Here are a few resources for busy parents trying to raise their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord for the 21st century.

5 Lessons for Parenting in the Digital Age
Facebook has recently announced that they will be rolling out even more additions to the largest social media engine to entice more users and keep current users on longer. How will this affect your family, or your parenting? The five lessons may be helpful for thinking through with your spouse as you raise young men and women to become godly, responsible consumers of technology.

1. Technology No Longer Has Boundaries
2. Know When to Cut It Off
3. The Difference Between Preference and Addiction
4. Focus on Technology that Connects Us to Our Children
5. Model the Balance

Read the whole article to see how each of these five points are unpacked, as well as a link to the role of technology in a child’s development.

Children and Second-Hand Stress
Children aren’t exactly finding a lot of free time these days. And as parents scramble harder and faster to get their kid to their next event/practice/performance/recital, the mounting stress builds up and our beloved kids notice. Kevin DeYoung provides the following quote:

… few [parents] consider the dangers of secondhand stress. If you make yourself miserable to do a special favor for your child, he might enjoy it. But if he senses your negative feelings, he might come to share them.

Secondhand stress is one of kids’ leading grievances. In the Ask the Children survey, researcher Ellen Galinsky interviewed over 1,000 kids in grades three to twelve and asked parents to guess how kids would respond… Virtually no one guessed that kids would use their one wish to give their parents a better attitude.

We try to do all the special things but we are easily angered and prone to frustration… parents make parenting too hard by trying to do too much, getting too worked up about little things, and thinking they have almost sovereign control over their children’s future.

You can read the full article by DeYoung to see more quotes and an explanation how this pastor struggles to overcome impatience.