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Six parenting skills, taught in the order they are learned.
In a world competing for your child’s attention, trust and identity, you have a unique calling to remain their primary influence.
How to use this course. Read the “Six Parenting Skills” overview first. Then work through Sessions 1, 2 and 3 of Course A below — about twenty minutes each. After that, climb the porch: begin with Step 1, Communication, and work your way up.
Course A · Why parents matter
Three short sessions to set the ground.
Before the skills, the case for them. Why your influence matters more than it feels like it does, who is competing for it, and what a shepherd actually does.
Read first
Six Parenting Skills — the overview
The framework in one document. Start here so the sessions have somewhere to land.
Session 1
Competition for kids
Who else is spending money and effort to hold your child’s attention, and what they want from it.
Session 2
Wolves are real
Not a metaphor. The people who target young people, how they choose, and how they open a conversation.
Session 3
Parents are shepherds
What the shepherd image actually asks of a parent or grandparent — and what it does not ask.
The front porch
Now climb the steps.
Each skill rests on the one below it. A child who will not talk to you cannot be taught discernment; a child with no sense of consequence cannot be trusted with a phone. Take them in order.
Step 1
Communication
Everything above this step depends on it. If a child will not bring you the uncomfortable thing, no amount of teaching reaches them in the moment it matters.
This skill is about becoming the person your child tells first — which is mostly about how you receive news you do not like. It covers listening without immediately correcting, asking questions that do not have a right answer, and keeping the door open after a conversation has gone badly.
Step 2
Boundaries
Clear limits, explained rather than announced, and held.
A boundary a child can articulate is a boundary they can use when you are not there. This step covers setting limits your child can defend to a friend without embarrassment, saying why the line sits where it does, and what to do when it is crossed — so that a broken rule does not become a broken relationship.
Step 3
Discernment
The difference between a kind person and a person being kind for a reason.
Recruiters lead with generosity, attention and flattery, because those things work. Discernment is the trained habit of asking what someone wants, noticing when interest arrives too fast, and knowing that a gift can be an invoice. This is the skill Proverbs is built around.
Step 4
Intuition
The feeling that something is off — and permission to act on it.
Children are taught to be polite, which often means overriding the signal that would keep them safe. This step is about naming that signal, taking it seriously when your child reports it, and giving them an exit that does not require them to be rude, certain, or right.
Step 5
Consequences
Thinking two moves ahead, before the moment arrives.
Most damaging decisions are made quickly, by someone who has never rehearsed the situation. This step is about walking through outcomes out loud, in advance and without drama, so that the second and third consequence of a choice are already familiar when the choice appears.
Step 6
Media and cultural exposure
Reading what a screen is selling, and who profits when they buy it.
The top step, because it needs all five below it. A young person who communicates, holds boundaries, discerns motive, trusts intuition and thinks ahead can be handed a phone and taught to interrogate what it shows them — what this content wants them to believe about themselves, and who makes money if they believe it.
Next
Go deeper, or bring it to your church.
The six skills are drawn from a wider curriculum of three courses and more than thirty sessions — all of it free, all of it built to be taught by an ordinary volunteer.