Game Plan

Time-Out Dialogue for Training Young Hearts

With this new parenting series, the lectures can take a time-out. Let's dialogue our way to the hearts of our children.

Game Plan_Time Out Dialogue for Training Young Hearts_Parenting Series_Becky Bennett
Game Plan_Time Out Dialogue for Training Young Hearts_Parenting Series_Becky Bennett

Training up children in the way they should go leading them toward love and to listening and learning is like running a marathon with constant twists and turns. Just when you think you’ve figured it out or gotten a rhythm down, a curve shows up in front of you.

Sometimes, it’s when our little ones disobey that we get the most thrown off course. What do you do when your tactics don’t seem to be working? What do you do when you’re exhausted and you don’t feel like you could possibly handle one more conflict?

Take a step back and ask yourself why you want obedience from your children. Why do you want them to be kind? Why do you want them to forgive, to share, to love?

Do they know your “Why?” Do you?

Good behavior doesn’t win life. It’s all about the heart.

 Every opportunity for discipline and training is a chance to lean into our kids and point them to Jesus.

The lectures can take a time-out. Let’s dialogue our way to their hearts.

That’s the Game Plan.

The Game Plan Package Includes:

•    The Dry-Erase Time-Out Dialogue

The dialogue offers seven questions to use in discipline and training that aim for the heart. You can talk through the questions with your child and write their answers down with a dry-erase marker, or have your child take some quiet time to write them out on their own, depending on his or her age. When your child asks for forgiveness, there may still be consequences that need to be carried through, but you get to take a cloth and literally wipe their “slate” clean, to show them (and remind yourself) that God's kind of forgiveness brings a fresh start. A black fine tip dry-erase marker is included. 

•    The Game Plan Cards

Pocket-sized for parenting on-the-go, these 2.25x3.5" card sets include 42 cards on a nickel-plated ring. 

The same seven questions from the Time-Out Dialogue are included here, along with helpful tips for reaching further and additional questions to guide you in your conversations with your children. The dialogue questions are followed by thirty “Know-Your-Why” cards so you can help your children understand what God's way really is. Behaviors and attitudes are given on the front of each card (i.e. "Why We Are Kind") and coordinated verses to teach your kids the biblical reason behind the behaviors you expect from them are on the back of each card.

These compact resources are portable so you can hang them in your kitchen, hook them to your keys, tuck them in your purse or even your pocket, and have those dialogue questions and easy access to the truth behind your “why’s” right with you when you need them.

With thirty Know-Your-Why Bible Verse cards in the set, you can easily turn Game Plan into a family devotional. Try focusing on one card each day for a month: look up the "see also" verses, discuss heart attitudes and life change, and even work towards memorization.


Specifications:

  • Dry-Erase Time-Out Dialogue is 8.25x10.25" and is laminated on durable 100lb cardstock. 
  • Game-Plan Cards are 2.25x3.5" (set is 0.5" thick) and are bound with a nickel-plated spring-gate O-ring.
  • Black Fine-Tip Dry-Erase Marker is included.

Notes:

  • Game Plan was designed with children ages 2-12 in mind, but creates useful dialogue that is helpful for all ages.
  • Please be sure to erase your Time-Out Dialogue promptly after each use. Writing from dry-erase markers can become difficult to erase if left on for too long.

Copyright (c) 2016 by Becky Bennett. All Rights Reserved.

Game Plan_Deuteronomy 6_Becky Bennett_Heart Soul Mind Strength

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9 NIV)

"Heart, Soul, Mind, Strength" Print by Becky Bennett (available in the To Choose Joy Shop.

 

David Whiting, the Pastor whose life-changing parenting series at Northridge Church was the inspiration behind these cards (you can find that series HERE), says this about Game Plan:

"I think one of the things that preachers struggle with most is putting "handles" on our preaching -- that is, making it practical. How can we help people to put into practice what we preach? If we preach a "great" sermon, but it doesn't result in life-change, then how could anyone call it a great sermon. It may have been a great speech, but it wasn't an effective sermon. 

"Becky has taken the principles that I taught on for years about parenting and put hands and feet to them. They are tools to help parents disciple their children. Not are they only helpful biblically, but they look awesome too. I'm so thankful for people like Becky who make sermons have a lot longer life by helping people put them into practice," (David Whiting).