TBOC: Character Training

I posted before about how we need to plant seeds of God's word into our children and I've been seeing something called the Child Training Bible around online. Basically it's a system that a family came up with that uses the Bible to address behavioral issues in their children. I think this is a great idea and my husband and I considered purchasing a kit. But then we decided we'd rather make our own. I had read a review, where the reviewer said they didn't agree with certain verse choices. So we just figured if we made our own we could control the verses used. 


In addition to controlling verse selection, for our family we are aiming to focus on character training. We don't want to be only using the Bible to correct, we also want to use bring our children to God's Word when we praise them. We use the character qualities list from the Advance Training Institute. If you watch the Duggar family on TLC you've heard of this list and for those who haven't you can find it here. 


What we've chosen to do is take those 49 character qualities and create a system to make the verses for each of those character traits easily accessible. We also looked up different verses that compliment each trait and added them to our master list. Then we went through and highlighted each verse and added a corresponding color tab to make it easy to locate. 


Here is what it looks like when complete:

Looks like any other Bible when closed

This is the guide which color coded and numbered

As you can see the tab is on the right side
and the verses are highlighted
and  have the corresponding number next to it. 

We completed this project a few days ago and have already used it several times to train our children in the way they should go. Today the girls were fighting for a spot on the couch next to me while I was reading a book. So we stopped reading and daddy took out the Bible and began to talk about not fighting and used Genesis 13:7-8. I know there are other verses that could be used but this one really made our oldest (she's 3) understand. The verse says: "And there was a strife between the herdmen of Abram's cattle and the herdmen of Lot's cattle: and the Canaanite and the Perizzite dwelled then in the land. And Abram said unto Lot, Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my herdmen and thy herdmen; for we be brethren."

As I was listening to my hubby explain to the girls how the Lord doesn't want them to fight, I realized just how far we've come as a family. After he finished talking to them they hugged and sat together peacefully. It's moments like that when I feel like God is blessing our efforts. 

Another resource that I use (which I may have mentioned before but I can't remember if I did) is Creative Family Times by Allen & Connie Hadidian and Will & Lindy Wilson. 

This book gives different ideas for simple and practical ways to get Biblical truths into your child's heart. I've slacked off a bit on some of the things in this book but I'm purposing to pick back up on them. It's really cheap on amazon (you can get it for a penny used!) and totally worth it. 


Some examples of what you'll find are ways to incorporate sit time, memorization time, devotion time and other "times" that will help in training your child. It's so important to have a plan, or a vision, for what you want to accomplish, and how you will do it. If you don't you're just setting yourself up for failure. "Where there is no vision, the people perish..." -Proverbs 29:18a