“My job is to teach my kids to discern right from wrong and to constantly help them practice in everyday situations. I’m instilling and equipping wisdom and discernment in my child by doing so.” – Julie Lowe.
Julie Lowe, MA, is a faculty member at CCEF and a licensed professional counselor with over twenty years of counseling experience. Julie is also a registered play therapist and has developed a play therapy office at CCEF to better serve families, teens, and children. Julie is the author of Child Proof, Building Bridges, and Safeguards, as well as the mini-books Helping Your Anxious Child and Teens and Suicide. Julie and her husband, Greg, have five children and serve as foster and adoptive parents.
During this episode, Julie shares her wisdom from her book, Safeguards, which equips and empowers parents and caregivers to think wisely and biblically about the dangers children face instead of living in constant worry, fear, and denial.
“I really felt like there was a gap in equipping parents to know how to talk to their kids about hard topics to equip their kids.” – Julie Lowe.
Julie elaborates on the following key points:
- Worry and denial are not safety skills; worrying and denial are equally dangerous – instilling a biblical worldview forms a foundation for any safety skill and understanding good from evil.
- To teach wisdom and discernment, we have to teach our children right vs. wrong and good vs. evil.
- We are crippling our children in the same ways we hope to protect them when we live in worry or denial because worry doesn’t teach wisdom or discernment.
- A key mistake we all make is that we think we can evaluate whether a person is good; it’s important to teach our children to evaluate someone’s behavior rather than their character.
- Stranger danger is a myth- strangers aren’t dangerous; dangerous people are dangerous.
- It is important to teach kids the language of consent, which gives them the ability to say no in certain situations – if they feel like what they are being to do is wrong, and they choose to say no, this demonstrates discernment, and they should be supported by the parents or caretakers in this decision.
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