How to inspire a passion for reading in your children

"School is where children learn that they have to read. Home is where kids learn to read because they want to," conclude the authors of a guide to cultivating a passion for reading in children of all ages. It is clear that with good resources and role models, a child can become passionate about reading, but there are parents who wonder where they...

What religion has to say about anxiety

A cold flash, like the strange, icy feeling after a burn, runs through his body with every breath. He feels his heart racing. It feels like it is counting down to the moment when it will explode—or, mercifully, to the moment when he will turn his pillow to the cooler side, and finally fall asleep.

It all adds up

We try to protect them as much as we can from the evil and the ugliness in this world, maybe because we know that indifference does not fit in their heart as easily as it has made a nest in ours. And maybe that's why children are the ones who give us amazing lessons of sacrifice and altruism.

Managing screen time 

Are you tired of feeling guilty for letting your kid play with an iPad or watch a show on Netflix? Perhaps you’re worried about the impact screen time has on them.

It’s about guilt

Mainstream culture has tried to airbrush guilt out of everyday life. It’s the ultimate social faux pas, it seems, to make someone feel guilty—How dare you judge me! Or maybe it’s the penultimate faux pas, because what’s even worse than making someone feel guilty inside is to shame them in front of others.

The family we choose for ourselves

In a world of many predetermined things, friends are the family we choose for ourselves. Often, their presence is what keeps us going. In Vital Friends, Tom Rath says that many of those who end up on the streets, divorced, or addicted to overeating, struggle with inner demons precisely because they are alone. They feel excluded, abandoned, unloved.

Adolescence: a generational Tower of Babel

Adolescence is not a series to watch with your teenage child, but it is a series that may cause mature viewers to re-evaluate their relationship with their own children, as well as their relationship with their parents.

The #selfcare epidemic

In times of anxiety and insecurity, the ways in which we are encouraged to care for our emotional and mental health can become mere trends that come and go in waves, taking with them our money, time, and hope—and sometimes leaving us in a state which is at least as bad as what we were in originally.

Recognition of dignity

Although the concept of human dignity may appear relatively recent from a historical perspective, the notion of human worth has a long history, as evidenced by accounts in the Book of Genesis, Cicero, and Kant, among others.

I’m here! | friendship and interest in each other

I'll leave my heart as payment among the coins, and pass... – Nichita Stănescu

Parents, children, and online exposure

A photograph of a father holding his sick little boy is simply an example of parental affection, right? But it can provoke a virulent reaction when it's posted on Facebook and the protagonists are naked under the refreshing spray of water in the shower.

How well are you protected against scammers?

Most of us want to trust. We assume that others possess our own level of honesty and goodwill. Sadly, this is neither a sensible nor a safe attitude anymore.

“The Most Important Job in the World” | Book review

Did you wrestle with your decision to have children? Or did you know motherhood was for you from a long time back? More than six years ago, I found myself wondering about children. I couldn’t really find a “point” to having children. “Underpinning all of these [ideas] was the knowledge that the world is overpopulated and under-resourced,” I had written.

Procrastination: Why we procrastinate and how to win the war on ourselves

Procrastination is self-harm, psychologist Piers Steel says. A kind of self-harm that we can become addicted to if we do not detect the reasons behind it and especially the effective strategies to counter it.

“Facing Suffering: Courage and Hope in a challenging world” | Book review

Roberto Badenas is a Seventh-day Adventist who specialises in Bible studies and is a New Testament teacher, with a theological leadership career that reflects his concern for people.