10 Favorite Bedtime Books for Boys

By on January 30, 2012 in a little fun, book review, growing godly men, Manly Virtues, Uncategorized

Mixed with the smell of baby lotion, footie pajamas, and snuggles, reading with our boys before bedtime is hands-down my favorite time of the day. Piled on the couch together and soaking up the last few moments before bedtime, it’s my last chance of the day to hear their giggles and to impress God’s truth on my boys…my two favorite things. Each night, my oldest son lingers over the bedtime book basket, choosing the perfect book to bring a smile and a laugh to our day’s end. Likewise, I linger over the shelf of books I’ve handpicked to point my boys to Jesus, because I realized long ago that I needed to use every opportunity to capture their heart…bedtime books included.

It works for us, this routine of two books and a Bible story before bed, and I thought I might share a few of our most treasured reads. Since Jonah (our oldest at 4 years old) chooses our “Giggle Book” for the night, I asked him to help me with this list. Our list is split into two categories–Giggle Books & Mom’s Picks. I hope you find a few new treasures!

Giggle Books for Boys:

Zoomer is just plain fun and all-boy! The hilariously far-fetched things Zoomer does gets my son laughing the deep, belly laughs. Although his dad begs him to get ready for school, how can Zoomer make time for school with such a full schedule? He has to blow the world’s biggest bubble, build a Brontosaurus out of sand, launch a rocket ship—and that’s just the beginning! Boys will laugh out loud at the surprise ending that proves Zoomer knows best after all.

You knew I had to go there…I mean, I am a boy mom, after all! Aliens Love Underpants is perfect for bringing out the silly in your boys. When little aliens fly down to Earth, they don’t come to visit because they want to meet the Earthlings. They simply want to steal everybody’s underpants! I double-dog dare you to keep a straight face while reading this one!

How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? Boys & Dinosaurs. Need I say more?

Rhyming Dust Bunnies Bug! Rug! Mug! Hug! These dust bunnies love to rhyme. Well, except for Bob. Much to the other bunnies’ frustration, Bob can never get the rhythm right. Then he saves everyone from a big, scary monster wielding—gasp!—a broom, and they all breathe a sigh of relief. But can Bob save them from the big, scary monster’s next attack? Vrrrrrroooommm . . .

Double Trouble In Walla Walla will have you doubled over in laughter from the antics of a magnificent red-head named Lulu who sets the entire school ablaze with catchy two word phrases such as higgledy-piggledy, chitter chatter when she is sent trit-trot down to the principals office for all of her fancy-schmancy yak-yak. Don’t miss this one. It’s a hoot!

Mom’s Picks:

The Boy Who Changed the World is one of our all-time favorites! This engaging story reveals the incredible truth that everything we do matters! The book is beautifully illustrated and shares the stories of Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug, Vice President Henry Wallace, Inventor George Washington Carver, and Farmer Moses Carver. I love using this book to remind my son that he can do big things for God.

I’d Choose You is a book I pull out when it’s been a rough day around our house. This book helps encourage conversation about our bad day and reinforces that, even on our worst days, we are we are chosen and treasured (Deuteronomy 7:6) A message that even Mommy needs to hear some days!
His Mighty Warrior: A Treasure Map from Your King offers the truth about what it really means to grow up strong, brave and true. I cannot recommend this book highly enough! You know all those warrior prayers we’ve been praying? This book addresses some of the same things, but from the boy level. Take a look at the preview feature in Amazon…I promise you’ll be hooked!

Brave Young Knight tells the story of a boy in competition with other young knights to become prince of all the land. In a series of contests and competitions, the king recognizes the brave young knight as the winner, not because he was the fastest or strongest, and not because he was smarter or more cunning than the other knights. Rather, the brave young knight is the winner because he doesn’t follow the crowd, instead making decisions based on what is right and true and in accordance with his faith. The moral of the story is that the bravest young boys are those who exhibit the strongest character.

Lightkeepers: Ten Boys Complete Box Set Along the same theme as The Boy Who Changed the World (above), each book in this set takes a look at ten boys and how God changed them into men who changed the world in some way. I love the themes of each of the books and the ten boys who represent each of the themes are great role models. The individual books in the set include: Ten Boys Who Changed The World, Ten Boys Who Made A Difference, Ten Boys Who Made History, Ten Boys Who Used Their Talents, Ten Boys Who Didn’t Give In. And if you are interested, there are girl versions of all of these, too! (Note: My boys aren’t quite old enough for this set yet, but I can’t wait to read them to my boys! My set is waiting on our shelf! Recommend for Age 9 and up)

Our Favorite Bible:

I would be missing an opportunity if I didn’t share our favorite Children’s Bible!

The Jesus Storybook Bible is our absolute favorite because “every story whispers His name”.  I love how each story points back to Christ and God’s beautiful plan of redemption. The illustrations are gorgeous, too!

Moms, let’s not forget to seize every last opportunity of the day to have fun with our silly boys and to point them to Jesus. Do you have a book that should be on this list? Share it in the comments!

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Making the Most of Mealtimes

By on January 20, 2012 in Crafting, growing godly men, Single Parenting

There is never enough time.  When you are a working mom or a single mom, time seems even more elusive.  There just aren’t enough hours in the day to do all the things you need to. And when you find a few moments in the evening to spend quality time with your kids, they are exhausted from their day.  They’ve gone to school and possibly day care after school.  They’ve been in a structured environment all day and just want to play and relax in the evenings.  But you want to use your time to shepherd their hearts.  So, how do you disciple you children when time is short and their attention spans are even shorter?

 

As moms, we have to be creative.  We have to multitask.  We have to look for opportunities in everyday life to disciple our children.  We don’t always have the luxury of home schooling or private schooling.   So we make the most of each minute, trusting that God will be faithful to reveal Himself to the hearts of our children.  And we look for opportunities to point them to Jesus even in the mundane moments.

 

Your boys eat at least three times each day.  Use your time at the table to point your boys to Jesus. Review what your children learned at church that weekend.  Review memory verses they are working on.  Leave notes in their lunch boxes with Scripture or prayers written out.

 

In our home, I point my children to Jesus at the table is by using homemade placemats.  I take a piece of poster board, cut to placemat size and decorate it.  Some are decorated for seasons and holidays.  Some are decorated with their current fascination.  Right now, my son is fascinated with superheroes.  He wants to talk about them constantly.  So I look for opportunities to redeem superheroes to teach him about Jesus.  I took a superhero book from the dollar store, cut out his favorite characters and glued them on the poster board.  Then, I asked him to describe what made a superhero special.  He used words like “strong”, “powerful”, and “courageous”.  I found Scripture that used those and wrote them all over the poster board.  I found a Bible that is illustrated in comic book style and copied a story and glued it on the back.  I laminated the poster board.  Now, my son has a placemat that he loves because it has superheroes on it.  And every night, he asks me to read him the Scriptures and Bible story on it and we get to talk about Jesus in a way that is fun for him.  Less than 30 minutes of time and less than $5 has proven invaluable in discipling my son.

 

William's Superhero Placemat

 

There’s never enough time, but we can make the most of mealtime. Be a good steward of your time and trust God to work in your son’s life.  He is faithful.

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When the Red Light District is in the Living Room

By on January 6, 2012 in growing godly men, Manly Virtues, Raising Older Boys, Uncategorized

When we were young, a boy had to led astray by an unruly friend or find an ungodly uncle’s stash to be tempted by pornography. Not so, now. Now, it’s lurking in the sidebars when he checks the football stats and is emailed to him by spammers. Boys don’t even have to go looking for it; it comes delivered straight to them. A guy can hardly avoid being tempted by it…every day!

It’s pretty horrifying looking at your little guy and thinking about him sitting in front of the computer screen looking at garbage like that, but the research is showing that boys are being exposed to internet pornography earlier and earlier, and more and more seriously. We’ve heard of boys as young as ten getting their fathers in trouble at work by looking at porn on their dads’ laptops. How can we protect them? How can we keep them out of the red light district when it’s right there in our own living room?

Here are a few things that you can do to protect your sons as much as possible:

  • Talk about sexuality with your boys early and often, in the course of normal life, and always in the context of God’s law, marriage, and family. “Yes, son, that lady is dressed inappropriately. She’s showing parts of her body God meant for her husband alone. I wonder how he feels about that?”
  • Warn them that temptation lurks out there and they have an enemy who desires to harm them and their future wives (Porn is not a victimless crime, it harms the watcher, the watcher’s mate, the subjects, and their families). Show them how to shrink a window to hide a sidebar, remind them to think carefully what they are searching on, tell them never to guess at a url.
  • Install accountability software on every computer your family has access to. We like Covenant Eyes, we’ve used it for years. It will email you an easy to check report on each user in your family each week. Just knowing they are bound to get caught is a great deterrent.
  • Teach them how to fight temptation when it comes. Here’s an excerpt from our book that explains how we do it:

A Fist to Knock Away Temptation

 We do our best to protect our sons from temptation, but we know it is impossible to avoid it entirely – our own hearts provide temptation! Sons need to know what to do when they face the desire to sin. We tell our sons to use five important tools to fight off immoral thoughts:

1. Leave the situation. This is so important. If you are in the bathroom, get dressed and get out. If you are in bed, get up. If you are at a friend’s house, go home. Leave a situation that tempts you.

2. Pray and ask the Lord for forgiveness and help.

3. Read your Bible. The Word is a light to our feet and will guide us to do what is right.

4. Sing praises or hymns to God. Sometimes music can break through the coldness of our hearts.

5. Go to your authority and ask for help. Our sons have each done this more than once. They say, “Mom and Dad, I just keep having bad thoughts. Will you pray for me?”

We lift a finger for each of these as we remind them, then close all five into a fist and say, “Five ways that make a fist to knock away temptation.” We remind our sons of this often, because it is important that they realize that they are not helpless before temptation, but that God always gives a way of escape.

Raising Real Men, pp215-116

It’s a scary time to raise a boy. The enemy seems more determined than ever to embroil our sons in sin that will affect them all their lives. The worst thing we can do in the battle to protect our sons’ purity is to pretend there’s no battle at all. That leaves our boys unarmed and unprepared. Instead, we have got to overcome our own shyness, face the battle head on and prepare our sons to be warriors instead of victims. God hasn’t left us and He gives us all we need to follow Him. We want our boys to grow up to be truly knights in shining armor for their princesses.

For more on this topic, check out our hourlong workshop, Shining Armor: Your Son’s Battle for Purity. Use the link above or the discount code raisingrealmen to receive a free month of Covenant Eyes – and help support our ministry.

Hal & Melanie

Hal & Melanie YoungHal & Melanie Young are the authors of Raising Real Men: Surviving, Teaching and Appreciating Boys, Christian Small Publishers’ 2011 Book of the Year. Check out their own blog, join them on Facebook, and follow them on Twitter.

Copenhagen photo by Electra Stavrou

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Growing Godly Men {Link-Up}

By on November 24, 2011 in growing godly men

Today’s the day!

Let’s all benefit from each other and share our struggles and insights about raising godly men. If you have a post on that subject please link it up below. It can be a recent post, or a (not so) recent post. No restrictions except that it be based on the Truth of the Word and be specifically about your attempts to raise godly men. Be sure to share as much of the title in your link name as possible so that other moms can look for what they need.

(Looking for a great resource on raising godly men? We recommend Plants Grown Up, by Doorposts.) Link up!

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Don’t forget that next week this link-up will change! Get ready to brag on those boys in our brand new link-up, Let’s Hear it For the Boys!

 

And HAPPY THANKSGIVING!



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