John Trent

Being honest with our children is important. Even in stressful times, it can build trust. Developing an understanding of your family’s unique fears and stresses can benefit your ability to cultivate security.

Dr. John Trent and his daughter, Kari Trent Stageberg, provide strategies for moving toward health, freedom, and life. They talk about Biblical truths that can lead Christ followers to a more positive future, as they share their helpful framework for overcoming past pain and challenges. (Part 2 of 2)

Dr. John Trent and his daughter, Kari Trent Stageberg, provide strategies for moving toward health, freedom, and life. They talk about Biblical truths that can lead Christ followers to a more positive future, as they share their helpful framework for overcoming past pain and challenges. (Part 1 of 2)

To create a healthy culture of responsibility, it begins with us as parents modeling a willingness to do those small things. Our children will pick up on our actions and will begin to live them out later in life. Watching them do this is in itself a great reward.

Here are three “small things” I’d like to share with you. Even if things are going great in your ministry marriage. But especially if you know things could be better.

Emotional and relational intelligence is one of the most critical, yet often overlooked, areas of development in our children. These five characteristics can help your child succeed in developing their relational intelligence.

Using the brief overview of the five key elements of the blessing, you can create life-changing moments for your family.

You can step onto the down escalator, stop fighting, and return to the issue level, or you can keep moving up to a third level of emotion.

Consider the following four ways to “wake up” and start moving toward healing if you feel stuck in your marriage, like a repeating bad dream.

Marriage and parenting are the hardest jobs you’ll ever have. Here are ways that hard work within that job can actually make life easier.

These 3 steps can help you change your mindset following the COVID-19 pandemic and start getting back to a more normal mindset.

While there are challenges to opposite-gender friendships, there are also genuine benefits if you position your son or daughter to have these types of friendships.

A biblical tool called “emotional word pictures” can help you improve your communication skills with your spouse. Learn to use this emotional language of love that Jesus modeled for us.

This National Marriage Week, author John Trent talks about how to give and live “The Blessing!” to your spouse.

This week is National Marriage Week, with Valentine’s Day in the midst of it. It’s a great time to pause, take a breath, and do two things – celebrate marriage itself and Bless your wife.

Peer pressure is real. Help your kids spot peer pressure, gain tools to deal with it, and be strong enough to deal with someone’s reaction to hearing “no.”

Our children need to have great mentors in their life. Here are ways to find a great mentor for your child and how to maintain a great relationship with him or her.

It is possible to teach our children how to show empathy and altruism, even in today’s world. We want our children to both feel compassion and have the courage and willingness to step in and help others. If we are intentional as parents in demonstrating empathy and altruism, our children will notice and will learn from our example.

Dr. John Trent and his daughter, Kari Trent Stageberg, share the valuable lessons they’ve learned about the importance of being intentional in blessing your children unconditionally.

Blessing our adult children may seem harder than blessing our kids when they are young. However, it’s still vitally important.

These conversations might be something that your loved ones remember for the rest of their lives. They’ll remember the pandemic, where you were, and what you said to them. Tomorrow is never a guarantee, so have those conversations now.

Don’t waste this crisis. Use it to take control of your life. The best place to start is by making a list of what you have and what you need.

Learning how important it is to value each other’s differences and how to bend towards strength and softness at home can help make your family time even better. With all that in mind, here are several ideas to keep your family close and grow stronger together.

In a discussion based on his book The Two Sides of Love, Dr. John Trent explains the differences between the “hard side” and the “soft side” of love and how they may manifest themselves in your marriage. He offers advice for how you and your spouse can strike a healthy balance between the two sides by developing qualities that you may be lacking.

You can take the 4 animals personality test in a few minutes. The goal is to give you a picture of your and your spouse’s unique, God-given strengths.

The Blessing is something you can choose to give and live out in your home. It is a “choice” parents make to use five distinct elements to impact a child’s life. Each one is way to help a child understand their incredible worth to you, and to their God.

I can’t remember a day that there wasn’t some kind of “learning lesson” going on in our home. But most of those lessons didn’t involve sitting down and doing homework. Instead, my mom employed active ways to help us learn how to learn.

Greg Smalley and John Trent explain how spouses and parents can avoid miscommunication and conflict by using “word pictures,” which are simple metaphors to help clarify thoughts and feelings. The discussion is based on a book by John and Greg’s father, Gary Smalley, titled The Language of Love: The Secret to Being Instantly Understood.

An emotional word picture is a tool that simultaneously activates the emotions and intellect of the listener. When you use a word picture to communicate, it can go straight into your spouse’s heart.

When you quit making small adjustments in your relationship, you head toward serious trouble. But small changes can become powerful tools for moving a couple back toward caring, closeness and healing.

When you bless your children, you reinforcing your children’s worth.

Dr. John Trent explains the concept of the biblical blessing and why receiving that blessing helps children thrive. Our guest also offers parents practical suggestions for bestowing blessings on their kids. 

Here is why you should write down your blessing for your children, and how to compose a written blessing to affirm them.

Take a look at seven common faith-launching worries parents face.

Now is the time for you to realize the incredible impact you can have on your child, helping him or her come to Christ and grow in that relationship.

When we decide to place high value on our spouse, and then back that up with spoken words, it can do wonders for a relationship.

The same need for meaningful touching we see with our children is equally important in a marriage.

Our mate needs to hear positive words that picture a special future in the same way that our children do.

What every man or woman owes his or her spouse is the willingness to stay committed, even if the other person fumbles the ball.

The five elements of the blessing are not just limited to the parent/child relationship. Let’s look at how the blessing can and should be given to a spouse.