When my husband and I were first married in the early 2000s, we watched the video “The Secret” after we had seen the author’s interviewed on the Oprah Winfrey Show.  The concepts in the video/book (mainly gratitude, the law of attraction & goal setting) made a lot of sense to both of us. 

My husband had had a lot of success as a QB (making it as far as playing football professionally in Europe), using “The Secret’s” strategies (without knowing they were biblical strategies), by being introduced to them from a family friend and mentor, Bruce, when he was in high school in the early 90s. 

Although I hadn’t had a lot of “worldly success” at that time (my mid 20s), using the methods in The Secret (thankfulness to God, making positive statements & praying for things I wanted-goals) I had had many miraculous experiences with the Holy Spirit in my life from the time I was very young.  For example, praying for snow (when the weather report showed no chance of precipitation), and then getting snowed-in to our cabin in Lake Arrowhead, California. You see, not exactly worldly success? But the Holy Spirit gave me the chance to experience fun sledding and get the hands-on childhood experience of goal setting (I packed my snow gear) through prayers answered:) 

However, the main reason goal setting (as it connects with thankfulness to God & the law of attraction), really stuck out to me as a way to live your best life was because I created goals daily as a Speech & Language Pathologist for students.  I saw firsthand how assessing students’ present levels of performance and creating goals for all kinds of speech and language disorders (mainly social-behavior) was effective. In fact, the entire profession of Speech & Language Pathology and effectively treating students is based on assessing a student to find their areas of strengths (things to be thankful for), the law of attraction (during training/therapy praising what the student is doing well (positive affirmations) and targeting weaknesses through creating measurable, observable and attainable goals for students.  We would begin with a long-term goal (1-3 years away) and would continue to benchmark the goal until it was a measurable, observable and attainable goal for each therapy session.  I also was privileged to go to Loma Linda for Graduate school, where I saw a scientific research study on prayer and positive patient outcome.  The study proved that even if a patient did not pray themselves, if they had someone praying for them their outcomes were significantly better than people who did not pray or have someone who prayed for them.  

Anyway, after seeing this video, Mike and I began writing lists of all the things we were thankful for, focusing on the law of attraction (saying what we wanted instead of what we didn’t want) and setting all kinds of short and long-term goals for both our personal and professional lives. We have been blessed with a ton of success through working & praying to accomplish these goals.  We have owned a successful business for 20 plus years that has allowed us time flexibility to enjoy raising our four children all while buying, owning & living in a house in Huntington Beach, California (which have been some of our long term goals). But it didn’t stop there!  With my background in goal setting (particularly with children), we didn’t just set goals for ourselves but I also began setting goals for our children when they were babies. 

Now, let me be the first to admit there are all kinds of problems that come up as to why people (myself included) don’t reach their goals or at this time of the year-don’t stay consistent with their New Year’s resolutions! Let me tell you these problems are amplified when you are trying to set goals for your child or children or have them begin setting their own goals!   

The biggest problem I see is people not using the power of the Holy Spirit when they set goals.

Secular people (who read The Secret and try to apply the methods without God) have a,  “I do it myself mentality” goal setting approach that does not rely on God’s power & the free gift of the Holy Spirit. So by trying to do it all themselves, they burn out!  Or saying you can do anything you put your mind to is not true, biblically!  If God is not putting a goal in your heart it doesn’t matter what “I try,” I just can’t do it by myself! In Proverbs 19:21-23 King Solomon says “Many are the plans in a man’s heart but the Lord’s purpose will prevail.” My husband had this happen to him in his football career! Highschool football was in his heart and he had a lot of success but his goal of playing in the NFL was not God’s plan for him.  It didn’t matter how thankful or positive or how much he worked his goal did not happen.  We know now through bible study that just was not God’s plan for him.  Romans 8:28 And in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.  God had a bigger plan for him! 

Another major problem is, I have even heard pastors and priests of major churches saying your only goal should be Jesus!   I feel like these pastors and priests either don’t understand the power of the Holy Spirit or their motive is money gained from church attendance.  Jesus came to put his love in the minds and hearts of everyone in a personal way. I think he loves people who set personal and professional goals and work and pray for them! Then He can help us through the free gift of the Holy Spirit!  This makes us thankful to Him, builds our faith, trust & relationship with Him when our goals are achieved and makes us positive people to be around because of our God-confidence!  

The Solution is goal setting and getting the Holy Spirit working in your’s and your family’s life!

When setting goals for yourself or your child/ren you want to think in terms of 

1. Mind (informal & formal education) 
2. Body (hygiene, diet & exercise)
3. Spirit (prayer with God alone & others who fill you spiritually)

Keep in mind, goal setting is different for under age 5, ages 5-10, ages 10-20 and 20+.  A lot of times under age 10 parents are creating the goals for their children while over age 10 children can begin to set their own goals.   Also, a major consideration is trying to understand what God is putting in each child’s heart.  

My suggestion would be to get the power of the Holy Spirit working for all 3 areas in your life!  Age appropriately expose your family to as much of the following as possible:

1. Read & Study the Bible (daily if at all possible)
2. Listen to Christian Music.  There are tons of modern Christian Bands and lots of fun Christian Children’s music.
3. Get out into Nature!  The beach, ocean, mountains, lakes makes us all feel close to God.  In Ancient times people believed in many gods because they were in nature all the time!  Now that we are around man-made buildings all the time there are people who don’t believe in God at all!  Nature is wonderful and refreshes us and children especially need to be outside or encouraged to be outside to feel spiritual!
4. Join a Church/Youth Group!  In the summer, have children go to Vacation Bible School.

Our son plays baseball and he has created some tough hitting goals for himself.  I kept encouraging him that if any negative thoughts came into his mind to pray about them and dismiss them.  Only focus on positive thoughts, things he is thankful for and successful outcomes.  He started singing “Don’t Worry About Anything Instead Pray About Everything” which was a song from Kingdom Rock from Vacation Bible School CD that we use to listen to constantly on our summer  road trip to Yosemite!  It made me chuckle that scientific social training of exposing children to song was spot on!  Research shows that stroke victims who can not speak can sing!  Exposing children to song with scripture (which was a spiritual goal I made for him long ago) made him remember the scripture and he was getting hands-on experience goal setting and working towards achieving his goal at age 12.  

Why, as a licensed Social Pathologist & mother of 4, would you encourage families to write a list of all of their blessings and share them each year at Thanksgiving?

Our four children (like most children with a fun childhood) absolutely love Halloween and would skip to Christmas if they could:) I, on the other hand, absolutely love Thanksgiving and not just because turkey with all the trimmings is one of my very favorite meals! It’s because listening to all the things our four children are thankful for is like Christmas to me! 

During Passover (also a meal & a required tradition of the Jews), Jesus took bread and GAVE THANKS (Luke 22:19)!!! I imagine Jesus, our model-perfect Father, feels the same way I do, that Thanksgiving is the best start to celebrating His Birthday! He also sees the potential (like I do as a nationally licensed Social Pathologist) for parents to use the Holiday to model and teach children the spiritual skill of gratitude.  His ultimate goal would be that children will eventually give-time, talents & money (advanced social-behavioral skills), from a heart filled with gratitude (spiritual skills) to God, the whole year and not just on His birthday.

The problem with many children growing up “these days” is a lack of gratitude to God for what they have.  One of the problems is that in teenage culture, it has become “socially cool” to complain, be sarcastic and (bossily) tell others their opinions and what to do. 

Of course, for some kids growing up, it’s not their fault!  They are growing up in both a secular society as well as a secular family, without reading the bible and  putting the spiritual skill of daily thanksgiving to God into practice.  These kids are probably celebrating Thanksgiving by paying attention to the more secular parts of the Holiday such as who’s coming for dinner and what foods they are being served, which gives them the social opportunity to complain as opposed to giving thanks to God. Ugh!

Even in homes with Christian/Jewish parents these parents, may not know “how to” use the yearly Holiday to train the spiritual skill of being thankful to God to improve their child’s/children’s spiritual & social skills.   I know our family (although we made meal times a priority) didn’t make writing down lists of what we are thankful for a tradition until more recently.

The Bible agrees with scientifically researched social training methods-that what a student thinks in their mind (receptive language skills) & heart (spiritual skills) is what comes out in his/her words and actions (expressive social-behavioral skills). So, we really can’t work on developing children’s social skills without working on spiritual skills. As both a licensed Social Scientist & mother of four, the research (& our own case studies of our four children) says daily mealtimes are the best opportunity for parents to teach social skills. I would add Thanksgiving as the best yearly opportunity to teach the spiritual skill of Gratitude (which highly impacts social skills) as a fun family bonding tradition and hands-on-learning experience.

On Thanksgiving, as our four children have been growing up, we have always gone around the table and said what we are thankful for.   About 3-5 years ago, we also began having everyone write a list of 100 things they are thankful for.  This year, we didn’t have an amount of things but we just said each item/person has to be very specific.  For example, you can’t just say, “Dad.”  You have to say the reasons you are blessed with Dad like his sense of humor, work ethic or grit, etc. 

Once the lists are completed, then we share our lists with each other as we enjoy our Thanksgiving meal. This year it was brunch because we had our turkey at my in-laws:) This thankful-list-sharing helps our family bond as well as work on our social skills including appropriate turn-taking and complimenting each other. Adding this positive social activity also helps us avoid making rude comments, offering our own opinions and talking about politics or Religion;)  We try and encourage everyone to talk about spirituality, not Religion.  Spirituality is how Jesus is effecting me and my life.  Religion and Politics talks about groups of people and has its place but, in my opinion, not at the Family Thanksgiving Table:)

Reading each person’s list out loud also jogs everyone’s memories of all the blessings we have received over the year! Inevitably, each one of us forgets 1-2 highlights, but as each person says their list out loud, it reminds us and we can add them to our own list.  I know this year, I had forgotten our hike to the Hollywood sign, & visits to Griffith Park Observatory and LA Museum of the Arts. My husband remembered so I added them to my list! 

Another benefit to hearing everyone’s yearly lists is you really learn the types of things your spouse or children honestly value & enjoyed. Sometimes the things we are spending money or time on are not the things our children really cared about which helps us get ideas for Christmas gifts or to plan other fun things to do together:)

In addition to teaching the spiritual skill of gratitude, writing down lists of what each person is thankful for can really begin to create a beautiful family journal of memories as a keepsake for years to come! My biological Grandmother use to tell me to write everything down and I gotta admit it always made me feel guilty!  I felt so overworked when our kiddos were young! I was having trouble keeping them clean, fed and educated let alone having the time to write down as much as I would have liked! They said so so so many funny things so I know I missed stuff! I’m still hoping Jesus was and is taking video that I can watch when I get to heaven:)  But of course, I really appreciate everything I did write down and I would encourage other parents to write as much down as you can (just like my Grandmother told me) because honestly  if you DON’T write it down you oftentimes forget! No pressure though because the Holy Spirit’s Grace will help you remember the truly important stuff! 

Another really great benefit is that when combining (Thanksgiving Lists) with last year’s Christmas Lists, Prayer Petitions & New Years Resolutions, it creates a way to scientifically measure how many of our family’s prayer requests (wants & needs) were answered!  This should make everyone even more grateful to God (& others involved) in making answered prayer a reality when we have written evidence!

Something that blew me away this year was that our second child and daughter, Julia, (who is 17) said she was thankful for her opportunity to work! I had to fight back the tears since my grandfather (coming from the Great Depression), would tell us that we needed to be thankful to our employers and give them respect for the opportunity to work.  I feel my husband and I have have been very grateful for our jobs and careers along our life journey. We have been hoping and praying our kids would feel the same way. The reason I thought this was difficult (as parents) to teach was because my husband and I have employed at least 20 young college graduates over the years,  who (judging by their words and actions), didn’t really appreciate the opportunity we gave them. From that experience, we wanted to make sure our children appreciated whatever job they were given. We have been praying for them, having on-going conversations with them, as well as having them go out and get their own jobs with the possibility of being rejected. Yes, their was some rejection (which was difficult as a parent to watch) but this is exactly what our daughter was saying on Thanksgiving day as she read through her blessings list that because she experienced some of the rejection it made her appreciate her job:) So only through our daughter sharing her gratitude list were we able to find out that our gratitude training and prayers had been answered!  I was so overjoyed that she “got the gratitude lesson” that I was trying to hold back tears and also thinking I needed to add this to my list of things I’m thankful for!

So this past week, our 6th grade daughter, Sarah, had to turn in an Ancient Egyptian Artifact Project, as well as give an Oral Presentation Project of her chosen artifact.  I encouraged her to do Ancient Egyptian Bread making for quite a few reasons. 

First of all, I am trying to post weekly (Home Economics w/ a Bible message) themed posts, so I have a vested interest in this content😂 But all joking aside, bread was the staple of the Ancient Egyptian Economy (Economy? Economics?) and has a major biblical message!  

Ancient Egyptian bread making has to be the most historic (Home Economics with a Bible message) lesson we have on record. Bread Iinks the peoples our 6th grader has studied so far (Nomads, the Mesopotamian Civilization and the Ancient Egyptian Civilization),  in her secular history book.

So you might be asking why is Mrs. Smith using a secular history book to teach our 6th grader Ancient History?

This is a great question! The reason I use this book is because it is a textbook specifically made to teach children ancient history. As a nationally licensed Social Pathologist (who has a lot of experience and expertise in teaching critical thinking skills) I feel this book has excellent critical thinking questions.  Although a little warning: Be careful and read with your child because it does include some loaded questions:)  Although I don’t agree with the historic dates and the fact they have taken the Bible stories out of the book, studying the everyday lives of both of these different ancient civilizations from a social studies standpoint is the best way to teach children.  History really comes alive when we see the social and economic connections of the nomads, Mesopotamian & Egyptian civilizations from the people in the Bible like Abraham (from Ur in Mesopotamia) to Joseph (enslaved in Egypt) and God (who with Moses as their leader) led the Israelites out of slavery so fast that they didn’t even have time for their BREAD to RISE! 

When we add the bible & this other beautifully written book by the brilliant Creation Scientist Bruce Malone (who have included accurate historic dates) I am overwhelmed by God’s clues He has been trying to give us all since the beginning of history to find Him<3<3 

If you have a 6th grader who is studying Ancient History (or any grade child who is studying Ancient History), see the embedded YouTube video lesson attached to this blog to make sure you include the bible history and how the Nomads, Mesopotamians and Egyptians were all linked through bread & the bible stories in Genesis and Exodus!

In this video my goal was to teach our Home Economics Students to begin paying attention for opportunities to help you (their parents who are their first teachers) in the kitchen. I taught your students the biblical, spiritual and social skill to as Ephesians 6:2 says “Honor your Father and Mother. This is the first commandment with a promise, that it may go well with you and that you may have a long life on earth.” At the end of the lesson, I specifically showed them how to make a overnight oats breakfast recipe we call “Apple and Date Cereal for the Teacher.” I encouraged them to make the recipe for you (their parents) if they thought you would enjoy it. I told them that if they did not think their parents would enjoy the cereal to try and observe what you like and if they didn’t observe anything to  just plain ask you what you like. This should help give your child(ren)  some ideas of how they can help you. 

In the entrepreneurship curriculum called Lemonade to Leadership by Bonnie Bruce one of the chapters is dedicated to “Looking for opportunity.” Teaching kids to look for opportunities to help out their own parents in their own home is the first step to entrepreneurship or getting their first paid job outside the home.  

I began by explaining to your student that when they are born their parents do everything for them. When they go to college or move out they will have to make the transition to doing more and more things for themselves.  They have the opportunity to begin now while they are in 2nd-8th grade. I forgot to mention that younger & older children as well as adults can also benefit from learning these new recipes as well as the biblical, spiritual and social skills we are addressing. Wishing The Blessing (By: Elevation Worship) w/ a Promise to ALL Our Spiritual Families<3<3

Hi! My name is Mrs. Smith!

I am super excited to be teaching a Pilot Home Economics with a Bible message Class this Fall for students in Grades 2-8. Along with some yummy seasonal recipes in this class I am also going to be teaching students many spiritual & social skills they can use and practice in order to live out the great commission (John 21) at home now as well where ever God leads them in their future- college, career and family life! These spiritual & social skills pull heavily from the book of Proverbs (which is the book of wisdom in the bible). The book of wisdom (as does the entire bible) agrees with scientifically researched social training techniques I have learned and have had many experiences teaching as a nationally licensed Social Pathologist. I am also going to share these spiritual/social training techniques with you (parents) via weekly posts (instagram, blog, etc.) Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child in the way s/he should go and when he is old s/he will not depart from it.

So that being said if you have a 2nd-8th grader that would like to watch our Sweet Home Economics with a Bible Message Class Videos subscribe to our YouTube Channel called AmenWeekly. Some of the videos for the class will be public but some will be private so your going to want to make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss any of the classes because they tend to build on each other.

I would also encourage you to encourage your student to take the class further by joining our exclusive Sweet Home Economics w/ A Bible MSG Club via our private google classroom page. Your students will have the opportunity to practice the spiritual, social and Home Economics lessons presented in class. Visit our website at AmenWeekly.com and go to the About Us Tab for directions. Our first 2 recipes are Apple and Date Cereal & Miguel’s No Blow-out Chicken Burritos:) See you in the Club!