Encourage Your Children In Their Writing

Encourage Your Children In Their Writing

While I am not a homeschooling parent, my parents have homeschooled me from the beginning. My dad taught me that the only way to improve in my writing was by writing a lot, getting edits, and then writing again. For my book, “A Cry From Egypt,” I did over ten drafts of the book to get it to where it is today. My dad told me that when he was in school, his writing teachers didn’t tell him how to write. They didn’t explain to him how to make an outline, make his papers have a point and a consistent flow, or how important revision was. Instead, they simply corrected grammar and gave him low grades. He didn’t get any constructive criticism until college when he had a professor who taught him the importance of editing and re-writing. Constructive criticism, focusing on the main goals and ideas over the perfect grammar or spelling, is what will help your children succeed in their writing.

Encourage Them with a Purpose

While your children need support and constructive criticism, you also need to encourage them to write for a purpose that brings glory to God. As parents, give them support. Be genuinely interested in their writing and in their stories. If they veer off of their theme and towards another direction, help them get back on track. Encourage good morals and strong, scripturally-based truths.

Encourage Their Thoughts

The last, but probably the most important point, is to help them to take every thought captive in obedience to Christ. My parents helped fuel my relationship with Christ and kept me sheltered from worldly or sinful atmospheres and thoughts. They encouraged me to be in the Bible every single day and to do my personal quiet time in the mornings. They did family devotions with my little brothers and me every night. They gave me books to read with a Biblical worldview. Books from Vision Forum, Mantle Ministries, Grace and Truth books, and biographies showed me what living for Christ really meant.

Read To Your Children

My mom read the entire Elsie Dinsmore series aloud to me when I was younger. But we didn’t just read books. We discussed them. My dad read the entire Chronicles of Narnia series aloud to us. We talked about the allegories that were found in the books and the spiritual truths. We also talked about C.S. Lewis’s theology and searched the scriptures to see where he was accurate and where the scriptures had other things to say.

Discuss Biblical Morals

When our parents gave us opportunities to watch movies or read books that had less-than-Biblical morals or lessons in them, we saw the negative lessons and steered away from them. We held those books and movies up to Scripture instead of the world’s standards and reviewed them critically and with discernment. Now granted, it takes a long time to cultivate wisdom and discernment in your kids. But the younger you start, the easier it becomes. When my dad and I were talking about my blog post this week, he was talking about all the ways he and my mom encouraged me to develop a Biblical worldview. I’ve been surrounded by it for so long that I didn’t even realize how deliberately my parents were discipling me and pointing me towards Christ.

This may seem like quite the uphill battle. But I promise you this – your children are hungry for the Word of God. They want to live upright and pleasing lives. They have the capability to take back the medium of writing for God’s glory!

Check back Friday for the last installment with an inspiring story on how God’s word changes the lives of our homeschooled children!

Hope Auer is twenty years old and has been writing stories and plays actively since she was ten. She loved writing and telling stories from a very early age. When Hope was thirteen she started writing a short historical fiction book about ancient Egypt. When her family read it, they were impressed and encouraged her to pursue getting the book published. She took their encouragement seriously and continued to work on the book through her high school years. She is also currently working on three more books that will be sequels to her first book, making a four-book series entitled “The Promised Land Series.” The first book, “A Cry From Egypt,” is currently in the publication process.