Parenting Elementary Age Children • • • •

Parenting During the Elementary Years

During the ages of 6 to 12, children change in significant ways. Their thinking patterns and mental abilities go through major developments. Personality, character, and a worldview are being formed and molded for the long term. Developing responsibility and wisdom are two significant priorities at this stage. In addition to these two qualities, children often demonstrate heart quality strengths that you’ll want to encourage. Unfortunately, some of those strengths can be misused, requiring the need to develop additional heart qualities to balance things out.

For example, Jennifer, age eight, is easy-going, laid back, and tolerant. Those are great qualities that help her remain calm with her brother, comply with Mom’s requests, and make transitions easily in family life. However, Jennifer is also quite tolerant of messes, doesn’t take initiative to do chores without being prodded, and isn’t doing her best at school. Jennifer has some great heart qualities but needs additional ones such as thoroughness, thoughtfulness, and attention to detail in order to be most effective.

Chapter 8 in the book Home Improvement, The Parenting Book You Can Read to Your Kids contains a list of several heart qualities along with the ways those qualities can be over-emphasized and misused. This chapter also gives you a six-step plan to address some of the more deeply rooted problems children experience, helping you develop a positive approach to overcoming these weaknesses. Eight different parenting problems are addressed in the Home Improvement book, with each chapter containing a fictional story about a family that realizes they have a problem in family life and then discover a solution to overcome it. The rest of the chapter teaches you how to apply those solutions to your family. The eight-CD series entitled, Eight Secrets to Highly Effective Parenting provides you with the teaching of Dr. Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller, RN, BSN to guide you through these same eight family essentials.

We have a lot of resources to help you work with your child between the ages of 6 and 12 years. This page will guide you through the many resources we offer so you can find the best ones to suit your needs.

1) Discipline Strategies
Parents of elementary age children need tools to address the ever-changing challenges of family life. To set a foundation of good relational routines in family life, we suggest you work through the Heart Work Training Manuals and CDs. This set of eight lessons provide you with practical solutions for helping children learn to follow instructions, receive correction, deal with attitudes, accept no as an answer, understand repentance, and help you connect on a heart level. One of the workbooks (Training Manual #4) provides you with seven categories of consequences to use with your children. Most importantly, that lesson shows you how to use those consequences to help your child grow toward maturity using a map-mentality. Your child is at point A on the map and needs to get to point B by developing a particular heart quality. This lesson teaches you how to use consequences to move your child along the path to point B.

The book Good and Angry, Exchanging Frustration for Character in You and Your Kids identifies seven things that make parents angry. These are things like, “My kids don’t listen or follow instructions,” “They keep doing the wrong thing and nothing seems to help,” “They lie,” “They’re annoying,” “They won’t accept no for an answer,” and “They always grumble and complain.” We then provide specific solutions for these common problems. This practical book helps reduce anger by giving you plans to address the problems you face. We know that parents who don’t have good plans use anger to solve problems so we’ve given you the parenting strategies that will work.

2) Growing in Honor
We say that God has hidden within honor the secret ingredients that will help kids be successful in life. Children learn honor at home but the lessons will be used for the rest of their lives. The book Say Goodbye to Whining, Complaining, and Bad Attitudes, in You and Your Kids explains honor and shows you how to teach it to children. Not only do children learn to honor you as parents but they learn what honor means in practical terms. We define honor as treating people as special, doing more than what’s expected and having a good attitude. Those three components of honor address many of the challenges faced in family life. The children’s curriculum called the Kids Honor Club will help you teach the concept of honor to your children in thirteen lessons. Kids will learn how honor deals with selfishness, anger, and foolishness. They’ll learn through activities, Bible stories, crafts, and games how to add energy to family life instead of draining it out. The Say Goodbye to Whining, Complaining and Bad Attitudes, in You and Your Kids CD series contains eight audio CDs of Dr. Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller, RN, BSN teaching these concepts to parents. You might want to play these in the car and talk about them with your children.

3) Understanding the Heart
One of the most important biblical parenting concepts is to work with children on a heart-level. If parents rely only on behavior modification to get things done, children develop a selfishness and demandingness about life. When receiving an instruction, children want to know what’s in it for them. When being corrected, they look for ways to blame and rationalize and not take personal responsibility. A heart-based approach to parenting is different.

The book Parenting is Heart Work is the result of a study of the 750 times the word “heart” is used in the Bible. Nine functions of the heart are revealed in this study and then applied to parents who want to touch their children’s hearts. You may want to listen to the Parenting is Heart Work CDs, eight sessions taught by Dr. Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller, RN, BSN on practical ways to develop a heart-based approach to parenting.

The book Family Heart Moments is the result of a contest in 2007 where parents were asked to submit Heart Moment Stories. We took the best 70 stories and wove them together with teaching to provide you with a tool that will show you in practical, hands-on ways how to develop or take advantage of heart moments in your family.

The Treasure Hunters Children’s Curriculum was written to help you teach these concepts to your children. Eight lessons provide Bible stories, crafts, activities, science experiments, and games to teach children about how to follow instruction, receive correction, accept no as an answer, have a good attitude, and several more common family themes.

You may also enjoy listening to the CD by Nyla Rayburn entitled, Personality Style + Learning Style = Reaching your Child. This is a fun look at how personality and learning styles affect the family and ways you can reach your child best by understanding what makes him or her tick.

4) Spiritual Training
The language of children is activity. When you use activities to teach your children biblical truth, you’re following what Christ modeled when he taught his disciples. He took common, easy to understand objects and stories and used them to teach his disciples about the kingdom. You can do the same thing by using activities and object lessons that capture a child’s attention. We’ve put together several books to help you. The Family Time Activities books give you fun activities together with Bible stories to teach spiritual truths to your children. You may download a sample activity here. There are six books altogether, three for children of all ages, two for families with preschoolers, and one for families with teenagers.

Get motivated to develop a Family Time in your home by listening to the author of these books, Kirk Weaver, teach about Fun and Effective Spiritual Training. Or, listen to Dr. Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller, RN, BSN teach a similar session entitled, Having Fun Teaching Spiritual Truths. Also, Rob Rienow’s CD God’s Grand Vision for the Home will inspire you to be the primary spiritual trainer of your own children. This one area of parenting is foundational and has ramifications for everything else you do as a parent.

5) Teaching Children about Sex
It’s not sufficient nowadays to have one conversation about sex when kids are eleven or twelve. Frequent, honest dialogue about this subject is essential for children to understand and manage this area of their lives. After all, they’re continually bombarded with messages from the media and our culture, parents need to help children process what they’re hearing and seeing.

We recommend the book How to Talk Confidently with Your Child About Sex. This book helps you understand what’s appropriate to teach at what age and how to dialogue about relationships, privacy, reproduction, boy-girl relationships, and sex. In addition there are five books written for children, developmentally appropriate for each age group, from preschool right on up to young adult. These books are designed for parents and children to be read and discuss. We suggest having a discussion at least once a year to address new interests and questions your child might have. Parents need to take the initiative in the area; otherwise children may go elsewhere seek out the facts.

6) Teaching Children Values
The I Want to Teach Series of books provides you with hands on ways to talk about important concepts in family life. Each book addresses an area you’ll want to do some training in: Manners, Values, Media, Fitness, and Money. You may also want to listen to Sue Summers teach about how to Develop Media-Savvy Kids. This CD can equip you to teach your kids to be critical thinkers about the messages they receive each day.

7) Specific Issues
We know that parents sometimes need specialized help in specific areas so you might consider these solutions as well.

> Anger and temper tantrums
> Lack of cooperation, defiance
> Lying or other forms of dishonesty
> Sibling conflict
> Lack of motivation
> Parental yelling or nagging
> Distance, lack of closeness in relationships
> Mealtimes
> Bedtimes
> Other problems

8) Additional Support and Help
If you haven’t already signed up for Free Email Parenting Tips you might want to do that right away. They’re free, come into your inbox a couple times a week, and provide you with a steady flow of parenting suggestions.

We have an Online Parenting Support Group for parents of elementary age children. This group allows you to dialogue with other parents about areas of concern. You’ll be encouraged and inspired by parents who have similar challenges.

Attending a live parenting seminar in your area is so helpful. We have three parenting seminars that can help you address the challenges you face every day and provide you with a way to think about parenting that transforms family life.

If you need a specific action plan for your unique situation you may want to set up a Phone Coaching Session with Dr. Scott Turansky. Email Joanne Miller to learn more or to set up an appointment. Dr Turansky can help you develop a personalized plan for your particular child. If you live near the National Center for Biblical Parenting headquarters in New Jersey you may want to come into the office for help. Dr. Turansky meets with parents and children in the office. To set up an appointment, email Joanne Miller. Robin Downs, our associate also meets regularly with parents and young people. Email Joanne to find out more.

We’re eager to help you work with your children. We know that parenting is a big job that requires continual growth and development for you and your kids. After all, just when you think you’ve got it down, your child enters a new phase, and you’ve got to develop a new approach. We are continually looking for new ways to support and encourage you so please stop by often and see what’s new at the National Center for Biblical Parenting.