Practical Ways to Encourage Your Kids to Develop Faith
Practical Ways To Encourage Your Kids To Develop Faith
Teenagers are most susceptible to external influences from their peers and society. It becomes tough for them to discern which behaviors to model and which to stay away from.
It is even more challenging in today’s society, where teens can look up information on the internet without any barriers or parental oversight.
Parents are faced with the massive task of teaching their teens about faith and how it works. Faith is taught continually.
Many parents enroll their kids in Sunday School classes or Church Youth groups, thinking that their children will develop faith faster.
Unfortunately, this may cause the opposite effect. The kids might shy away from embracing faith as they feel like their learning under duress.
Here are three practical ways parents can encourage their kids to develop faith.
Appropriate Resources
The fantastic thing about the Bible is that it has many variations. Some bibles are written in Shakespearean English that can be incomprehensible to an illiterate mind.
Similarly, there are bibles written in simple English, making them more palatable.
Parents should give their kids bibles written in an easy-to-understand language. They can also specifically buy bibles for teens written with the child in mind. Ones that have notes or stories referencing the life stage that the child is currently going through.
Another suitable resource might be a bible written in the child’s home language. This dramatically improves the child’s attention span and understanding of what they’re reading.
You can even purchase bible or faith audiobooks to encourage your kids to listen to the word if they are too young to read.
Practice What You Preach
Children are extremely sensitive to the connection between words and actions. They are more likely to do as they see.
Therefore, parents can best teach their kids about faith by living by it.
When they see you as their parent living a particular lifestyle and the benefits thereof, they’ll want the same for themselves and begin to live by the same model to achieve the same results.
It will be helpful to also speak to them openly about your inequities as their senior. Therefore, they will learn that living by faith will come with challenges.
They will develop their ways to deal with those challenges.
Encourage A Relationship With God
Encourage your kids to develop a parent-child relationship with God, similar to their one with you. Explain to them that whenever they are sad, happy, troubled, or ridiculed, they should share their feelings with God as they would with you.
This opens your child to the knowledge that God is always there and will forever be there.
This will strengthen their reliance on God, and their faith will grow. They will trust God and seek him and his guidance whenever a challenge arises.
Religion goes hand-in-hand with faith, but it does not fully embrace the one-to-one relationship that God seeks from his servants.
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It is wise to educate your child about God and faith independently from religion.
A vacation bible school program is a great way to introduce your child to the customs and beliefs of other cultures. By participating in activities and learning about different traditions, your child will learn to appreciate the richness of our world’s religious heritage.
In addition, they will also develop a greater understanding and tolerance for those who hold different beliefs.
Another way to teach your child about religion is to encourage them to attend churches and participate in group classes, fostering their sense of belonging.
The problem with religion is that everyone is expected to follow its rules regardless of the uniqueness of their troubles; faith does the opposite.
Faith will teach your child that whatever challenges they have, God is capable of fixing them in a way specific to them.
Do you have any tips to encourage kids to develop faith?
– Dr. Drayman
I am a retired GP that is passionate about health, parenting, and helping others. I am a grandparent to 3 amazing little boys and mama to 2 incredible women.
