Do What Matters Most

This episode lays a foundation for why parents should be interested in teaching what it is that enables children to keep promises, face and overcome hardship, and retain their loyalty to friends, family, and God. Fidelity is an old word with a new blessing for those who have this kind of faith. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

We talk about three more characteristics of faith that make it easier to identify, teach about, and promote. Faith can be a focused form of loyalty toward others and God, which leads to honesty, regulating thoughts so they are positive and loyal, and training feelings so they are focused on keeping one's commitments. Faith also increases people's mental and spiritual abilities to comprehend important principles of truth, and it is quantifiable and can be measured by its emotional intensity in order to comprehend it. We then discuss how to talk to kids when things don't turn out how they want and they wonder if they have enough faith. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

In this episode, we talk about two more aspects of faith that we can learn to recognize—and help our children learn to recognize. Faith is not totally separate from knowledge or reason but is usually strengthened when one's intellect, evidence, and reason are employed. Also, faith reveals or excites what a person knows about himself by identifying and giving access to added abilities called spiritual gifts. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

We want to have faith, but what does that look like? What does faith feel like? How will your children know when they have it? In this episode, we talk about how to teach children about their inner experience so they know what mental and emotional activity to look for so they know when they are experiencing faith. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

Scriptures teach about faith, sure, but faith can also be very practical. Learning about faith is something you and your children can use every day in your religious life and everywhere else. See how faith can be taught and applied as we discuss 10 practical elements of faith. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

Children's early experiences often lead them to be afraid, and then when parents see this, they try to instill confidence. But confidence is not the same as faith because confidence is related to a specific situation while faith is related to children's belief in themselves and their future. Consider making a new effort to promote your children's faith in themselves, and watch them begin to see their futures as something achievable. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

When parents are teaching their children about faith, they are asking their children to believe in things that are not certain. Since traditional religious training isn't proving to be enough anymore, what can parents do so that children actually listen, apply, and then use this knowledge to take steps of faith themselves? First, you have to build trust by avoiding harmful behaviors, remove distractions like excessive screen time, and then use your teachings to help them learn how to do hard things, which every person needs to know. Becoming a faith-emergent family will promote so many positive behaviors in you and your family, some you probably couldn't even foresee, that will make the extra focus worth it. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

Learn nine new factors you can teach to promote children's faith in themselves. When you use these tools, children will know more about themselves and believe in themselves more. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

​​In order to successfully teach children to have faith in themselves, it will be necessary to recognize that we may have gotten it wrong sometimes and we need to adjust what we do. In this episode, learn what does not work and instead what can. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

We live in a time when the ideas about what children could become are blurred and less definite. This can be positive in a way because it provides more options, but there is a risk because it often leaves children more confused. Plus, we sometimes focus so much on what children become in their careers that we forget to give them what they need most for success—to have faith in themselves. In this episode, learn the foundation for teaching your children to believe in themselves. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

This episode describes ten specific things you can do that will lead to the quiet miracles that demonstrate the worth and power of teaching your children to believe in God and themselves. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

Teaching children to feel faith brings inspiration, and with this inspiration comes several other remarkable but quiet miracles: peace of mind, organization, or more hope. In this episode, see how inspiration is connected to teaching faith to your children. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

When parents decide to focus more on faith in their families, what does this look like? Learn simple ways to start the process of becoming a faith-emergent family, like telling stories of people who have exercised faith, as we discuss how manageable it can be, how you can adjust your approach according to the ages of your children, and how great the rewards are. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

Humans are hardwired to have faith. It can be seen when children are young and begin to make choices, and it can grow into something really powerful if we know how to use it. Faith has many mental and emotional qualities to it, and the more we know about them, the better we can use faith to strengthen ourselves, our company, or our family. What does it feel like to have faith? What can you do to build more faith? What is its purpose in the first place? Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

Faith really impacts whether the mission of an organization, a leadership team, or a family is achieved. If people believe in the mission and focus their mental exertion on it, people tend to be more committed and more focused on producing it. There are risks organizations face when employees don't have faith in the mission, like low employee morale, and you can see these risks in a family setting as well. So how do you create faith in the mission and make it last, and what do you do when people don't have faith? Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

While faith used in a business sense might sound unusual, faith in your company culture or team culture has a lot to do with how much you enjoy your job, how well your team bonds, and how well people work together to get things done. If you're a team leader, do you know how to promote faith in the culture of your team? Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

Many people think that engaging in traditional religious practices, like prayer or scripture study, is enough to produce faith in children, but many children who grow up with these traditional practices do not remain faithful for the rest of their lives. So what else matters? The family environment and how families are organized have a tremendous impact on how receptive children are to parents' teaching. Learn why and what you can do in your family to help your children better receive what you teach. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

While faith is something people might often think about and even talk about, most people still don't know the full meaning of it and the tremendous and dramatic benefits of using it. In this episode, we discuss an expansive definition of faith—faith in God, faith in yourself, and faith in your culture—and how faith is one of the first answers to the challenges people are facing today. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

There is a lot of uncertainty when it comes to knowing what is best for children. This is not much of a challenge when you're only facing minor situations, but when there are big consequences, knowing what is best matters a lot. Teaching your children to have faith will help you identify what is best in these uncertain times because faith is involved in virtually every possible solution. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

Every parent faces times when children bring unexpected experiences home. Teaching about faith successfully will help you prepare for those times so you don't overreact or focus on the wrong things. Besides, teaching children to have faith in themselves, in God, and in their culture prepares them and gives them strength to manage their own challenges. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

When parents are able to use the significant moments of their children's lives to teach faith, they bring together a child's experience, the interpretation of it, and knowledge of faith. Putting this together will be helped by the Lord who will send inspiration. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

When you decide to learn more about faith, it may amaze you to learn how much more there is to learn. And when you learn more, you will be able to see more different and interesting ways to teach it. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

Growing children's faith usually requires much more than talking. Children will need to be receptive to what they hear, and parents can adjust their methods of teaching as needed. In this episode, you can see the need for thinking both about what you already do and how to create an environment where your children are more likely to receive and believe what you teach. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

Learning more about faith can lead to the discovery of its amazing qualities we don't often think about. In this episode, learn some of what faith accomplishes in our lives and how it originates. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

Those who think you might want to do more with teaching your children about faith might discover that it offers more than most of us know, and then we realize it has always been so and we have neglected to use its great blessings for our families. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

Deciding to give more emphasis to teaching children to be faithful appears to lead to five very positive conditions. In this episode, learn what many parents discovered about the power of doing more to teach children to develop faith and keep it. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

Even in the busyness of life, parents can make changes in their families when their children are involved. If you decide to become a faith-emergent family, this means you give more emphasis to teaching faith and organizing your family to ensure that your children will trust you and learn how to exercise freedom—not as an option but as an essential part of the recipe. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

Discover the types of parent-child communication that influence whether children are receptive to parents' teachings, and see how ritualized forms of communication can either lead children to mistrust their parents or honor and learn from them. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

For many years, we thought of faith as an individual quality that develops within each person. But research has revealed that families influence children's faith in several different ways. This means that parents can actively teach children to develop faith and ensure that their faith works for them while they are children and when they are adults too. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

When Dr. Scoresby began to ask what parents do or could do to teach their children about faith, he said he got a lot of strange looks and then was told by many parents that they read scriptures, pray, and attend church with their children. This is a great answer, but then he asked them if they had specific ideas about how parents could teach it. When met with uncertainty, he discovered that there are some things parents would like to know, so if you listen to this episode, you will begin to get an idea about what we as parents may not know and should know about teaching faith. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

What would you say if someone asked what you thought was the one single thing we could do to help our families and our society? Lighting the fire of your children's faith is the one thing that will help them the most and help you create the type of family you would like. This episode will introduce you to what this series will bring to you and will help you get ready to learn some amazing things about teaching and increasing faith in many areas of life. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

In this episode, learn how to resolve two risk conditions for healthy gender identity: emotional enmeshment and influence from the internet. Emotional enmeshment reduces freedom and creates anxiety. At the same time, ever-increasing access to the internet creates a perfect storm of confusion, but you can compensate for it. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.  

Learn more about what you can do to avoid the errors that can lead to gender-related problems, and learn how to solve the extreme emotions that many consider to be a cause. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

We are often allowing children to learn negative words and hostile reactions to the other gender. As a result, both boys and girls often carry these ideas and feelings into their relationships later on. Now is the time for greater emphasis on respect rather than pursuing equity or equality. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find answers for 21st-century parents and more about the podcast.

It now appears that parents will need to prepare their 21st-century children to succeed with the other sex. In past generations, this seemed to be a foregone conclusion, that the forces of nature would motivate and make that possible, but divorce rates and declining rates of marriage suggest otherwise. In this episode, find out what is impacting our children negatively so you can adapt and help your children succeed in their relationships. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and answers for 21st-century parents.

In this episode, learn how children form their inner core of knowledge about themselves, and learn about the family's role as a small community where children are influenced and how the social world around them can affect them. These experience areas will give you ideas about what you can do to promote healthy gender identities in your children. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and answers for 21st-century parents.

In this episode, you can learn the process children go through developmentally to acquire their gender identity. Understanding this process will help you to also see how you can play a vital role in influencing your children's gender identity as male or female. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and answers for 21st-century parents.

When children acquire self-knowledge, learn about free choice, develop awareness, and then participate fully in their families, five possibilities emerge. By understanding what is successful and not successful, you can be better equipped to do what is more effective with your children. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and tons of resources for families.

Researchers have identified four experience domains that make up an individual's identity and shape how it develops. In each of these four areas, there are things you can do as a parent that can ensure that your children are healthy and successful. When you learn these methods, you can feel more confident as a parent. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and tons of resources for families.  

Reviewing Erikson's eight stages of identity can show us how identities develop over time. With this in mind, you can also learn what you can do to influence your children toward a healthy gender identity. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and tons of resources for families and relationships.

The remarkable increase lately in gender-related problems tells us that we should be searching for a better way to help our children. This episode introduces a rationale for parents to learn more in order to promote healthy development in their children. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and tons of resources for families and relationships.

The people most likely to get a divorce think the problems between them stem from some personality defect or inadequacy. Affairs, for example, are considered a defect. Those less likely to divorce understand that the cause of their marital problems has to do with inadequate transmission or communication. In this episode, learn positive and negative forms of communication so you change the negative, improve the positive, and perhaps avoid a divorce. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and tons of resources for families and relationships.  

Instead of being numbered among the rising tide of those who get divorced, learn proven methods in this series of avoiding or solving serious relationship problems. In this episode, learn some of the principal causes of divorce and a few preliminary things couples can do to avoid them. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and tons of resources for families and relationships.

When your children become young adults, it can be one of the best times for your family if you have prepared them well. Learn what to do to successfully prepare your children by creating a family forum to accommodate children who leave, then return, then leave again. Remember freedom is more influential than control. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and tons of resources for families and mental health.

Today young adults are running into more contradictions, biases, and intolerance that may not have existed at any other time since the civil war. In addition, the relaxing and disappearance of clear moral structures presents confusion so that many resort to the idea that there is nothing better than their own opinions and preferences. Learn about the milestones successful young adults demonstrate, and learn how you can help them. You will have a better time if you do. ​​Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and tons of resources for families and mental health.

Adolescent children face significant challenges that can be harmful to them or prepare them for success. Their success may even depend on what you do. Learn about the milestones of growth for teens so you can see the progress your children are making, and learn how to help them. It takes more time and effort to solve problems than it does to prevent them. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and tons of resources for families and mental health.

Most of us know someone with one or more children who have left religion and are unwilling to exercise faith in God and Jesus Christ. Even with great resources provided by our churches and actual experience with faith, increasing numbers of our children are losing their faith. One possible reason why children lose their faith might be what happens—or fails to happen—in their family. In this episode, you will learn the family dynamics that are the foundation for faith. If these are mishandled, it can lead to children's failure to develop and then live faith-filled lives. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and tons of resources for families and relationships.

For 21st-century children to succeed, they need parents that understand the threats to their growth. Learn the 15 threats that impact your teens so you can adapt your parenting appropriately during this stage and make this time as great as it can be. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and tons of resources for families and mental health.

Adolescence is considered a critical period in our society because teenagers' development can be impacted in so many ways. This is one reason why it is important to provide firm, flexible, conversant, and accountable parenting during these years. Learn how to successfully apply this form of parent leadership and feel more confident with your teens. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and tons of resources for families and mental health.

Since our podcast has always been sponsored by FirstAnswers.com, it will now be called First Answers. Same great host, same great content. Follow First Answers on Facebook to stay up to date. Visit FirstAnswers.com to find more about the podcast and tons of resources for families and mental health.

As parents, we adapt to our children as they mature so we can provide the conditions that will help them avoid the pitfalls or threats to their growth. This works best when you communicate to your children that you understand each one of them in a unique manner and at the same time make your family the primary point of reference for your children. Visit mattersmostmedia.org to find more about the podcast and FirstAnswers.com to find tons of parenting resources.