Christopher > Christopher's Quotes

“One of the best ways to do that is to cultivate the morning ritual of ignoring your phone until after you have found the gaze of God in Scripture. Going to Scripture before we go to our smartphones is another small way to pattern the morning in the reality of God’s love. But given the black-hole allure of the smartphone, it is probably one of the most radical habits of the household you can cling to. In turning our gaze to Scripture, we turn our gaze to the face of God, and find him looking back at us. In a house full of children, this will look as messy as everything else does. Ideally, the pattern of Scripture before smartphone means I’m up before them, having a few minutes to read and reflect before they wake. But of course that is not always the reality, and it is important to know that that is fine. Sometimes, that is even better, because one of the ways we teach the habits of the household is by letting children observe our habits and inviting them into them. Some mornings this looks like listening to a psalm while holding a kid who is holding a sippy cup of milk on my lap.8 He is invited into the routine. Occasionally it means reading a Bible story out loud to one of them. Many, many mornings it means they also get a book, or a coloring page, and we have some minutes of quiet before we start breakfast.”
― Justin Whitmel Earley, Habits of the Household: Practicing the Story of God in Everyday Family Rhythms

“To understand why a rhythm as simple as coming to the table could be so significant across so many areas, we have to understand the idea of a keystone habit. A keystone habit is one that supports a lot of other good habits. Exercise is a classic example. Studies consistently find that participants who were asked to exercise, even as little as once a week, without prompting started to eat better, sleep more, smoke less, and so on.7 Apparently, it is simply a human phenomenon that when we commit to certain smaller rhythms, a lot of other rhythms fall into place. This is fundamental wisdom for parents. It means that we parents who want to pattern our households in gospel formation should not just be looking for that one-off spiritual conversation that we hope our kids remember, we should be patterning our houses with the kinds of keystone family rhythms that turn kids into disciples of Jesus. Coming to the table to talk is one such keystone habit.”
― Justin Whitmel Earley, Habits of the Household: Practicing the Story of God in Everyday Family Rhythms

“A wise parent talks when the kids are in the mood. Every so often they will ask a question, make a comment, reveal some little aspect of their heart. In those times, when their conscience is stirred, you need to talk. This may require dropping everything else to seize a critical moment.”
― Tedd Tripp, Shepherding a Child's Heart

“Pressures of the teen years pull children away from home. This is the time when they develop camaraderie with those who “understand them.” They are looking for relationships in which someone knows, understands, and loves them. Your children should not have to leave home for that. You can provide family relationships in which your children are understood and embraced.”
― Tedd Tripp, Shepherding a Child's Heart

“Pressures of the teen years pull children away from home. This is the time when they develop camaraderie with those who “understand them.” They are looking for relationships in which someone knows, understands, and loves them. Your children should not have to leave home for that. You can provide family relationships in which your children are understood and embraced. The attraction the “wrong crowd” holds is not a license for being bad. The attraction of the “wrong crowd” is camaraderie. Children long to be known, understood, discipled and loved.”
― Tedd Tripp, Shepherding a Child's Heart

“These extraordinarily high rates suggest that even when members of Gen Z are not on their devices and appear to be doing something in the real world, such as sitting in class, eating a meal, or talking with you, a substantial portion of their attention is monitoring or worrying (being anxious) about events in the social metaverse.”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

“Now, as I write in 2023, there’s a lot more research—experimental as well as correlational—showing that social media harms adolescents, especially girls going through puberty.[”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

“2015 report by Pew Research[31] confirms these high numbers: One out of every four teens said that they were online “almost constantly.” By 2022, that number had nearly doubled, to 46%.[”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

“With so many new and exciting virtual activities, many adolescents (and adults) lost the ability to be fully present with the people around them, which changed social life for everyone, even for the small minority that did not use these platforms.”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness