We Support Military Families
Welcome to our ministry to military families. It’s here that you’ll find resources for your family. If you’re a leader in a church, you’ll also find ideas for enhancing ministry to military families through your church.
It’s our desire to provide a place for parents to learn and grow. Dr. Scott Turansky has a special place in his heart for military families. He and Carrie have their son Ben and his wife Galan and their two children in the Marines. They all recognize the personal challenges they face as do the spouses that are often raising children under unusual circumstances. It’s hard enough to raise a child with two parents both present continually. As a military parent you have additional challenges because you’re either separated from your kids during deployment or your spouse is gone for long stretches of time, leaving you with most of the parenting responsibilities day to day. You need as many strategies as you can get in order to maximize your family dynamic.
Here are some suggestions that might help you as you continue on your parenting journey.
1. Honor, A Core Value
One of the core values of the military is honor. Those in the service of our country understand honor of our country and practically what that looks like day to day within their service. But honor is also crucial for family life. Honor provides a working relationship between parents and their children. You can learn more about how to develop honor in your family by reading the book Say Goodbye to Whining, Complaining, and Bad Attitudes, in You and Your Kids or listen to the MP3’s by the same title. Honor changes people and kids who learn honor at home are strengthened for their future, no matter what they choose as an occupation or vocation.
Dr. Scott Turansky with his
Marine son, Ben.
2. Find A Good Church.
A spiritual community is very helpful for you and your family. You probably already receive significant help from the military community and that’s strategic. As you develop your own support system for yourself and your kids, a church is immensely valuable as well. In fact, God calls the church “a family” in the Bible because the close support and relationships that spiritual community creates.
3. Employ Good Discipline Strategies.
Parents need tools to address the ever-changing challenges of family life. To set a foundation of good relational routines, we suggest you work through the Heart Work Training Manuals and Audio’s. 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 heart-based approach. 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.
4. Don’t Miss 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 MP3 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.
We are here to help parents and churches. Also, if you are a church leader developing a ministry to support military families, please contact us. We have several ideas that can maximize your strategy.
