Am I Even Doing This Parenting Thing Right?
If you're a parent, like me, you often wonder if you're doing it right. All of it.
- Am I spending enough time with my kids?
- Am I providing my kids with the right opportunities?
- Am I balancing compassion and consequences well?
- Am I talking about God—faith, prayer, good and evil—the right way?
- Am I modeling a life of faith that my kids will want to follow?
There's no guilt quite like parenting guilt. It's that distinct blend of self-consciousness, confusion, societal pressure, and internal voices you didn't even know existed. Nothing in the world matters to you as much as your children. and yet, on most days, nothing in the world leaves your head spinning more than the task of parenting.
The Search for Parenting Wisdom
If there were a magic potion we could take that would remove all the ambiguity and guarantee success, I’d certainly take it. Even if it tasted like worms or dog breath or brussel sprouts. I’m sure you would, too.
But you’re smart enough to know the magic potion isn’t real. If you want to pass your faith onto the next generation, you know it’ll take a lot of wisdom and no small amount of grit. You know it’s a matter of being intentional with your family time.
Making Family Time Count: A Shift in Perspective
Around here, we have a lot of advice for making your family time count. All of our GoodKind products, after all, nudge us toward engaging with God and others. But we don't want you to get the wrong idea: The rich spiritual life you're after isn't a matter of adding a bunch of new family activities to your already-packed calendar.
Making your family time count doesn't begin with adding anything at all. It starts by paying attention to the moments you already have.
Focus on the Right Questions & Identify God Time Opportunities
Here’s another way to put it: If I were to summarize my plea for parenting wisdom, it would sound something like this: What in the world am I supposed to do?
That's not a bad question. The trouble is, it's overwhelming. Can I suggest a more manageable question instead? Here it is:
When can I turn family time into God time?
Do you see the difference?
Swap out a “what” for a “when,” and suddenly, the overwhelming becomes … well, if not easy, then at least possible.
Here's why focusing on the "when" can help you out. You already have moments of family connection in your day. You don't need to manufacture those moments. you don't need to start something completely new. The moments are already there. All you need to do is recognize them for the opportunity they are. And with a bit of creativity (and yes, no small amount of grit), everyday moments can shift from "boring family time" to beautiful rhythms of God's great grace.
So when, exactly, are those opportunities? In this blog, we share with you the five small spiritual-opportunity moments we think matter most.
1. Morning Time: God Loves You
In Psalm 90, Moses wrote, “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days” (Psalm 90:14). I love that idea: Begin your day with the truth of God’s love, and it frames everything that follows. The rest of the day may be a dumpster fire or it may be a highlight reel. But if I start my day reminding myself of God’s steadfast love, I’m starting with my feet in the right place.
Moses could have simply written, “Satisfy us with your steadfast love.” And there are plenty of places in the Bible where God’s love isn’t associated with morning. But I don’t think it’s an accident that he chose to mention both ideas together. The first few thoughts you have as you begin your day chart the course for your day. Begin the day with damaging self-talk (“I’m just not good enough”), and the rest of the day is colored by with that rot. But begin the day grounded in the truth of God’s love, and the rest of the day is seasoned with salt.
The older I get, the more I find myself astounded by very simple biblical truths. I’ve been to seminary—twice—so it’s not like my Bible knowledge is slim. I know about soteriology and eschatology, and Greek participles, and all the rest. But you know what still stops me in my tracks? A simple reality: Jesus loves me.
Passing Down The Message of God’s Love
In my home—and yours—there are young people who, every morning, wake up and look out at the world with curiosity and wonder. Their view of the world is still raw, still forming. What more fantastic gift could we give them than telling them, over and over again, "God loves you"?
2. Bedtime: Rest and Trust in God
Every morning, I ask my kids seven questions on the way to drop them off at school. It's a mini-catechism, grounding them in what's true as they begin their day. it's not groundbreaking—just seven simple questions to frame their day in God's love. And since we do it in the car, I call it our "car-techism." (I'm a dad. Dad puns just happen, okay?)
The last questions of our car-techism is, "What will you do at the end of the day?"
The answer? "I will rest and trust in God."
The Very Real Struggle to Rest
Like all of the questions in the car-techism, I need this reminder just as much as my kids. Maybe more. I tend to cram work into every spare moment of the day, squeezing efficiency out of everything. When it comes to rest, I don't do it often. I certainly don't do it well. There's always something else that needs to be done. And I'm usually trying to do it.
My view of work and rest is something like this: "I'll rest when everything is finished." That makes sense, right? Don't leave tasks undone or half-done. Finish what you start, and you can rest easily.
The trouble is, nothing is ever done. Like I said, there's always something else that needs to be done. Always.
That is why God's invitation to rest is so beautiful. In God's economy, we don't rest because everything is done; we rest because God is in control, and we trust him. Every night, when I close my eyes to sleep, I acknowledge that I am weak, vulnerable, and incapable of keeping it all going. Without God, that would be scary. But with God—with a strong, caring, and generous God—I can lean into my vulnerability.
Teaching Rest to Our Children
And I can teach my kids to do the same, which happens, most naturally, at bedtime.
There are many ways to turn bedtime into God-time. Our family has often used this time to read to our kids (Bible stories and other stories, too) and to pray with our kids. It's a natural way to emphasize the "spiritual stuff" within the context of your day-to-day life. So take advantage of that moment. And as you do, sprinkle in reminders that rest is a gift from our gift-giving God.
3. Car Time: A Sneaky Moment of Family Connection
In his fantastic book, The Tech-Wise Family, Andy Crouch says, “Car time is conversation time.” Technology doesn’t always help us out when it comes to family connections. But in the case of the automobile, it actually does.
Think about what's going on when you're driving your kids around: You and they are in the same physical space, with no opportunity to exit (safely, anyway) for extended periods of time. That combination of factors doesn't actually happen much in the modern world. However, extended time in the same physical space provides an excellent opportunity to talk.
Why Car Conversations Work
Here's another factor that makes car time a more accessible conversation moment than, say, dinner time: You aren't looking directly at each other.
Have you ever noticed that it can be much easier to carry on a conversation if you and your conversation buddy are looking at something else? It could be a campfire, the scenery on a walk, or a shared meal. When you've got something else to look at, there's less pressure on the conversation. It's less awkward. Long pauses are ok.
All of this can happen in the car—if you arrange your car time to capture the moment.
Most of us, though, bail on the opportunity, opting to tranquilize our kids with portable screens so we can drive in peace. And I get it: At times, the screen saves the day. But if that’s the baseline for travel time, you’re missing a sneaky moment of family connection.
Make it a Healthy Habit
I make a habit of being intentional with my kids. I ask them a lot of questions. But I've been surprised at how often our car conversations start with them. It begins with providing the space for those conversations to emerge. Force yourself to drive a few miles without screen distractions, and suddenly, you'll hear questions, thoughts, and dreams percolating in your kids' souls.
4. Meal Time: Move Beyond, "How Was Your Day?"
You’ve probably heard how important it is to share dinner together as a family. I haven’t looked up the stats recently, but I remember once being told that you could essentially chart a kid's future success by how often his family had dinner together.
Don’t Stress Over Perfection
I don’t want to heap guilt on you for only having family dinners a few times each week. Family activities come up. Kids have soccer practice. Life happens. I'm less interested in getting you to that dinner table seven times a week and more interested in what you do when you get there.
Often,
we parents struggle to get anything out of our kids at dinner time. We ask, “How was your day?” They answer, “Good.”
We ask, “What did you do?” They answer, “I don’t know.”
And... that's the end of it.
Jumpstart Meaningful Conversations at Dinner Time
Like I mentioned in the previous point, it can help to realize that we don’t need dinner time to be the only (or even the primary) moment of family connection and good conversation. But we can also jump start our dinner conversations with a little creativity.
For instance, our family often picks up the GratiKube, a nifty little die that adds gratitude, intentionality, and variety into our everyday table conversations. It’s fun to roll, so the kids want to do it. And the prompts make it easier to ask more specific questions about the day: What made you smile? What did you eat? Who helped you? What are you proud of?
You don’t need the GratiKube to mix up the dinner table conversation (though we really think it helps!). Just plan ahead, collecting a handful of questions that spark your kids to share more. Here are some others you may want to try:
- Who did you sit next to at lunch?
- What did you do during specials (or during recess)?
- Did anything silly happen today?
- Did anything surprising happen today?
- What was the hardest thing you did today?
- Did you do anything brave or kind today?
- Did you learn anything new today?
Not every question is going to automatically
open up worlds of new insights. You’ve got to know what works for your kids and read the moment. But it helps to have some go-tos that tend to get your kids sharing. You can just keep a mental list. Or you might literally print out these questions and put them in a box, drawing one or two out every night.
5. When-You-Mess-Up Time: Learn to Apologize
This last one is a time we’d all like to skip, if we could—those moments when we, as parents, mess up. But as uncomfortable as it is, our mistakes provide one of the most powerful and beautiful opportunities for family connection there is.
The Power of Apology
It feels terrible to make mistakes. It feels particularly terrible to make mistakes that hurt our relationship with our kids. But it’s inevitable. We lose our temper. Or break a promise. Or simply don’t give our kids the attention and care they deserve.
In those moments, it’s natural to want to pretend it never happened. With other grown-ups, we may not be able to get away with that. But with our kids, we often can. Since we set the rules and we set the schedule, we can pretty easily plow through our most recent mistake, hoping it wasn’t that bad for our kid.
The Art of Repair
You probably know that’s not a healthy response. You probably know what you should do—apologize.
But here’s what you may not know: Apologizing isn’t just the right thing to do; it’s a unique chance to deepen and strengthen your relationship. In fact, clinical psychologist Becky Kennedy says that “the work of repair” is the single most important parenting strategy there is. And she’s not speaking in hyperbole, either. Scores of psychologists have pointed to the same reality: What makes our relationships strong is not simply a pattern of goodness and kindness; it’s disproportionately a matter of how we respond when we botch it.
Here’s why that’s good news: You and I will continue to make mistakes. We just will. But when we recognize that “repair work” is the glue that deepens relationships, we won’t bring ourselves begrudgingly to apologize. We’ll realize that every time we apologize—acknowledging what we did wrong and how it hurt—we are building something more beautiful between us and our children. We won’t be consumed by guilt or terrified that we’ve blown it. We’ll begin walking in grace, watching the seeds of forgiveness and healing plant themselves in our kids’ souls.
And in ours as well.
In Conclusion...
Transform Small Moments Into Meaningful God Time!
Turning family time into God time doesn’t mean we need to add more to our already overflowing schedules. Instead, it’s about recognizing and embracing the small moments that naturally occur throughout our day. By asking ourselves when we can infuse our time together with God’s love—whether in the mornings, at bedtime, during car rides, at mealtimes, or even when we mess up—we open the door to deeper connections and spiritual growth.
These simple practices not only help us pass on our faith but also strengthen the bonds within our families. As parents, we don’t need to be perfect; we just need to be intentional. So, let’s take a small moment to breathe, shift our perspective, and seize the opportunities that lead our families closer to God. In doing so, we’ll discover (and appreciate!) that parenting truly is a beautiful journey filled with grace, love, and learning.