by Kelli Sanders | Jul 3, 2013 | Encouragement, Faith and Family, Help for Moms, Motherhood, Spiritual Growth, Teenage Years
What is expected of most teens in modern day culture is rebellion, irresponsibility, immaturity and a general stage of confused “quasi-childhood” where the guidelines for when and how to become an adult are foggy at best.
If you are reading this and you are the mom of a teenager, I want to encourage you! The teen years don’t have to be DREADED years! They don’t have to be filled with worry, fear and low expectations! They can be very blessed years that become a learning and growing experience for both you and your teens!
We need a paradigm shift in our way of thinking about adolescence. Quite frankly many parents just want their teens to escape drug addiction and teen pregnancy, maybe graduate high school and eventually get a job. If they can accomplish that much in today’s culture, they have done a good job raising their kids. While all of the above mentioned goals are good to have, they cannot be the standard that we look to. With our expectations of young people at an all-time low, teens are meeting them…or even coming a little short.
Before you throw stones at me, there is no judgment here. You’re looking at a woman who did struggle with drugs as a teen and DID become pregnant as a teen – I’ve been there – but I desire that each generation after me reaches even more of their potential, and at an even younger age! I believe we all want that for our children!
So how do we navigate parenting in the teen years with great success? Very carefully! Here are a few things that have helped me walk the journey from diapers to the altar with that handsome young man in the picture above (my son, Seth).
Trust God!
Sounds simple enough, right? Yet almost daily there are opportunities to look at what you see in your teen’s life and start the cycle of worry in your mind! Here is a thought to meditate on: God loves your child more than you do and He is smarter than you! I know – hard to hear, but it’s true. He has the plan. He has the answers. He knows all the right ways to lead you as you make the daily decisions that effect this young person’s life.
Imagine for a moment a fish on a line. There are two forces at either end, each one struggling for power amidst the give and take until one of two things happens: the line is held too tightly, breaks and the fish swims away; OR, the line is too loose, there is no control and the fish swims away. There is a third possibility though. The wise fisherman knows when to tighten and when to release the line, drawing the fish into the boat and then, at his discretion, he sets the fish back in the water to swim free – both are happy. The fisherman wisely guided the fish to what it ultimately wanted anyway – freedom.
I cannot imagine how I would have navigated the teen years without God’s wisdom given to me daily in every circumstance. I had to know when to tighten the reins and when to relax them, when to allow my son to make his own decisions and when to set a firm boundary. This fine dance was masterfully guided by someone much smarter than me! The wisest fisherman I know!
Releasing your child to God’s care and trusting Him to guide you is one of the most precious pearls of wisdom I can give to any mom. It’s a simple but profound truth.
See the Good!
This is one of the biggest lessons I had to learn when I saw my son struggling with some poor decision making. I started to focus too much on the attitudes, behaviors and actions that I felt were stifling his growth, and I neglected to focus on the attitudes, behaviors and actions that were developing his character in a very positive way.
Here is the nugget to take away from this: When we speak to, magnify and focus on the negative that we see in our teens, we are creating an opportunity for them to do the same. When we speak to, magnify and focus on the good we see in our teens, we are also creating an opportunity for them to do the same. God spoke to my heart one day when I was allowing myself to become overwhelmed with some circumstances in my son’s life saying, “Acknowledge every good thing that is in Him in Christ.”
This is not an encouragement to ignore problems or fail to address a need for change; however, it is an encouragement to examine your heart. How do you speak about your child, and to your child. Is your focus on what they fail to do right? Is your focus on constant correction? Do they sense from you that you are consistently disappointed with them? How much do you speak to the GOOD in them? How much do you acknowledge when they please you – even in the small things?
Through every circumstance choose to see the GOOD. It takes faith – so have more faith in God’s ability to develop them than you do in the devil’s ability to destroy them! God is bigger!
Expect Greatness!
I want to leave you with the same thought that we began on – expectations. Don’t fall in line with the expectations of the majority. When you take a look at history, some of the world’s most influential leaders and nation changers were accomplishing great things in the years we now refer to as adolescence! Don’t look at these years in your teen’s life as the stage where they have zero responsibility, zero accountability and freedom to play all their days away. Soon they’ll be twenty something and still lack the skills, strength of character, and financial independence to get out from under your roof and into the great, big “real world.”
Instead, see these years as a launching pad for life! See them as years to develop God given talents, gifts and abilities! Expect greatness and you will be surprised at how your teen rises to meet those expectations! These are not pressure driven demands, but strong convictions that your teen can do and be more than you ever dreamed!
by Kelli Sanders | Jul 1, 2013 | Babies & Pregnancy, Faith and Family, Help for Moms, Motherhood
There is courage beyond the fear, hope beyond the hurt and joy beyond the pain – just don’t give up!
I have a confession to make. When God started to deal with me about writing this article I was reluctant and not prompt to do it. Why? I believe when we share our own places of pain we make ourselves vulnerable, and it’s not necessarily comfortable; however, I also believe with great conviction that the Holy Spirit helps us to glean purpose from pain, and the treasure we can unearth from our own adversity is often the ability to help others walk through what we have overcome ourselves.
If you are reading this from a place of brokenness over a pregnancy that ended too early, over a little one that went to heaven before you had the chance to meet; I want to offer you hope, encouragement and peace. I want to glorify God’s goodness and His ability to heal, restore and bring us into victory in the midst of every circumstance.
After two textbook, healthy pregnancies I expected the same the next time I saw those two blue lines indicating that a new life was growing inside of me. My husband and I were both excited and looking forward to another blessing. When I began to show signs of a miscarriage, we came together and agreed in faith that this baby would live and not die. Quite honestly, I was not afraid! I had every reason to believe that everything would be fine, and no reason to fear. When I miscarried, I was shocked to say the least.
I didn’t have the answer to the question, “Why?” This is where a lot of people get stuck. You might be there now, and if you are, let me help you. When something in your life doesn’t go the way that you thought it would, DO NOT expend all of your energy trying to understand why it happened; instead, focus your heart and mind on trusting God even when you don’t understand, even when you don’t have the answer to the question, “Why?” You must choose to move forward, and be very intentional about transitioning from a place of grief to a place of peace.
As we moved forward, we soon found out that we had quickly conceived again! This was an exciting and rapid recovery from what we had just gone through! We almost had to laugh at how quickly God had turned our sorrow into joy. About 5 weeks into the pregnancy I found myself in excruciating pain that landed me in the ER. I soon found out that I was bleeding internally. I was rushed into emergency surgery so quickly there was hardly time to think. The pregnancy was ectopic, and was removed during surgery to save my life.
I spoke just a moment ago about being intentional in transitioning from a place of grief & mourning to a place of joy and peace. As soon as I got home from the hospital I began to journal, to listen to God’s word, and to meditate on what I was thankful for. I watched a teaching series, Victory Over Death, which helped me tremendously, but I want to share with you a pivotal moment that took place in my living room.
The Battlefield of the Mind
I had thoughts come to me like a flood: sad thoughts, fearful thoughts, angry thoughts – all aimed at unraveling my faith and trust in the only One who could heal me, restore me and give me the victory in this situation. I stood to my feet and began to declare God’s goodness, His faithfulness, His power, His love and His ability to give me the grace to trust when I didn’t and couldn’t understand.
YOU, if you are in that place where wrong thoughts are beginning to eat away at the foundation of your faith and trust, STAND right now and declare that you will choose to trust in God’s grace to empower you to overcome!
Here’s the deal, when we go through the “hard stuff” in life, we have an opportunity to choose faith or fear, hope or hopelessness, bitterness or thankfulness, resilience or self-pity. We choose to cling to our pain or let go and be free. Some people want their pain more than they want their freedom. Don’t be that person. Choose faith. Choose hope. Choose to be thankful for every good thing in your life, and choose to trust God when you don’t have all of the answers.
When you are intentional about the victory, there is great reward! Three months after these back to back trials, we were pregnant with our beautiful daughter. In about 10 weeks we will hold her in our arms and see her face to face. The period of pain I experienced will be a distant memory and will not even compare to the joy that will flood my heart when I look into her eyes! Her lovely name, Grace, is one that God gave us three years ago. How fitting that she will be a constant reminder of God’s grace and His faithfulness!
I don’t for a moment belittle the reality of the pain that comes with miscarriage, but I DO magnify the reality that God is bigger than that pain. Don’t blame Him, believe in Him to heal and restore. Don’t doubt Him, trust Him to bring you to victory. Don’t remain stuck in sorrow or paralyzed by fear – choose to hope again for God’s best. He will never disappoint!
I love you and I believe in you! I pray that sharing this testimony is a blessing to you and that you will find strength to move forward as a result!
by Kelli Sanders | Jun 25, 2013 | Help for Moms, Motherhood
Sight Words
If the goal is to help our children become successful readers, then sight words are a HUGE key in achieving that goal!
Sight words, also called high frequency words, are commonly used words that must be recognized by sight, rather than using decoding strategies to “sound them out.” These words have unusual spelling patterns and cannot be represented using pictures; therefore, young readers can’t rely on some of the core reading strategies that they commonly use to read the text. So what’s a reader to do??
It sounds crazy, but I can distinctly remember being in my first grade classroom during reading time and getting stuck on the word, “the.” It was the very first word of the text and I couldn’t remember how to “sound it out.” While the other students around me were well into their books, I was feeling frustrated and embarrassed!
“The” is a sight word! The astounding thing is that sight words account for up to 75% of the words used in beginning children’s print materials! One can quickly see the great advantage a beginning reader has in being able to recognize sight words automatically. They will be able to identify the majority of the words in the text without having to stop and decode every single word!
So where can I find these sight words!?!
The truth is, there are a number of lists out there, but the most common are the Dolch sight word lists, and the Fry lists. Dr. Fry expanded on the Dolch lists and research and published a book titled “Dr. Fry’s 1000 Instant Words.” Now, before you hyperventilate, you don’t need to teach your Kindergarten student 1000 words before school starts! What Dr. Fry found is that,
- 25 words make up approximately 1/3 of all items published
- 100 words make up approximately 1/2 of all the words found in publications
In our school district, “Fry’s List” of 100 sight words was the standard for 1st grade readers to learn by the end of the year. If you’d like to get in some practice with these words, download the list for free!
Frys First 100 Words
If you’d just like a “Top 20,” more like a “Top 30,” to work on this summer with a little one heading to Kindergarten, here is a Kindergarten Sight Word List:
Kindergarten Sight Word List
Here are a few ideas for teaching sight words!
1. Create a Sight Word Sticker Book
(Earn a sticker for each sight word mastered)
2. Sight Word Bingo!
3. Colorful Flash Cards
4. Word Search
5. Pudding Art
(Write sight words into chocolate pudding spread on paper – YUM!)
REMEMBER: The aim is to help your child learn in a way that is fun! Use these ideas and think of some of your own! You’ve just been given a BIG KEY to reading success: SIGHT WORDS!
by Kelli Sanders | Jun 21, 2013 | Encouragement, Faith and Family, Help for Moms, Motherhood
If you’ve ever doubted how special and UH-mazing you are, you need to hear this!
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10 Things Every Mom Should Know!
Dear Mommy,
Please do yourself a favor and watch this video. Why, you ask? Because you need to smile today and this is GUARANTEED to make you smile (caution: it may even make you tear up a bit).
This isn’t a video that I helped to create – just something that I thought the world of moms needed to hear from the heart of a very cute and inspirational boy!
Enjoy and comment below if you thought this was as cute as I did!
by Kelli Sanders | Jun 8, 2013 | Bible Studies, Encouragement, Faith and Family, Help for Moms, Spiritual Growth
Being positive and thinking on good things is a choice. What are YOU choosing in the “daily grind” of your life? It could be making all the difference in the world. Read on to find out why.
Some surprising statistics show that as much as 77% of what people think is negative, counterproductive and works against them. In addition, people who grow up in the average household hear the word “no,” or they are told what they cannot do more than 148,000 times by the time they reach the age of 18! The culture we live in has the potential to produce in you a critical spirit that will cripple your life and relationships, limit your ability to succeed, and keep you from the joy that God intended for you to live in.
That negative thinking will stop faith, it will stop love, and it will leave you with a sense of hopelessness and despair! So how do you unlock the power of being positive!?
First, examine your own heart and identify what has brought you to the negative side of life. Is it:
- A critical family?
- Too many disappointments and broken promises? (e.g. “I tried that and it didn’t work.”)
- Dreams that haven’t come to pass? (related to marriage/divorce, death(s), job loss, etc.)
- Pride or insecurity?
- Past hurts that have hardened your heart? (unfaithfulness, betrayal, etc.)
No matter what has brought you to that place in your heart and mind, YOU can break free from the past!
God wants to bring you out of the “world’s” atmosphere (critical, harsh, mean) into the atmosphere of His kingdom (one of faith, hope, love, compassion and caring) so He can begin to release His power and His purposes IN you and THROUGH you! The world needs the creativity, life and light that are inside of YOU – yes you! But you must DO something to turn around and begin to swim against the world’s current. Are you ready?
Follow this road map to freedom and begin right now!
#1 Recognize Wrong Thinking
As an elementary school teacher I found that there were some classrooms in which children were always told the things they were doing wrong, and there were others in which there was ALSO an acknowledgment of what was done right and well. The atmosphere of the classroom largely depended on the mindset of the teacher. In a similar way, the atmosphere of a home can largely depend on the mindset of mommy.
Look honestly at your heart right now. Do you consistently look for, find, and expose the weaknesses, shortcomings, faults and failures of others? Do you set yourself up as judge, jury and executioner? Do you tend toward skepticism, envy and unbelief? Are you often frustrated, sarcastic and impatient with people? If you answered yes to any or all of the above, it is time to acknowledge that wrong thinking and make some adjustments.
#2 Choose to Change
It will profit you nothing to see a wrong spirit in the way you perceive life and people, and then to go on thinking the same way, and talking the same way because you will keep acting the same way and getting the same results! You can choose to change the way you think!
#3 Refrain from Criticism!
Katherine Marshall, wife of Peter Marshall (chaplain of the US Senate in the 40’s):
“One morning last week, God gave me an assignment one day. I was to go on a fast from criticism. I was not to criticize anybody or anything. For the first half of the day I simply felt a void almost as if I had been wiped out as a person. This was especially true at lunch. I listened to the others and kept silent. In our talkative family no one seemed to notice. Bemused I noticed that the world could apparently get along just fine without my penetrating observations but still, I didn’t see what this fast from criticism was accomplishing until mid afternoon. In the afternoon God gave me a new vision for my life, and it had His unmistakable stamp on it: JOY. Ideas began to come in a way that I hadn’t experienced them in years. Now it was apparent that what the Lord wanted me to see was my critical nature had not solved a single one of the many things that I had found fault with. What I had done was to stifle God’s creativity in me.”
When you stop complaining and criticizing, the joy of the Lord can bring creative power into your life! The problems you were complaining about, you will now have answers to! Try this for one hour, one day, one week, and see what it will do to plant the seeds of positivity in your thought life.
#4 Replace “Bad” with “Good”
This is what the world says:
Whatever is false, whatever is unworthy of respect and dishonorable, whatever is shameful and offensive, whatever is unjust and polluted, whatever is unlovely and unkind, whatever is rude and disgusting, if there is any bad news and failure, if there is anything worthy of fear and worry, think on and weigh and take account of these things.
This is what God says:
For the rest, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is worthy of reverence and is honorable and seemly, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely and lovable, whatever is kind and winsome and gracious, if there is any virtue and excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think on and weigh and take account of these things [fix your minds on them].
Once you recognize the negativity, choose to change, and practice refraining from the negative commentary, you may feel like Katherine Marshall – wiped out as a person! So what do you do? Replace the former way of doing things with a new way of doing things! Replace the “bad” with the “good.” YOU CAN DO IT!
Why is it worth it???
As a mommy you have tremendous power and influence in the lives of your children AND in creating the atmosphere of your home. Families thrive in an atmosphere of faith, hope, love, positivity and good words being spoken over them. Just think of what you can do to help your children believe that they can do all things through Christ! Just think of how your choice to make some adjustments today can affect lifelong change in future generations! CHANGE IS POSSIBLE AND CHANGE IS POWERFUL! I believe in you!
