I’ve got a six year old (today is his birthday!), a four year old, and a two year old in my home, and they are pretty media-starved.

And that’s not to say that we are not tempted! We home school and Stacy works part time from home, so the kids spend a lot of time around the house–a single story ranch home.

On a daily basis, they watch a 20 minute morning show when I leave for work, and they often get an episode or short movie as a reward for doing school. When we go out, the kids often watch a movie in the car on long trips, but I can only count about a dozen times that I’ve set them in front of a tablet or computer on the go. It’s a necessary thing from time to time, but Stacy and I both try our best to exhaust our other options first. It’s harder with three of them than it used to be!

When they do watch shows, however, I love to leverage the best content I can find…and free content at that. Stacy and I only pay for an Amazon Prime membership, so everything else we watch comes from the free web, for the most part. Here are my favorite media resources to push my kids to.

For Spiritual Growth:

We always start with the amazing free content created by Life.Church. It’s easy to get to on computer or phone (just go to life.church or the LC app and click media…then scroll down), reinforces what our kids are learning at church each week, and my kids love it. The only time I’ve seen them dance and yell at the TV is in response to the Bible App lessons. There’s also a memory verse that we review at night with them in each lesson. Currently Eli uses the Crosstown material, and Lizzy and Abby use the Bible App lessons, but at home they will watch each others. My only reservation when it comes to using this content is: practice those dance moves! Worship is a full-body experience, and if I am watching with the kids, I am leading the way in dancing!

For our Bible Time together, the kids and I have enjoyed Louie Giglio’s Indescribable Devotional these past few months together. We bought it off Amazon here, and it looks like there’s a sequel now too. This may not be “media” in a video sense, but its highly engaging and applicable.

We also love the Biblical print media available at Dollar Tree stores in their book section. I have found everything from board books, to sticker books, and paint with water resources, all inexpensive and engaging to help reinforce the things the kids learn about God everywhere else. I recently found a few short character books that we will read at bedtime this next week.

TV Shows:

My favorite TV resources come through Amazon Prime:

• Superbook is a great show with two kids who journey into Bible stories to learn life lessons. The first season was a bit rough (you could definitely tell it’s the first season), but season two is excellent. My kids love to watch this show, and each episode is under half an hour too!
• Sid the Science Kid is a great show that promotes education and science through the eyes of a young, curious kid. I love the extended family that is represented in it, and the many things my kids have learned about. Eli and Lizzy are adamant recyclers after a great key lesson in season 2.
• Tumble Leaf is a show I checked out after it won some awards. It really is a nice, low key show about figuring out how things work. I like the fact that it’s not about epic action sequences of events. Sometimes you need a show that keeps the kids calm and let’s their imagination think more about a unique way of doing things than grand fantasy adventures.
• Wallykazam (YouTube, not Amazon Prime) I fell in love with this show long ago, after my kids rejected Seasame Street. I wanted to make sure they were taught literacy basics when they watched TV, and this one does a great job of illustrating letter sounds and words. I also think it passes along pretty good values and friendship examples. After Nick Jr. made the episodes pay related, I opted to pay for a few of them and found others here.

Shared Media:

One of the greatest challenged I find in my own experience, and one I feel my generation is often failing on, is picking appropriate media that my kids and I can watch together. I constantly meet young kids who have too great a capacity for violence at a young age, and I struggle with that. I want my kids first impression of guns to be as tools that must always be used responsibly.

My kids haven’t seen me play video games (and when they do, I’ll start with Mario and other animated games). They haven’t gotten to watch Harry Potter, Star Wars, or any of the Marvel movies made in the last few years. They only have a few nerf guns they keep outside and play with only for target practice.

That random tangent aside, the thing I love to watch with the kids most is nature shows. We LOVED the science and visuals behind PBS’s show, Earth: The New Wild. And with our Disney Plus subscription, we frequent the National Geographic content available on that platform a lot too. I now own Planet Earth seasons one and two, and Blue Planet is also in our collection. The thing I love most about nature shows, is how the wonder, complexity, and way everything works together intricately reminds me of how great our God is and how powerful and wise His plans are. I’m astounded by His works, and I love to pass that sense of wonder onto my kids.

In addition to our Amazon Prime membership, I do pay for a premium music subscription through Amazon, because I let my kids have free reign with our Echo devices around the house. I’ll admit that we primarily use these for music and weather updates, but I find that the kids also ask great questions to Alexa from time to time, learning about animals, or discovering whether a random fact is accurate (like are watermelons fruits or vegetables?)

Stacy and I also make use of the local libraries in Tulsa and Coweta. We have tons of books we use for school. The kids get to pick out one book each time we go themselves, which usually ends up being an animal book. I have successfully gotten Eli interested in the Fly Guy books, Berenstain Bears books (best ones for teaching values), and Elephant & Piggy books.

Light displays, Christmas songs, plays and performances, movies, cookies and pies, family potlucks and gift exchanges, a visit to see Santa Claus, a visit from Santa’s elf on the shelf, a Christmas tree or two, letters to Santa, gifts on Christmas Day, shopping…shopping…and more shopping. It’s all driving me nuts this year. Why? Because I don’t see any lasting meaning in any of it! Aside from the worship I am doing at church…which I do every week of the year, Christ isn’t very prominent in my Christmas.

Do me a favor: add up all the hours you have spent on Christmas traditions, then compare them to the hours you have spent seeing Jesus in the season. If your like the average American Christian, it’s a pretty pathetic ratio, maybe even as bad as 100:1. In fact, beyond Christmas carols, I’m afraid that most people’s only Christian Christmas experience may be worshipping on Christmas eve.

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I stood an aisle away on Saturday, listening to a parent lecture his twelve year old son as they shopped. I wish that I could say that some of the lecture was helpful, but none of it made any difference for the son or for me. The main content sounds like news clips from an old ranting preacher:

• You need to grow up and be a man
• You kids these days don’t know how to be responsible
• Your mom can’t do everything for you for the rest of your life
• Your a loser and I’ve got to compensate for you

I hope I never talk to my child like this!

First: You don’t make negative character judgements on your kid.

That only reinforces a self image that says to them, “I’m a loser. I’m incapable. I’m lazy. I’m dishonest.” Kids need to be challenged to live up to a high standard and told they can be better than their present actions make them seem. They are changeable. They are growing. Encourage and picture growth in how you talk to them. Don’t praise your children for being better than they are–if they lie, call them out on the lie. But call them out for being dishonest, don’t call them a liar. One is a poor choice or action, the other is an identity.

Second: Don’t simply tell your kids what to do all the time.

The other problem the Dad had, was he never once asked his kid to think for himself. It’s no wonder the kid is lazy and waits for you to command them…that’s all they know. Kids don’t pull down initiative and responsibility and good decision making from the sky–parents are supposed to teach it to them. If I could have told the guy one thing on Saturday, it would have been this:

If your kid is irresponsible and immature…it’s your fault.

It’s the parent’s job to teach their kid to make decisions. To do so, often times we need patience, kindness, and thoughtfulness. We need to ask good questions of our kids. We need to let them choose–even if their choice is a poor one. Experiencing the consequences of a poor decision helps them to think about their next decision and make a better choice.

Ultimately, there will come a day when our kids make choices based on their own maturity and the influence of others beyond their parents. It’s not always the parent’s fault that their kids made poor choices…but if anyone is failing children in the world today, it is their parents.

Stacy and I thought that an update was in order—so much of life has changed in these past few months that it seems like a great excuse to send snail mail, complete with a picture of our family and an update on our involvement in a mission project in the Middle East!

Elisha Scott Fowler was born on Saturday, March 22^nd weighing 6lbs and 4oz via c-section. Everything about his arrival was a surprise, we didn’t even find out our baby’s gender until we got to see him for the first time! Most first steps as new parents proved very hard for us, for Stacy in particular. We are blessed to have had very good doctors and nurses, very helpful family, and encouraging friends to pray for us and help us through the weeks of adjustment. But we have learned a lot the hard way and are passing along the news: be prepared, prayerful, and ready to change your plans as a parent at a moment’s notice. Don’t set your expectations so high that you are disappointed by the challenges you face as a parent. The books often paint too “average” a picture to adapt it to your child. And remember: you are blessed to live in a world where pregnancy and childhood are VERY VERY safe compared to every other generation that lived before modern medicine!!!

So many new perspectives come to life in Scripture when you are having a child of your own…the pain and trials of loss and infertility become frighteningly real, every verse of parenting becomes alive with meaning, and the life of Jesus—who was a baby—becomes so interesting! Many of these thoughts are finding their way onto Patrick’s blog at blog.pathfinders.training if you are interested in reading them.

Since Eli’s birth, Patrick’s been busy on the house—creating a garden and a chicken house for Stacy to plant and manage on her 16 week maternity leave. Being close to nature is being close to God for Stacy, so we are doing all we can to create an awesome home for her and our child(ren). We expect to have lots of cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers and eggs this summer. If you are in Clarksville, be sure to let us share the wealth in fruits and vegetables if things go well!

We are also using Stacy’s temporary freedom from work to build more relationships. Having her home daily, rather than after 6-7pm most days is awesome! She’s able to become a very experienced caretaker for Eli and she can plan to join me for dinner with friends or with people we are getting to know in the community without exhausting herself. While Stacy’s job provides good health insurance and a great income, we are VERY hopeful that we can find opportunities for Stacy to work less and less in the future so that we can continue to use every opportunity to share the love of Christ without taking time away from our relationship and our family. Keep us in your prayers for a good future job in that respect. It’s hard to make enough as a pastor to support a stay at home mom, but I am hopeful that we can manage money and opportunities in a way that makes that a reality.

Stacy and I are blessed beyond belief. We wouldn’t trade our life for another, knowing that our circumstances and challenges are nothing compared to most of the world. We send this out to you in hopes that you will thank God for His blessings to us and to you, and that you’ll let us know how we can pray for and stay in touch with you too.

Sincerely,
Patrick and Stacy

“God, did you REALLY send your Son as a baby?”

I always thought that was cute and fun–but now that I have a baby, I keep thinking, “really?” This person is totally helpless, totally dependent, weak, demanding, scared, cold, and unable to do anything but cry, sleep, eat and poop. The Son of God spent His time in this condition? He nursed at Mary’s breasts? Mary and Joseph wiped His butt? He came through the birth canal bruised and bloody and crying? He kept them awake at night?

AND – this was your design for humanity? To start as a seed that would need to be planted, nurtured, and monitored for years in order to reach it’s potential? Wow. You really did design us to be servants–to take joy in training, nurturing and growing others. I’ve always thought of us as conquerors, achievers, and managers. I’m sorry. I really need to lean more deeply into the design you have for us. I promise to learn how I am built to be a father. And I’ll never doubt Your humility again. You are willing to do whatever it takes to regain our love. I’m so grateful that You loved us that much. That You CHOSE to take on the flesh of humanity–the fragility and limitations of a baby–to save us.

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death–even death on a cross!
~ Philippians 2:5-8

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
~ John 1:14

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death–that is, the devil–and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.
~ Hebrews 2:14-15

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are–yet was without sin.
~ Hebrews 4:15