helping them to find their own walk with God in the grand adventure of life that He had planned for each of them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neighbor Posted July 2, 2019 Group: Worthy Ministers Followers: 18 Topic Count: 951 Topics Per Day: 0.35 Content Count: 13,556 Content Per Day: 5.03 Reputation: 9,039 Days Won: 6 Joined: 12/04/2016 Status: Offline Birthday: 03/03/1885 Share Posted July 2, 2019 Hi, Congratulations, Treat your first child as though the second one ( relax, be kind, patient, and forgiving). 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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