Tweens and teens – Mum in Zone One

Christmas Shopping 2023

In previous years people have quite enjoyed my Christmas gift ideas, so I’ve tried hard again this year to make some good suggestions for you. I hope you’re excited about Christmas and not feeling stressed about the shopping. My previous years’ posts are here, here and here.

I’ve been reflecting on how amazingly generous God is, and what a privilege it is to be able to celebrate him by showing generosity to people we love. (Let’s try to keep that in mind when we’re in the queues or we’re behind on the wrapping!)

For Baking Lovers:

My daughter loves to bake and we’ve enjoyed a few recipes from the the ‘Fitwaffle’ lady, Eloise Head. For her 14th birthday this month her aunt bought her the ‘Baked in One‘ book and a 20cm square tin to go with it. (Every recipe in the book can be baked in the 20cm square tin.) I thought this was a really lovely gift. Maybe check out her videos to see if it’s the sort of thing your baking-lover would enjoy.

3D puzzles

My son really likes building 3D wooden things. In fact, so does my husband. They’re a step up from those dinosaur ones you get in museums or owl ones you get at the Wetland Centre – you know what I mean. There are loads on Amazon. If you’ve got a tween who’s good at puzzles they should be able to do it – perhaps with the help of a willing adult. (Not me, sorry. I’ll be baking something from Fitwaffle.)

2D Puzzles

If you know someone who likes a good jigsaw at Christmas, I think this would be a lovely gift – it’s a different jigsaw to do on each of the 12 days of Christmas. Here’s the Waterstone’s link to buy it but it is sold elsewhere. Each jigsaw is quite small but I think it’s a fun idea and could be enjoyed by little ones and oldies alike. The description says ‘Minimum Puzzle Dust’ which is a problem I didn’t know I could have. I’m grateful to have it kept to a minimum!

Cool notebooks

This website, Atoms to Astronauts, has some unusual notebooks. They’re not cheap – it’s a small business – but would be a lovely gift if within budget for a teen if you’re stuck for ideas! They’re made in the UK.

For Bible-readers who like pretty organisation…

Someone bought my daughter some index tabs for her Bible and they’re just the sort of thing that many girls her age (or even women my age) find really satisfying and beautiful. They also help you find the Bible book you’re looking for. There are a selection at Cheerfully Given.

For the Home

My daughter has been making and selling macramé plant hangers and they’re lovely! They’d be a great gift for anyone with a house plant. If you’d like to buy one, you can go to Vinted or message me on Instagram.

This is an idea I wish I’d seen when my children were younger. It’s a picture frame with storage so you can store your children’s pictures inside and then just keep adding the latest picture to the front. It’s easy to open the front of the frame and add the latest picture. This would be a good gift for a toddler who’s already got enough toys, or for a family who’d appreciate the neatness of it. (I’ve put a link above but there are a few different companies making them.)

For babies and toddlers

I’m sure any parent appreciates a gift that can stack for storage. We like these stack and roll cups from Fisher Price. They’re simple and pleasing.

The other thing that’s good, although not as stackable, is this ramp. Apparently this is good for a child’s development. I’m sure that’s true. And it’s one of the few toddler toys we’ve kept.

Books

The Dreamkeeper Saga books are a good option for children who enjoy fantasy books involving dragons etc. My ten year old enjoyed ‘The Dragon and the Stone.’ He said he liked the magic in it and that ‘foes become friends.’ Mysterious!

I’ve also heard very good things about the Green Ember books so we’re going to try those out this Christmas. They’ve got rave reviews so I’m looking forward to it.

For tight budgets remember that some Christmas cookies, baked with love, are a thoughtful gift. It’s also a lovely idea to frame a good postcard, and nice white frames can be bought very cheaply in the supermarket.

Suggested by a Reader

One of my Instagram followers suggested the Yoto player. I’ve never seen one in real life but perhaps you should check it out. We do love an audio book in our house.

I hope this has been helpful for you. Do comment below if you’ve got a brilliant idea you’d like to share! Happy Shopping x

True and Proper.

This weekend Mum in Zone One is 10 Years old! Thank you to those faithful readers who have been with me since the beginning – and to those we’ve picked up along the way! Please do tell your friends about it if you think they’d be encouraged.

The reason I started this blog was to encourage people – mums in particular – and to share real life and perhaps sometimes make you laugh. I wanted to lift up our eyes to Jesus in the midst of all the crumbs and chaos of parenting littlies. My second post, (10 yrs ago minus a week) was ‘Push, Push, Glide‘ about my daughter’s 4th Birthday. It seems funny to me now that the 4th Birthday of my eldest felt like such a milestone – but I know it really was.

Now of course, she’s 14. Soon I’ll have 2 teenagers. If you have a spread of ages in your household you’ll know that this means I get woken up before 7am by a bright-eyed tot and am still up late in the evening, sipping hot chocolate and talking to a wide-awake, suddenly-ready-to-talk teen. It’s an incalculable blessing. This lifestyle also requires me to spend myself for others in ways that don’t always seem reasonable! Do you ever just lean against a wall for a minute and wonder if someone could make you a cup of tea?

I recently read a great little book called ‘Sacrifice‘ by Simon Guillebaud. It’s very short – I read it in two sittings: one on the Victoria line (which is competing for the noisiest tube line in a field of strong contenders) and one in a soft play area (um – yeah). In summary I’d say it’s a massive kick up the backside for a self-care-giving generation. (I’m really holding back in my description here; you can fill in the blanks I’m sure.)

The book focuses on this verse from Romans 12:

Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship.
Romans 12:1

I wonder if people often think of worship as something glamorous and public – hands raised, heart abandoned etc. But if we mention ‘sacrifice’, I think everyone knows that as something hard. Hard, but glorious. In the UK we’ve just observed Remembrance Day, when we remember those who’ve fought for our freedom in conflicts – many of whom have offered their lives in sacrifice for ours. We know that sacrifice is not easy and it’s selfless. That’s why we remember them.

God, our most loving Heavenly Father, tells us that offering our bodies as a living sacrifice is our act of worship. So we’re not worshipping God if we’re not offering ourselves. And if we are offering ourselves freely to Him and to others, this pleases Him. When we set aside what we want and live for others, in order to honour God, then he is honoured.

So it’s worth it. It’s worth the late nights and early mornings, the driving around on a Friday night when you’d rather be on the sofa watching ‘All Creatures Great and Small.’ It’s worth wiping down the table and sweeping up the crumbs, knowing you’ll have to do it again in a few hours. It’s worth the meal prep, the uniform scrabbling, keeping up with the school newsletters, the Bible crafts, the 2am Calpol administration, the unfathomable laundry. It’s worth standing on the sidelines in the freezing cold and the discipline and the gift wrapping and the list making. If we offer these things to our families and to God with joy and a thankful heart, we’re spending ourselves on what really, really matters. It’s not waste. We’re investing our time, energy, all our resources, by offering them to the One who really deserves to be honoured and, in His mercy, can really bring fruit from all of this.

We won’t get everything we want. Then it wouldn’t be sacrifice. Guillebaud put it like this:

‘Our verse tells us that we are to be ‘holy and pleasing to God.’ The issue is full, undivided consecration, which means being dedicated, set apart for God. It involves surrendering our disappointments, hurts and fears, our longings, dreams and aspirations, our finances, health and hobbies, our family, friends, the lot… Holiness encompasses everything.’ p. 30.

Over the years I’ve lived in Chelsea, I’ve had to let go of some of my dreams. I’ve had to trust God and be willing to obey him. I’ve been disappointed. I’ve longed for things I wasn’t allowed to have. But even for that, I’m grateful. Idols give us what we want – for a short time. Because idols don’t love us. They’re like an unkind parent who leaves their child in front of a screen all day and lets them eat sweets until their teeth fall out. But not my Father. My Father loves me. He has set boundaries. He tells me ‘no.’ I dread to think where I’d be now if he’d given me what I wanted.

So let’s keep going. Let’s rejoice in the unseen ways we can serve others, offering it all up to God as our true and proper worship. Let’s trust God more than what our eyes can see. Let’s make our own cups of tea and be cheerful about it.

(If you’d like to hear a podcast episode on the topic of worship, featuring my husband Mike and myself, you can find it here or search for Delight Podcast Episode 12.)

Dads Behaving Badly – David

This Summer I’m doing a series called ‘Dads Behaving Badly.’ You can read the intro here. We’re learning about our good Heavenly Father through the not-good fathers we find in the Bible.

My final dad might be a surprising one. He’s also one of my OT heroes. It’s David. The man after God’s own heart, full of contradictions. The man who restrained himself from the evil of killing Saul – twice, and in between those events almost destroyed Nabal and all his property because of some bread.

Oh, David.

Incidentally, from what we know, David’s father Jesse seemed to ignore him a bit, but that’s not what I want to focus on right now. It probably didn’t help though.

I don’t know if you’ve got a challenging child, but I’m assuming that none of your children has organised a coup and tried to kill you so that you have to flee for your life. That’s what happened with Absalom. (This was after he murdered his brother for raping his sister. Once again, they make our family dynamics seem positively idyllic.)

David’s life is a bit of an epic narrative but long story short, we end up with a war between Team David and Team Absalom. But when it comes to the crunch, David doesn’t want Absalom to be killed. His men fight bravely for David and for the LORD, but all David seems to care about is Absalom: ‘Is the young man Absalom safe?’ (2 Samuel 18:29;32)

I guess we can sympathise here, but the problem is that Absalom is trying to kill God’s anointed king. Back in 1 Samuel, when King Saul was hounding David, David refused to harm God’s king. As he said himself, “But the Lord forbid that I should lay a hand on the Lord’s anointed.” (1 Samuel 26:11)

But now that David is King, he’s too soft with his own son. He’s lost sight of what’s really important – God’s promises; God’s people; God’s glory – and is focused on one thing: his treacherous son’s safety.

As controversial as it might be to say it: this is child-led parenting at its worst.

This is the very definition of an extreme example. But this kind of parenting is growing in popularity and although it appears kind, gentle and patient it is actually really bad news. If David’s men had followed his orders then Absalom could have ended up in charge of God’s people.

As David should have known, the trouble with putting your child in charge is that it’s not God’s design. Despite our weakness and our faults, God has put us in charge, so we need to honour God’s authority by teaching our children to honour ours.

The world doesn’t acknowledge God’s authority, and so the world is happy to tell us to take the lead from our children. But let David and Absalom be our cautionary tale. I don’t want to end up with a coup in my home.

There’s now a generation of young adults who, in general terms, have been over-indulged and raised to think that they’re in charge. Discipleship will be hard for them because it starts with learning that God is actually the boss, not them. But in the gospel there is hope for them, just as there was hope for David, and Jonah (the spoilt brat), and the apostle Paul (the over-achiever).

As Paul wrote, we have an anointed King who reigns forever and if we keep him at the centre of our families, it will keep the coups at bay:

¹⁵The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.¹⁶For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸And he is the head of the body, the church;he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. (Colossians 1)

I will be rounding off this series with a Good Dad. I wonder if you can guess who it is. Tune in next week. If you’re enjoying this series, please share it with your friends. My blog is thus far a very well-kept secret.

Dads Behaving Badly – Eli

This Summer I’m doing a series called ‘Dads Behaving Badly.’ You can read the intro here. We’re learning about our good Heavenly Father through the not-good fathers we find in the Bible.

Today’s Dad is Eli. (One of the top comedy deaths in the Bible, surely.) Eli’s sons worked in the temple but were dirty rotten scoundrels. When Eli found out about their shenanigans, he did try to rebuke them but they didn’t listen.

It doesn’t specifically say this in the text but I do feel like Eli failed to discipline his sons when they were young. Why do they behave so terribly? Why don’t they fear God? Why don’t they listen to their father’s rebuke? Eli was happy to let them steal the fat from the sacrifices and feed it to him:

²⁹Why do you scorn my sacrifice and offering that I prescribed for my dwelling? Why do you honour your sons more than me by fattening yourselves on the choice parts of every offering made by my people Israel?’ 1 Samuel 2.

As a priest, Eli was in a position of huge responsibility, but he was a hypocrite. He didn’t respect God and he passed on that example to his irreverent sons.

Eli has set them a bad example, and as a result this very fat man (whose girth is mentioned repeatedly) dies a very sad and silly death:

¹⁸When he mentioned the ark of God, Eli fell backward off his chair by the side of the gate. His neck was broken and he died, for he was an old man, and he was heavy. He had led Israel forty years. 1 Samuel 4.

God the Father is not like Eli. God disciplines the ones he loves. He puts his own glory first, and that’s what’s best for us. As parents, we know it’s hard to discipline our kids. The easiest thing would be not to bother. But out of love, we do it. And God disciplines us, too. How we need it!

My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline,
and do not resent his rebuke,
¹²because the Lord disciplines those he loves,
as a father the son he delights in. Proverbs 3

If you feel convicted by this story that you haven’t disciplined your own children, then fear not: you can start today. Our kind and gracious Father is ready to help us.

Nobody enjoys discipline, including the parent having to dish it out. But it’s part of loving our children, and it’s part of God’s love for us, too: “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” (Hebrews 12:11)

Righteousness and peace.

For those who have reached adulthood and realise they were never truly disciplined, there is grace and healing and love from our Father in Heaven. His Spirit is at work in us. He never stops sanctifying us. He who began a good work in us will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 1:6).

Tune in next week for another Dad Behaving Badly! You can subscribe to my blog by clicking on something… I think it might be a button that says ‘Follow.’

Dads Behaving Badly – Jacob

We’re in a summer series called ‘Dads Behaving Badly.’ You can read the first post here.

I hope it will encourage you that God is the perfect Father, that nobody is beyond his reach, and that he can turn any lost boy into a good father. I hope we can see together that even when a good father or husband is nowhere to be seen, we can look to God, our perfect Heavenly Father, and know that he is more than all-sufficient.

Our next example is Abraham’s grandson, Jacob (aka Israel). Did he respect women? He married two sisters so even by today’s standards that’s a poor start. Then he picked his favourites – Rachel’s boys. Unsurprisingly this led to a whole lot of resentment, not to mention attempted murder and the selling of Joseph into slavery:

³Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, because he had been born to him in his old age; and he made an ornate robe for him.⁴When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him. Genesis 37.

If things are getting trying in your home this summer, you might feel that nobody is saying a kind word. But hopefully things have not gotten quite this bad! Jacob’s favouritism has caused rifts which will take decades to heal, and even then only with the Lord’s intervention.

This is what God is not like as a Father. God does not show favouritism. We’re told that repeatedly in the New Testament, often in the context of Gentiles being saved along with Jews. He also tells us not to favour the rich over the poor. In Galatians 2 we see that God does not favour those of higher status.

God values everyone equally, so if you’ve ever been the less-favoured child or employee or member of your church, you should know that God does not operate like that. He keeps you as the apple of his eye and hides you in the shadow of his wings. (Psalm 17:8).

What good news this is to the child whose earthly father has favoured someone or something else over his children. Maybe you’ll get to show that wonderful truth to a child, or adult, soon. I hope so.

Tune in next time for another Dad Behaving Badly! You can subscribe to my blog by clicking on something… I think it might be a button that says ‘Follow.’

Resources for Starting Secondary School…

(… or homeschooling tweens!)

Last week I posted a tip for helping your child settle into secondary school. After all, I think we need all the help we can get. Here I’d like to recommend some resources which I think are a great help, too. These will also be helpful if your child is educated at home.

First a little Health and Safety Warning: Once your children start secondary school their routine at home will change. You might need to find a different time to read the Bible with them. They need God’s living and active word more than anything.

Books

Chris Morphew books: These are written in a very readable, quite light-hearted way by an Australian author who writes books for youth and children. We’d previously really enjoyed his book on Mark’s gospel, The Best News Ever, and we’re enjoying this new series.

The books tackle questions that young people might be asking, especially as they navigate secondary school and adolescence. My daughter and I are reading through ‘Who am I and why do I matter?’ This is surely a question that is more pertinent now for adolescents than ever before. If our kids know the fundamental truths about who they are and how valuable they are, then they just might save themselves a lot of trouble.

The ‘Is Christianity really true?’ is a question my children have grappled with already as they attend/attended a richly diverse community school, surrounded by people of other faiths. My son gobbled this book down in about half an hour and really enjoyed it. Rest assured it would take most people longer than that, especially if you’re reading it out loud! But it is nice and easy to read, which is a real win for tweens (and busy parents).

I think with books like these, it’s good to get ahead of the curve with your kids if you can. By this I mean that it’s good to read a book about identity issues before they even realise they might be faced with that problem. So when you’re reading the books, don’t be discouraged if they don’t say, “This is answering all of my current questions, praise the Lord!” Prevention is better than a cure.

Podcast

I’ve mentioned the Faith in Kids podcast before, but it’s worth mentioning again as there are some excellent episodes about adolescence. Episode 88, Hope-Filled Teens, very much encouraged me the other day. Going back further, there’s Episode 67: Parenting 11-14s, and Episode 14 (or 13b), Lovewise Part 2 which is specifically about guiding children through puberty. Really helpful! Also, I urge you to listen to Episode 80, Navigating Gender and Sexuality with Ed Shaw. This is very reassuring and also a bit of a wake-up call. As you may know, I do think Ed Shaw’s book should be on life’s compulsory reading list, anyway! So do have a listen to these podcasts. They’ll make you laugh and maybe cry but they’re so down-to-earth and practical. They surprise me every time with how helpful and joyous they are.

If you haven’t talked to your child yet about puberty, I recommend the books ‘Growing up God’s way for Boys/Girls.’ We’ve used them to have frank conversations about how our bodies change and why it’s a good thing (really!).

How about you? Any suggestions? I’m a novice!

Video

If you’ve got Netflix, I highly recommend watching The Social Dilemma with your child. It’s a sobering and honest documentary about how social media is designed and why it works so well. They interview many, many people who’ve been instrumental in designing social media (for example, the man who co-invented the Facebook ‘Like’ button) and who’ve now left for ethical reasons. You don’t feel lectured and they’re not scare-mongering. But it’s certainly good to know how we’re being manipulated! I’d even suggest getting Netflix for a month just to watch it – we might do that with our son.

Finally, and perhaps controversially, I wanted to share a video with you about the adolescent brain. This is by Dr Dan Siegel who’s a clinical professor of psychiatry. There are some really helpful things to learn from educational psychologists and from psychiatrists about the adolescent brain. But we need to look at them through gospel lenses. We believe in sin and grace and a good Creator who is working in us by his Spirit. However, it is really cool to learn how the brain changes in adolescence. I think it gives us hope that adolescence is an exciting time for our children!

Please comment below with any other tips! I’m sure people would really appreciate it. (And by people I mean me, first and foremost.)

Talk to Me

You know how yesterday I was hanging nappies out to dry?

My son starts secondary school in September. Eek! As with most surreal notions, I think I live mostly in denial about this fact until it suddenly dawns on me at unexpected moments and I find myself welling up or wanting to give him an embarrassingly big squeeze.

It’s not that starting secondary school is a bad thing. I’m looking forward to seeing what God’s got in store for him in this new chapter. I’m hopeful that he’ll really enjoy meeting new people and learning new things.

But it does feel big, and my husband and I want to help him to be as ready as he can be. We also want to support him through what will sometimes be an overwhelming time. I know it’s only May, but the summer is usually so mad that I thought I’d share some ideas about this now, rather than leaving it until January when it might feel a bit tardy.

My daughter started secondary school last September, so although I’m not a seasoned expert in parenting secondary school kids, it is fresh in my mind. First and foremost, we need to be praying with our children, praying for them and teaching them God’s word. As well as this, a top priority for us is to keep our children talking to us. We can’t protect them from everything that might happen at school, but we can listen to them and try to teach them that it’s always safe to talk to us. We can help them to process their experiences and keep taking them to God’s word for wisdom.

I try to take my daughter out once a fortnight, ask her how things are going and pray for her. We tend to go to a wonderful and ludicrously expensive gelato shop, but the McDonald’s drive-through would work just as well and would have the benefit of us not having to make eye contact. A park bench would also do the job, especially with a flask of hot chocolate or a bag of crisps. We’ve been known to just crouch on a pavement with an ice cream, now I think about it.

There may be times when we do things like this with our children and it feels a bit pointless (if all they talk about is, say, their favourite condiments), but we can trust that over time it will help them. It also gives them the opportunity to talk to us about bigger things as and when they want to.

As my daughter started her new school, I bought her a little prayer diary as a way to show her that she could talk to me about everything that was on her mind and that we’d bring it all to the Lord together. This also helps us to focus the conversation a bit (“What are you thankful for? What shall we pray about? How is that thing going?”) and then we can see how the Lord has been answering our prayers as we look back at previous pages. Don’t be discouraged if your child finds this hard. Hopefully it’ll help to open up conversations. We bought this prayer diary but a plain notebook would do nicely – that’s probably what we’ll use for our son.

I’ve gone on long enough already, so I’ll post some more tips in a few days’ time. Meanwhile, if you need me you might find me weeping into a Leavers’ hoodie.