Understanding and Helping Those with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)

People cry when they read about ADD, not because it’s so sad, but because they finally have words to describe their world. Learning about ADD helps them to understand why school was painful and why they didn’t quite fit the academic mold. It explains for them why they often feel both anger and shame, and think of themselves as losers, even if they are successful. And it gives them insight into why they sometimes drive those who love them crazy. Somehow just knowing that other people experience ADD is comforting-it’s always nice to know you are not alone.

So if someone you love (your child, your spouse, your friend) struggles with ADD, the first way you can help is by taking the time to understand his or her world. At first glance it seems like a motley array of experiences: creative, forgetful, unreliable, easily distracted, impatient with the ordinary, quick to start projects but slow to finish them, highly focused on certain tasks, and highly distractible on others. It is a package that tests the limits of your patience. But study them. Look especially for strengths and weaknesses that are different rather than simply wrong.

My First Book of Questions and Answers

Children always have questions about what it means to be a Christian. Do they need a long philosophical answer? Not always and it is simple answers to deep questions that feature in this book. If you have ever wanted to know how to explain the Christian faith to young children in bite-sized chunks then the 114 profound questions and answers, backed by scripture proofs provide an invaluable tool to get you started.

Truth, clarity and simplicity are the great virtues of this God-exalting catechism for children. It was a great pleasure to watch our daughter learn these answers. As usual teaching a child great truths enriched our thinking and our own worship.

John and Noel Piper

God centred. Christ honouring. Character building

Sinclair B Ferguson

To order this book, click here.

Bedtime Prayers with our Children

Do you ever feel you are failing to teach your children to pray?

The days are hurried. The more kids you have, the more difficult it is to gather everyone together for family prayer. When your child does start to pray, it’s the same prayer every night. You wonder how much he or she is praying from the heart and how much of their prayer is merely a formality. You yourself are exhausted from your efforts. Sometimes, it just seems like taking a few minutes every night to pray is too much.

Let me encourage you. Young children soak in everything we say to them. Don’t be frustrated if they’re not reciting the catechism by the age of 4. Don’t be frustrated if they seem to be disinterested when you pray. Don’t be frustrated by their lack of attention span.

Pray anyway.

Our son has learned the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and other Psalms merely through repeating certain prayers each night. No, we have not tested his memory or promised him certain rewards for praying fervently. Mere repetition does it all.

Quote Psalm 23 to your children every night for two weeks and you’ll be amazed at how quickly they can say it with you… word for word. Rather than seeing repetition as something that stifles prayer, we’ve discovered in our home that repetition is the best way to pray with a young child.

If this is any help at all, I’m including our usual nightly prayers that we say over our children:

Our Nightly Prayers

We gather as a family in our son’s room, turn the lights down, and kneel by his bedside (most of the time). By the way, I recommend you have these prayers memorized before you start teaching them. It will be more effective than reading them from a book. Furthermore, it will spur you on to greater efforts in memorizing.

1. Apostles’ Creed (with motions) – We quote the updated one (click here), and we use hand motions as well. Our son loves the story of Christ, especially “on the third day, he ROSE AGAIN!!!” (insert brief moment of bed-jumping here.)
2. May the Lord Almighty grant us and those we love a peaceful night and a perfect end.
3. Our help is in the Name of the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. (Psalm 124:8 )
4. Confession: Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we have sinned against you, through our own fault, in thought, word and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. For the sake of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, forgive us all our offenses, and grant that we may serve you in newness of life, to the glory of your name, Amen. (The Book of Common Prayer)
5. Gloria: Glory to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and will be forever, Amen.
6. Bible Memorization: Choose a psalm or a Bible passage you want your kids to know by heart. Quote it here for a few weeks.
7. The Lord’s Prayer: We use the ESV.
8. Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit, for you have redeemed me, O Lord, O God of truth. Keep me, O Lord, as the apple of your eye. Hide me under the shadow of your wings. (Psalm 17:8, 31:5)
9. Personal, spontaneous prayers: Each member of the family prays for a minute or two whatever is on our hearts.

It may seem like such a prayer program would take a long time. It doesn’t. Usually, we’re finished praying within 5-10 minutes. But the impact on our family has been great. When I was away from home last month, my son asked my wife to call me, put me on speakerphone and let me lead the family in prayers long-distance before he went to bed.

What kinds of prayer practices have you found effective with your children?

Written by Trevin Wax (c) 2008 Kingdom People Blog

Age of Opportunity – Parenting teenagers

What an encouraging and challenging book for parents. Tripp doesn’t pull any punches in this outstanding book that challenges parents to be more deliberate and intentional about their parenting.

The primary emphasis of the book is getting through to parents that raising children is not about how they look, how well they score on some standardized test, or how many touchdowns they score, but ultimately if they have a heart for God. Tripp first deals with the perspective of parents on this issue refocusing them on what’s really important, then he dives in to encourage parents to pursue their teens and accept this stage of parenting as a God-given opportunity instead of dreading it and working to avoid it at all costs. Tripp encourages parents to find a balance between protecting them from the world and allowing them to assimilate themselves into the world. Tripp knows that many parents of teens are tired and worn out – but he thinks that the reason is because they are spending too much time and energy addressing the wrong thing. Tripp warns parents that they should not focus on behavior modification, but be willing to spend the time and energy to find out the root causes which underlie their behavior.

One theme constantly running through Age of Opportunity is the emphasis given to conversation – parents making the effort to talk with their children While the intended audience is parents with teenage children, much of the sage advice is applicable to parents with any age children and the book might be a better read for parents before their children hit the teen years. Outstanding book, easy-to-read, biblically sound, challenging and encouraging – Age of Opportunity has my highest recommendation.

Dan Panett

Shepherding A Child’s Heart – Parenting pre-teens

There are many things in life that are easy to do poorly but are much more difficult to do with exc

ellence. It did not take me long as a parent to discover that it would not be difficult to raise children, but that it would be exceedingly difficult to do it with excellence. In the six years since my eldest child was born I have looked often for help and advice in becoming an excellent parent. Unfortunately my wife and I have received little mentorship in th

is area. Thankfully, there are many books written about this topic so we have often looked to these resources to provide the wisdom and training we know we need.

Shepherding A Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp came to us highly recommended. In fact, I can’t think of a book on this topic that was recommended to us more often. It is a book that deals with speaking to the very heart of your children. Realizing that too many parents react only to symptoms of underlying sin, Tripp attempts to help parents look deeper, to see that all the things a child says and does flow from the heart, for as Luke 6:45 says, “…out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.” If a parent can understand a child’s heart and shepherd that heart, he can deal most effectively with a child’s deepest needs. And through it all he seeks to keep the gospel central to a parent’s calling and to a child’s response.

The book is divided into two parts. In the first, Tripp lays the foundation for biblical childrearing. He shows that the heart of bad behavior is a sinful heart. He discusses a child’s development, showing that a child is shaped by various influences on his life and that a parent needs to help a child have a Godward orientation. He discusses authority and suggests that, despite our culture’s disgust towards authority, a parent must assert himself as being in a position of God-given authority over a child. A child must realize that parents speak not of their own authority, but of God’s. He also di

scusses goals, methods, communication and discipline.

Where the first part of the book lays a foundation, the second part guides a parent through shepherding a child through thr

ee stages of development: infancy, childhood and teenagers. For each of these periods he suggests the training objectives and then procedures a parent should use to attain these objectives.

A section I found particularly interesting, perhaps because I have young children, was the section dealing with punishment. Tripp advocates spanking as really the only biblical method of punishment (and certainly the only one that is specifically mandated by Scripture) for correcting yo

ung children. He lays out very clear circumstances in which children should be spanked and suggests many circumstances in which parents must not spank. He makes this type of corporal punishment very deliberate and very loving. He suggests that parents must be fully in control of themselves when they spank and must not be filled with anger. Parents do not punish their children out of anger, embarrassment or retribution, but to teach children that defying authority will bring about consequences. Children must know that God demands obedience to authority and that there are consequences for defiance.

In his endorsement of this book Edward Welch wrote,

Dr. Tripp’s material on parenting is clearest, most biblically framed, and most helpful that I have ever encountered. It has become the backbone of my own parenting.

I agree entirely. Throughout the book Tripp focuses on Scripture and on the gospel. He focuses on human nature and on the grace of God in providing a solution to the needs of our children. I would not hesitate to recommend this book to any parent, and especially to new parents. Read it now, pray about it, and let God direct you to His ways of shepherding the hearts of your children.

Review by Tim Challies

www.challies.com