grovekidsWe were blessed to get to attend Family Camp this week at New Life Ranch. It was amazing. In fact, Elspeth said it was better than vacation. That’s a pretty good review, I’d say.
Family Camp was essentially like regular “church” camp, but you attend with your whole family. Parents attend two worship and teaching sessions per day, and kids attend age-appropriate programs during those sessions. Additionally there is time set aside each morning for families to have morning devotions.
During the afternoons and late evenings, families are encouraged to have fun together. Afternoons are unstructured free time from 1:15 until 5:30. During that time, we swam, went on a guided creek hike, rode ponies, canoed, fished and ate junk food at the canteen. Other opportunities available during that time include zip line, screamer, 2 water slides, the blob, kayaking, trail rides, basketball, skeet shooting, archery, riflery and more. During the evenings, the camp staff had wonderful things planned for us: a country fair (inflatables, pony rides, face painting, cotton candy, games, square dancing, etc), fireworks, and a talent show.
One of the best things about our time at NLR was the incredible staff. Each family who attends Family Camp is assigned a counselor. This counselor is there to serve and love your family during your stay. Counselors can help by watching a younger child while parents go do activities with their older kids or they can help you with your trays in the dining hall or they can search frantically for band-aids when your child gets blisters on her feet from being in the pool for too many hours in one day. These counselors can help you get your kids to their activities and they can even wake your kids up, get them ready for breakfast and take them to breakfast while you go on an adults only breakfast trail ride. (We didn’t take advantage of that opportunity this year, but maybe we will in the future.)
We were so blessed by our counselor, Emily. She loved on our girls, swam with them, delivered them to various activities when Brett and I were busy with other things and generally made them feel like the most special girls at camp. Emily was great!
Another highlight of our time was Tuesday evening. Parents were treated to a delicious, sit-down dinner with their choice of steak, roasted red pepper chicken or shrimp scampi (not your usual idea of camp food, huh?) while kids were treated to parties complete with pizza, s’mores and tons of fun.
If you are looking for a way to spend some quality and quantity time with your family as well as some time to refresh spiritually, I would strongly recommend NLR family camp. They will be accepting registrations for next year beginning next week. I’d love it if several families from The Grove could attend Family Camp together next year. We’d have a blast!
One last kudos to NLR: Not only was the summer staff incredible, the full time staff were amazing. We were blessed by all that they do, year-round, to make NLR a great ministry. We enjoyed hanging out with our NLR staff friends from The Grove: The Freemans, The Wests and The Harrises. Thanks guys, for ministering to us through your friendship and through all that you do through NLR.
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This is a topic that is often difficult for parents to address with their kids. I am no expert, but I have the philosophy that earlier is better than later when it comes to discussing the basics with your kids in a positive, appropriate way. “If we want to shape godly attitudes in our children about sex, why would we wait until they soak in the errors and misperceptions of the world and then try to change their attitudes? Why not instead build from the foundation up?” (God’s Design for Sex, intro material)
The God’s Design for Sex book series is an excellent resource to help parents to begin to talk with their kids about this important topic. There are four books written to different age levels. The first three books are for parents and kids to read together, and the first one of those is written to 3 to 5 year olds. Rest assured, they are not telling the whole story in that first book, just introducing some key ideas. . .
We own and have used the first two books. They are tastefully done and most importantly, they stress God’s purpose in creating men and women. God is honored throughout the books. I recommend this series as a great resource. Let me know what you think if you use these books with your kids.
The Story of Me (3 to 5 years
Before I Was Born (5 to 8 years)
What’s the Big Deal: Why God Cares About Sex (8 to 11 years)
Facing the Facts: The Truth about Sex and You (11 to 14 years)
I just finished Family Driven Faith by Voddie T. Baucham, Jr. I highly recommend this thought-provoking book. I don’t agree with every idea he proposes, but most of his thinking is right on. (After you read the book, I’ll tell you which parts I didn’t connect with.)
Some of you probably know that in our home the TV is not a commonly used appliance. In fact, I would say that when LOST isn’t on and it’s not college football season, our TV is on less than 2 hours per week. Shocking, I know. . .
How did we come to this practice? We started our marriage as pretty typical American TV-viewers, I’d say. In my family of origin, the TV was on as background noise during most of our waking hours and as far as I remember, we didn’t have any limits on TV viewing unless they were, “Do your homework first.” Now, we didn’t have TV sets in our own rooms like some kids did, so that was a positive thing. When Brett and I got married, we made the decision to keep our bedroom a TV-free zone. Maybe that’s where we got started with our very limited TV viewing.
Right after Maitlyn was born, I worked 20 hours a week, mostly from home. I sometimes used kids’ videos to try to keep her occupied while I was at work on the computer. I remember my mom telling me that a pediatrician she knew said that TV viewing was good for young kids because it helped them to make neural connections, so I used TV to keep Maitlyn busy and felt okay about it because it was helping her develop her brain, or so I thought. (It’s interesting to note that now the American Academy of Pediatrics has declared that TV viewing for kids under age 2 is detrimental.)
Later, I began reading various books, articles and websites about raising and educating kids, and I became firmly convinced that TV was not good for kids for lots of reasons. I began to limit TV viewing for Maitlyn and that carried over to Elspeth and Amelia, too as they came along. At first I limited TV to one hour per day, and over the years, our kids’ TV consumption has dwindled to special occasions only. They all watch far less than 1 hour per week on average.
Some of the reasons we limit TV include:
1. Commercials—I don’t want my kids to be inundated with commercials that tell them that they need a certain cereal or game. We are fighting the god of materialism, and allowing them to view TV containing commercials just weakens our defenses.
2. TV isn’t good for their brains.—I don’t know all the technical terms, but TV simply isn’t good for kids’ brains, even educational programs. (We do make exceptions for really good nature, history and culture documentaries. It is true that sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.)
3. TV teaches kids that they need to be entertained.—Living without TV can be painful for parents and kids. It’s easy to pop in a video to keep the kids “out of your hair” for 30 minutes while you make dinner, but that’s really a short term fix. I have found that if I “bite the bullet” now and require them to find something to entertain themselves, or better yet, a way to be helpful with dinner preparation or cleaning their room, I am in a much better situation than if I cave in and allow them to veg out in front of the TV.
4. We value interaction within our family. –We’d much rather read a book aloud, play a game or roughhouse after dinner than spend our time staring at the TV and not interacting.
5. We want our kids to be readers.—Kids who don’t watch TV much have more time to read. If you were offered the option to receive your information passively via a TV screen or to work to read it in a book, which would you choose? We don’t give our kids the option to take that passive path of getting their info via TV. We require them to read it or hear it read by us, their parents.
I firmly believe that kids who can read well are poised to be the thinkers and communicators of the next generation. They will be the ones who can communicate the gospel, dialogue intelligently about various issues and read the Bible and understand it for themselves.
In the Greenhouse, we believe and proclaim that we are about the next generation knowing the glorious deeds of the Lord. Would you be willing to turn off the TV in your home more often so that your kids could become better readers so that in time they will be able to read God’s Word for themselves? Would you be willing to turn off the TV for one hour a week and play a game with your kids so that you can promote family togetherness? Even cutting down your kids’ TV viewing one hour per week will make some difference. Try starting small and see how it goes.
Educators and books who have influenced my thinking on TV and reading:
Jim Trealease, The Read Aloud Handbook
Clay and Sally Clarkson, Educating the Wholehearted Child
Susan Wise Bauer, The Well Trained Mind
Carole Joy Seid
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For Elspeth’s birthday, we got her the Hillsong Kids album, Tell the World. This is a high-energy, high quality kids’ worship album. I definitely recommend it. You can check out MP3 samples at Hillsong and you can download the album from itunes.
This weekend at the Church at Pinnacle Hills, there is an Answers conference put on by Answers in Genesis ministries. Answers in Genesis is a ministry that helps Christians understand the importance of believing the biblical account of creation. They adhere to a New Earth philosophy. In the past, I didn’t really think that New Earth thinking was that important, but after reading materials from Answers in Genesis and others, I am beginning to change my viewpoint. The bottom line though, is that believing in a biblical creation is essential to our Christian faith.
Anyway, I’d encourage you to check out the conference. I am taking my girls to the free session on Monday morning at 9:30 a.m.
Hey everyone, I thought it would be cool to set up a blog that relates specifically to the Greenhouse. Topics will/may include anything about raising kids to love God, the Greenhouse ministry, why we do what we do, parenting, reviews of products including books and music, events to attend, educational ideas, etc. So, put this on your RSS feed and you’ll know what’s going on in the Greenhouse and some behind the scenes thought.
