Every fall educators begin the process of crafting their lesson plans for the year. As the daughter of a former teacher, I know how valuable this preparation is. Lesson plans form the basis for the class’s daily activities and when the unexpected happens, they are the foundation for adaptation and adjustment. When the teacher’s kid gets sick and they must suddenly stay home, having organized lesson plans is the difference between a successful stint by a substitute and class time filled with watching movies. In short, lesson plans are important; they ensure that you and your pupils stay on track.
As parents, we may relegate lesson planning to the purview of educators and never consider how the process may pertain to us. Even if your child’s academic education happens at home, you may only plan out their academic goals and trajectory, never considering whether the same methodology should be applied to other aspects of your child’s development. However, as we all know, our kids are not only students; they are also spiritual and emotional beings. If we only plan for their academic future, we are likely to be more haphazard regarding other aspects of their growth. As has been popularly quipped, if you aim at nothing you are sure to hit it every time. Therefore if we create goals and plans for the whole of who are children are, we are likely to see greater progress in their lives . Let us consider then, other areas that may benefit from the process of lesson planning, recognizing that just as much as we desire our children to learn and apply greater academic knowledge, we should also desire to that their increasing mastery is not limited to scholastic enterprises.
Here are four specific areas where we should prayerfully consider how we can plan for our children’s growth during this academic year:
Increasing Biblical Knowledge
While we should desire that our children further their knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic, our passion should be even greater for their growth in knowledge of God’s Word. As we prepare our kids for a world that is hostile to the things of Christ, we should be purposeful in equipping them with Biblical truth. Before we launch our kids into adulthood, we should desire for them to understand the comprehensiveness of Scripture, as well as to know how to counter worldly thinking with a biblical mindset. If you have young children, perhaps this is the year to do a Bible survey with them or to set a goal to learn a specific number of verses before they graduate to the next grade level. If you have older children, you may consider reading a book together that discusses from a biblical perspective a subject they are currently encountering at school. Another idea is to listen to a Christian podcast series with your teen and initiate a regular discussion time to talk about the topic further. Regardless of the specific process we use, let’s make sure we carefully consider what Biblical knowledge we want our kids to have at the end of the year and create a plan for helping them obtain it.
The Practice of Spiritual Disciplines
Along with helping our kids grow in biblical knowledge, we should be purposeful in teaching our children how to practice specific disciplines of the Christian faith. Working with your children to develop a prayer journal can be the start of a habit that will serve them well through the rest of their lives. Creating a goal for daily Bible reading can become the building block for developing a love of God’s Word and teaching them the benefit of a regular intake of it. Helping your children increasingly understand the importance of not only attending church but applying what they learn to their daily lives can be as simple as asking them questions after your weekly worship service and regularly reviewing their personal application throughout the course of the week. Teaching your children to engage in spiritual disciplines will not make them a Christian, and we should be clear about that in our own hearts and in how we discuss these practices with them. However, through your example and through your instruction, you can help your non-Christian children intersect with God’s grace through engagement with these practices. If your children have repented and put their faith in Jesus, there should be even greater encouragement to continue their spiritual growth by committing to increasingly engage in the disciplines Christ uses to help mature His kids.
Sacrificial Service
If our goal is to raise children that bring glory to God, it should also be our goal to raise young men and women who serve others. However, especially if our children are young, this will not happen without intentional planning on our part. We must be purposeful in incorporating opportunities to serve into the family schedule as well as the rhythm of our familial activities. Some of the service endeavors that we plan for our kids may happen within our own home; perhaps we will craft a goal that our children will learn to give generously, starting with an increasing willingness for them to share their favorite toys with their siblings. Or perhaps we will help our children grow in this area by giving them increasing responsibilities to bless the family through doing chores that benefit the entire household. While in-home serving is certainly commendable, we should also strive to help our children learn to serve those outside the home. If we are taking a meal to a family in need, even young children can participate in this service by drawing the family a card or helping to bring the food to the front door. Perhaps you know of a widow in your church who could benefit from the young back and strong arms of your high schooler to complete chores that our too difficult for her to do alone. Life comes at us fast and it is easy to fill our calendars with sports practices, events and other personal endeavors. If we want our child to grow in serving, we are going to need to plan for it in specific and deliberate ways, and we are going to need to be intentional about helping them cultivate lessons from these endeavors.
Increasing Consideration of Others
One benefit of intentional service is that it gets our children’s minds off of themselves and onto others who are in need. We should recognize that thinking of others is not a natural tendency and if we aren’t intentional about teaching them otherwise, our kids will not developing the habit of putting others ahead of themselves. This should be another focus of our lesson planning. We should strive to help our children learn how to increase in their consideration of others and lessen their self-focus and concern. Put more bluntly, we should desire to cultivate a love for other people in our kids. This will require that we help our kids think about others and then consider how God can be honored in their responses to those who may not be naturally loveable to them. Perhaps this means that we need to encourage our kids to look for the classmate who is excluded and then together, craft a plan for how our child can bless them. Perhaps we will help strengthen their tendency to focus on others by praying together every time we hear the siren of an ambulance. Maybe we can set a goal that our kids will tell us about one new person that they talked to at each church activity or school event. The specific process will vary, but the goal should be shared; we should desire that our kids think of themselves less and others more.
A desire for an increasing consideration for others should also prompt us to plan for how our children can grow in respect for and deference to others, especially those in authority. For young children, this may mean that we help our kids learn the importance of looking someone in the eyes when their talking together and stopping other activities in order to give someone their undivided attention. For older children, this may mean instituting a “no phone rule” when fellowshipping on the patio after church service or when participating in a small group activity. Additionally, perhaps there are specific social skills we want our children to develop – how to write a sincere thank you note, how to treat authority respectfully even when you disagree with them, or how to engage with strangers in a way that honors Christ. Developing those skills and the increasing consideration of others that they showcase doesn’t just happen. And if we want our kids to grow in this way, we need to craft a plan to accomplish it.
Just like a teacher creates lesson plans to ensure that their students reach their academic goals, as parents we should be intentional about crafting plans for the lessons we want to impart to our kids during the few years of their lives where we live under the same roof. Our children will learn some lessons simply by experiencing life, but we don’t want to leave their development to happenstance. Instead, we should be prayerful about establishing specific goals for their growth and instituting practices that will help our children achieve them.
