In this episode, we’re excited to welcome Natasha Crain, author of several books, including Talking with Your Kids About God, Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side, and a number of others. She is a respected speaker, podcaster, and influencer and her gift of taking complicated topics and breaking them down is remarkable. Today we’re diving into why intentional, faith-filled conversations with your children are so crucial—and what that looks like in real life.
From practical tips for sparking dialogue, to how to respond when you don’t have all the answers, to the importance of your heart posture as a parent, Natasha shares insights every Christian parent can use to help their kids build a lasting faith.
Whether your kids are little or teens, this is a hope-filled, practical conversation to help you start the year with clarity, purpose, and mission in your family. So get comfortable, settle in, and let’s dive in!
Episode 27: Summary & Transcript
Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
Episode Summary
In this episode of the Upside Down Parenting Podcast, host Janel Greig interviews author and speaker Natasha Crain about equipping Christian parents for intentional, faith-filled conversations with their children. Crain emphasizes the necessity of moving beyond “Sunday school” topics to build a confident, evidence-based faith in kids, preparing them for the specific challenges they will face. She provides practical, age-appropriate strategies for integrating these dialogues into the natural rhythms of family life, highlights the critical importance of a parent’s humble heart posture, and stresses that parents must first equip themselves to be knowledgeable guides for their children.
Episode Transcript
Janel Greig (00:00):
Well, welcome back to the Upside Down Parenting Podcast. I’m your host, Janel Greig, and today we’re launching into a conversation to help set your family’s faith on the right path for the New Year, a true New Year reset for Christian parents. In this episode, I am excited to welcome Natasha Crain, author of several books, including Talking With Your Kids About God, Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side, and a number of others. She is a respected speaker, podcaster, and influencer, and her gift of taking complicated topics and breaking them down is remarkable.
Today, we’re diving into why intentional, faith-filled conversations with your children are so crucial and what that looks like in real life, from practical tips for sparking dialogue to how to respond when you don’t have all the answers to the importance of your heart posture as a parent. Natasha’s going to share insights every Christian parent can use to help their kids build a lasting faith.
(00:59):
Whether your kids are little or teens, this is a hope-filled, practical conversation to help you start the year with clarity, purpose, and mission in your family. So get comfortable, settle in, and let’s dive in. Natasha Crain, welcome to the Upside Down Parenting Podcast. We are honored to have you here on the show.
Natasha Crain (1:19):
Thank you, Janel. It’s so good to be with you.
Janel Greig (1:21):
It’s awesome to have you here. And Natasha, as I was prepping for our time together today, I was trying to remember when I first came across your Christian mom blog. It was around 2014, I think. And there’s a whole story in how God navigated me to your platform. But I am just so thankful personally for your gift and the platform that the Lord has given you because when I first found your blog, I was kind of in a place and, we’re in similar stages of parenting.
(01:53):
And so that was part of the appeal of your writing to me was, oh, she’s got kids similar to my kids’ age. But I was in a place where I was kind of thinking, “I just want my kids in heaven with me. ” I just want them there. And it was a very simple check the box. We read the Bible.
But God really used your platform and your writing to convict me and change my heart and realize I actually want my kids to have a confident faith. I want them to understand why they believe what they believe, that Christianity is true and what the evidence is. And part of that journey for me was understanding too, I didn’t have that. And if I don’t have that, I can’t equip them and pass that on. And so the growth that has come from that for me personally in my faith journey and our family is just such a blessing.
(02:41):
So just sharing a little bit about that profound impact that you’ve had on me as a parent and truly how you changed the trajectory of our family, Natasha, it just makes me so grateful that you’re here on our show today. And as we kick off the new year on our podcast, we really want to focus on equipping parents to engage in intentional, faith-filled conversations with their kids in everyday, doable ways. So you are exactly the right person to explore this with.
So we’re going to dive in. And Natasha, if you would just maybe give our audience a little bit of background on why intentional conversations about faith matter so much in a child’s spiritual development. Sometimes people say, “Well, isn’t it just about giving them the right content?” But it is about so much more. So can you share on that?
Natasha Crain (03:29):
Yeah. Well, first, thank you so much for everything you said. That is so touching and I appreciate it so much. And it’s a blessing to hear that some of what I was doing on my little Christian mom blog was helpful to you. And it’s funny because sometimes… I started that blog back in 2011. It was called Christian Mom Thoughts and I didn’t have any desire to become a writer or speaker or anything like that at the time. I was just writing about Christian parenting.
And so sometimes when people tell me today that they were following my writing back then, it kind of blows my mind. It’s been a long time, right? That was like 15 years ago. So it’s neat to hear and I appreciate that. And what I’m writing and speaking about now and talking about these intentional conversations that we’re talking about today, that goes back to kind of what I was doing at the time because I was just, I had three kids, three and under when I started that blog.
(04:15):
And I just started writing about little things that we were doing to help our kids to know and love the Lord at the time. And then I started getting attacked on my blog by a lot of skeptics. And they would come by and they would challenge everything that I was saying. They would say, “I was indoctrinating my kids and there’s no evidence that God existed. There’s no evidence that Jesus existed. The Bible’s filled with errors and contradictions.”
I would get all of these different kinds of challenges and I realized I had no idea how to answer them, kind of like what you’re saying. I was just thinking, I want to make sure my kids know Jesus. And of course I do, but that took on a whole other kind of meaning at that point because I realized I have no answers for these things. I discovered apologetics, which is how you make a case for and defend the truth of Christianity.
(04:57):
And I just started reading everything that I could to equip myself with that understanding. And then I turned my blog into a place where I was trying to equip other parents. And that’s probably when you came across the blog when I started writing about some of those subjects. So what I learned through that process is that there are so many conversations that we need to have with our kids beyond the kind of what I would call Sunday school conversations.
Now Sunday school conversations are important. We want them to understand the big story. We want them to understand all the individual accounts in the Bible, of course, that they tend to learn at church, but it’s not enough for them to have a deep and confident faith. And I love that word, the confident faith because kids can have all kinds of different levels of faith, but we want them to have a deeply rooted faith that is rooted in the knowledge that Jesus is our Lord and savior and we can be truly, truly convicted of that because there is so much evidence of the truth of it.
(05:54):
It’s not something we have to blindly guess. But in order for our kids to have that kind of conviction, when they’re going to be challenged in every single direction today on their faith, we’re going to have to have a lot of intentional conversations. We can’t wing it. I think most of us, we resort to, well, I’m going to do whatever my parents did. If you think that your parents did a good job, you’re going to do whatever kind of makes sense to you.
It really is a form of, wing it. And everyone wings it in their own way, depending on what they think is going to work, but we have to understand the specific challenges that are out there today so that we can be intentional in preparing our kids specifically for the challenges that they’ll encounter. And a way that I like to think of it is, it’s like if you’re going to set out to climb Mount Everest, you’re not going to just say, “Well, I’m going to do whatever I think kind of makes sense to me.”
(06:40):
You’re going to die on the mountain if you do that. Instead, you want to find out this is what is required in order to successfully navigate the mountain. And so I’m going to match my training specifically to that. And that involves intentionality and conversations.
It’s not just, here, we’re going to push a bunch of content at you, but it’s the content plus the intentionality of setting aside time for the conversations, being able to weave them into daily life and really just making it a way of life, not just a one-time training that, “Oh, my kids are old enough. I think we need to talk about why there are good reasons to believe Christianity is true.” No, no, no, no. This needs to be a way of life and how we disciple our kids.
Janel Greig (07:18):
Yeah, that’s fantastic. And I think it’s that ongoing, like you’re saying, it’s the ongoing. It’s not just a one and done. It’s putting it into play, putting it into practice all the time and it becomes habit. It becomes the normal rhythm. But for some of our listeners that may be thinking, “Oh my goodness, life is so busy.” And it is, but can you paint a picture for what faith-filled dialogue really looks like in that hustle and bustle of everyday family life? What are some real moments where faith can naturally come up for folks?
Natasha Crain (07:49):
Well, I think when somebody hears faith-filled dialogue, if they’re like me, that sounds really intimidating because maybe they’re picturing that because I’m sitting here talking about it, that in my house, all we talk about is God and faith and every single moment is filled with these big conversations. And that’s really not what it’s like in my house. And that’s not what I would tell anyone that they necessarily should expect in their own home.
So we have to get back to expectations of what that looks like. There’s a big difference between, okay, I’m only going to talk about something once every few months versus I think that I have to be talking about this constantly. You want this to go through the natural rhythms of your life. So I think it depends a lot on the ages of your kids because when kids are younger, I have three teenagers for some context.
(08:37):
So I have two 17 year olds and I have a 15 year old. So I’m in the thick of it with teenagers, but when your kids are little, you have a lot more control over what you’re able to work into those day to day rhythms.
So for example, maybe it is on the way to school each day. Maybe you’re driving your kids to school, your younger ones, and maybe that is part of your rhythm that each morning that you’re driving to school, there’s one thing that you’re going to talk about. Maybe there’s one question that you pose to your kids, maybe there’s one point you want to make, maybe there’s one verse you want to share and just explain to them, whatever it is that you feel is helpful for your particular kids and their age and what they’re going through, maybe that’s the time you do it.
(09:15):
Maybe at the dinner table, maybe you get into a pattern with your kids where you’re saying, “You know what? We’re going to tackle, every Monday night, we’re going to do one big question that people tend to not understand even as Christians.” And so we’re going to tackle that together.
Those are the kinds of things, especially when your kids are little that are really helpful to do because they tend to be, and I say tend to be because kids have different personalities, they tend to be a bit less resistant because you just say, “This is what the pattern is for our home.” And I will say that that doesn’t mean when my kids were little, they were all excited about that because we did do these things. We would have question nights when we would set aside time and say, “Hey, ask any questions that you want.”
(09:54):
We would do the dinner table thing, we would do the car thing. I mean, we found lots of little ways that we could do this and they, many times, I’m just putting it out there and they many times were not happy about that. So don’t expect that just because you’re kind of setting these things up in your family’s rhythm that they’re going to be really excited, but we persevered anyway. And I think that’s really important.
What I did at that age, a real practical tip is that if you set up these times to have these faith-filled dialogues, then you tell your kids how long you’re going to spend on it. I found that if I told them, “Look, this is every dinner on a Monday, we’re going to spend 10 minutes on this. ” Then they know what to expect. Otherwise, kids tend to think in their heads that they’re going to sit through something for an eternity and you’re putting some boundaries around that and saying, “No, this is about what it’s going to be.”
(10:40):
That was always very helpful to us when we had little kids. As the kids get older, it looks a little bit different. Now, if you’re homeschooling, you have natural ways that you can incorporate that. I homeschooled for middle school for my twins, and so that becomes a lot easier for the homeschooling family because it becomes a subject that you do and your kids know that this is what you have to do as part of your schoolwork and you can have many opportunities to do that. I don’t think homeschooling parents usually struggle with that so much.
I think it’s most of the parents who have kids who are in public school or private school who are thinking, “Well, I don’t have a subject dedicated to this time, so I don’t have that. My teenagers in no way want to sit through Monday night’s question time.” Maybe they will. It depends on the kids, right?
(11:20):
But you have to find ways to really bring in these questions when they become relevant to your kids. And so my background is in marketing and one of the things that marketers try to distinguish between is when people have felt needs and real needs. So every kid has a real need to develop their faith in Jesus, to learn about Christianity, to understand this deeply, why there’s good reason to believe it’s true. They all have this real need for that that doesn’t mean that they feel the need for it.
And so the trick as a marketer is to try to figure out, okay, when does someone feel the need for something so that you can use that as an opportunity to get to the real need? And it’s the same thing with parents. So when kids are teenagers, a lot of times these opportunities will come up when there’s something in the news, for example, or if there’s something that someone was well known for saying a celebrity made a comment that had something to do with faith or whatever the case may be, there are a lot of opportunities then to be able to say, “Hey, I heard so- and-so said this today. What do you guys think about that?”
(12:21):
And actually listen to what they’re going to say. It becomes more of a dialogue, I think, a back and forth dialogue the older your kids get because you want to hear how they’re processing things and they don’t want to hear their parents as much come right in and say, “Now that’s not right.” It’s a good time to ask questions and to get their understanding. And so utilize those opportunities.
If you have a family group chat or something like that, if your kids are old enough, which we do, I will send things through that, I’ll send a link and, “Oh, this is interesting. Look at the worldview perspective that this is coming from.” Or just it really depends on how your family interacts, but those are a few ideas of the things that we’ve looked at. I would just encourage parents, when you’re thinking about faith-filled dialogue, as you said in your question, you don’t have to think that you have to be talking about faith twenty four seven.
(13:08):
You want it to just become part of the normal rhythm of your life that when things come up, that you’re there to say something about it. Or if your kid is struggling with something, instead of just thinking, “I can get to pray about that later.” Tell them, “You know what? I’m going to pray about that later.” Get them inside of your thinking and your processing so that they can see how you’re utilizing your faith and how it applies on a daily basis.
Janel Greig (13:30):
Yeah, that’s great. Great tips. And I think that’s something, that natural rhythm too of that, this is something going on in real life. This is what we’re experiencing and to have that conversation. A proud parent moment yesterday for me, we watched World Watch on the way to school and I usually, I’ll pause that. Let’s talk about that. Tell me. My daughter, Natasha, she paused it, and she said, “Oh, that’s wrong.” And she just started breaking down the argument and it was one of those, it does sink in and it becomes a natural rhythm of how they’re reflecting on what’s going on in the real world. So those are great tips.
One of the questions I’d like to have you elaborate on or go into a little bit is a parent’s heart posture. How important is a parent’s heart posture, attitude, humility, and approach when talking about faith and also answering, one of the things you’re so good at is answering kids’ questions like when those questions come up, how does that heart pasture impact how the kids are hearing or how you’re responding?
Natasha Crain (14:29):
Well, truth is truth regardless of your posture, but truth is going to be received differently depending on that posture. So that’s why it matters, right? It’s the credibility factor. If you’re telling your kids, “We need to be humble and we need to be loving and we need, we need, we need to do all these things,” but then you’re not modeling that, then they’re going to start thinking, “Well, even if what you’re telling me is true, you’re not living it out, so why am I going to live it out? ”
And the older your kids get, the more critical they are going to be of you. I mean, this is just a reality of parenting teens. I don’t know, is it just me, Janelle? No, it’s not. And maybe your kids are not. Okay, wonderful. Well, good to hear. And based on all my conversations with every parent everywhere, this is a universal thing that kids do become more critical of you as you get older.
(15:15):
In fact, I have no official research on this, but it absolutely seems that they pay attention much more to the bad things you do than the good things, the older that they get. They’re going to pick up 80% of the bad and 20% of the good. I mean, that’s how it feels, right?
And so it can be kind of discouraging as a parent to know that, man, I try to model this all the time, but then I mess up and my kids are paying more attention to that, but we have to remember that they’re going to be more critical at that age and eventually they are going to remember the good things. They are going to remember how we deliver those things. And when we mess up, it is so important to be humble enough to say, “Hey, I messed up and I have tried to do that as much as I can.”
(16:02):
I’m a very impatient person. It is my absolute worst trait, 100%. I mean, if you ask my kids individually and my husband, what’s the biggest problem with mom, with my wife? I mean, everyone would say I’m impatient and it’s something, a lifelong work. But when that impatience exhibits itself in ways that are not God honoring, if I’m too fast to anger or if I say things in a way that I shouldn’t have said them, I try my hardest to come back and say, “That was really lame of me. I shouldn’t have said it that way. I’m really sorry.”
And I continually try to model that because we’re never going to model things perfectly. We’re never going to have the perfect heart posture, but we want our kids to see the humility and also to call ourselves out so that they don’t think we think that it was okay what we did.
(16:52):
So yes, we want to have these conversations with the right heart posture, meaning that we’re motivated by love, that we are offering credibility to the truths that we’re sharing so that they are more embraced by our kids and then also take advantage of the opportunities to be as humble as we can when we’re not demonstrating that well.
Janel Greig (17:11):
That’s great. Thank you. All right. Well, we love throwing in a speed round on our podcast here. I know you’re going to love this. It’s our quick fire way.
Natasha Crain (17:19):
I love it already.
Janel Greig (17:21):
I know. It’s our quick fire way to get to know you, to have our listeners get to know you and some fun, quirky stuff about you. So the only rule, Natasha, is to keep your answers short and sweet. So are you ready? I don’t know if I’m ready, but I’m going to try to be. I know these. So early bird or night owl?
Natasha Crain (17:38):
Oh, definitely early bird. Yep.
Janel Greig (17:39):
Yep. Good answer. There are correct answers. Coffee or tea?
Natasha Crain (17:46):
Coffee.
Janel Greig (17:47):
Yep. Favorite book you’ve read in the last year or so?
Natasha Crain (17:52):
Well, the most recent book that I read, I don’t know if it’s my very favorite, but it has really been amazing. It’s called The Strange Death of Europe. It’s from a few years back, but it’s about immigration and how things have changed so much in the demographics and the religious landscape of Europe. Fantastic. That’s not a brief answer, but hard to explain.
Janel Greig (18:11):
I’ll put that on my list. Beach or mountains?
Natasha Crain (18:16):
Mountains.
Janel Greig (18:17):
Mountains. One thing that you always have with you?
Natasha Crain (18:21):
Oh, my cell phone. Yeah. It’s an obvious one, but yes.
Janel Greig (18:25):
What’s your go-to comfort food?
Natasha Crain (18:30):
That’s hard. If I could have it all the time, it would be mashed potatoes. Love it. With gravy? Yes.
Janel Greig (18:37):
Yeah. And the last one, okay, Natasha, this one’s perfect for a last one for you, I feel like. Introvert or extrovert?
Natasha Crain (18:46):
That is so easy to answer. I am an introvert with zero extrovert points. I mean, if I line up with the Myers-Briggs test where the first question is all about getting you to, you’re either an E or an I. I don’t think that it ever thinks that there’s any E about me. I am an introvert.
Janel Greig (19:02):
I love it. Which is such a shock for everyone, I’m sure. You do a great job. You do a great job.
Natasha Crain (19:08):
I talk about being introvert in one of my talks that I do at conferences. And it’s so funny because people always will tell me afterwards, I would never think you’re an introvert. And it’s like, it doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not you can get up on a stage and speak. It has everything to do with where you get your energy. And what I want to tell them is after I’m done talking to people, I go back to my hotel room and put the covers over my head and I’m like, “Okay, I’m going to recover now for two days.” Yes, introvert.
Janel Greig (19:31):
I love it. I love it. With your mashed potatoes, right?
Natasha Crain (19:35):
Yes. Well, that’s ideal.
Janel Greig (19:38):
So getting back to a few more questions for our listeners about equipping them for those conversations, what are some examples of open-ended questions that parents can ask their kiddos to spark meaningful conversations about God?
Natasha Crain (19:53):
Well, one open-ended question that you can always ask, especially like I was talking about earlier with the younger kids when we would do a question tonight is simply, what is your biggest question about God or about Jesus or about the Bible, anything? And the very first time you ask that question, I can almost guarantee you, regardless of your kids’ age, that they will look at you and be like, “Nothing. I’ve got nothing.”
But if you push them a bit and you say, “No, really, if there’s one big question you wish you had an answer to, what would it be?” At some point they’re going to answer and it’s going to tell you a lot about where they are because it might be a very detailed question about the Bible or it could be something so broad as, how do I even know God exists?
(20:34):
And a few years ago, I encouraged people on my author Facebook page to go and ask their kids this question and report back, “What did your kids ask?” And I can’t break down if it was older kids or younger kids mostly at the time that parents were reporting back about, but the number one question that came back was, “How do I know God exists?”
(20:53):
And a lot of parents are surprised by that because they’re thinking their kids are going to ask them in Ezekiel 17, they think they’re going to have some detailed question they could never answer. And in reality, kids are wondering kind of these big picture apologetics questions, and it’s not always that one, but that’s just a big one. So it’s always a good question that you can throw out there. But I think going back to the older kids, if you’re talking about teenagers.
(21:17):
A lot of times teenagers are not in the mood for you to just be like, “Hey, I’ve got a great question for you. What do you think about the genocide of the Canaanites?” And the Old Testament, they’re going to be like, “Oh my gosh, why are you asking me this?” They’re just not going to be open to that most of the time, but that’s where it comes in to tie it to something relevant that’s going on, something that they tell you that somebody said at school, something that a friend is doing, something that they’re hearing about.
It can be anything, but when you see the opportunity when they have introduced a subject to you to say, “Well, what do you think about that?” That is the best opening to getting them to talk and to be hearing about how they’re processing these things. Even if it’s something so simple as they’re telling you about somebody they know at school who is doing something that was really problematic morally, or maybe they’re just throwing out that a friend of mine said that their parents said this to them.
(22:18):
“Okay, what do you think about that?” That can be one of the best questions you ask. “What do you think about that that isn’t so specific, but is getting them to start telling you about their thought process, and that can tell you a lot in terms of how they’re thinking, and then you can take the conversation from there.
Janel Greig (22:33):
Yeah, that’s great.That’s a great question starter for really any interaction, kids or not kids, and works for any age. One of the things, Natasha, that I love about your books and content specifically is how you take complex theological or apologetics concepts and break them down into these everyday practical moments. Often using stories from your own family, just thinking about the many books that you’ve written, there’s Lego examples, there’s ant farm examples, there’s piano lesson examples, just pulling that in and you naturally weave those in a biblical worldview and applying the question.
So for parents who are listening that may think, “That sounds amazing to be able to do that, but I have no idea how to make those connections myself.” How would you encourage them? Where would you point them to start getting equipped so that they can have these meaningful conversations with their kids?
Natasha Crain (23:28):
Well, I think that’s the biggest thing, is that the parents do have to be equipped themselves. So the most common question that I’ll hear from parents when I speak to parent audiences is, ” Okay, so what are some books I can give my kids? “Everyone wants something that they can hand directly to their kids, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I mean, there are some really good books, apologetics books that have been kind of pitched at a younger audience so that kids can read them directly, but that’s a one-time learning experience.
When we’re talking about all of these conversations today and being intentional as a parent, we’re talking about having lifelong ongoing conversations that form a discipleship mode, that’s just the way that you live and it’s integrated into your life. If you’re going to do that, you have to be equipped yourself. So that’s the first thing I would say is for parents who are listening, don’t take for granted what Janel just said about, how do you equip yourself?
(24:16):
You need to make sure you understand that you do need to equip yourself in the first place. And so how do you start with that? Well, there are many books on developing biblical worldview and apologetics. Of course, the books that I’ve written are directly for parents to equip you in this way. There are three of them. They’re Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side, Talking with Your Kids about God, and then Talking with Your Kids about Jesus.
And across those three books, there are a hundred different conversations you can have with your kids, which sounds really overwhelming, I realize. A hundred conversations. That doesn’t mean you have to have all 100 conversations, any specific timeframe, but I think what I found in talking to parents over the years about my books is that as much as the content in the book, it’s been helpful for them to see the kinds of questions in these books.
(25:02):
Because if you haven’t been engaging a lot in these kinds of subjects and you’re not online going back and forth with people who are challenging you and that kind of thing, which most parents aren’t, then you don’t realize what kinds of questions kids have today, what kinds of questions you should be talking about with them over time.
And so even if you don’t have money to purchase a book, go online, go onto Amazon, you can see the table of contents or go to my website, natashacrain.com. And you can see the table of contents for these books. You can look at a hundred different questions that are relevant to what kids should understand in order to develop a confident faith today. And that will start to get you thinking. And then you might feel like, you know what? Okay, maybe I need to go through one of these books.
(25:43):
Or maybe you pick one question that you see on that list and you think, I really don’t know how I would answer the question of how I know that the Bible’s true and how I would tell my kids that. Okay, we’ll go do some research. There is a ton of free content all over online. You can look at, depending on how you learn best, you can go on YouTube or you can listen to a podcast, you can read a book, whatever it is, but just take a next step. You don’t have to be an expert. I want everyone to understand that you do not have to be an expert on these things. You want to be a knowledgeable guide.
(26:14):
And when you start to learn these things, then you take that particular learning and then you weave some conversations into your life with your kids on that, and then you bring them along. You learn, you pass on, you learn, you pass on. It’s a dynamic process over time. So you absolutely can do it. Pick something that you don’t feel like you understand as much as you could and go from there. And it’s completely reasonable.
I mean, we know from the Bible, 1 Peter 3:15, that we should be prepared to give a reason for the hope that is within us. So this isn’t something where it’s like, oh, if you have a master’s degree in apologetics, then you should be able to do this. No, every single one of us should be able to give a reason for that hope that we have. And that includes our kids, especially for our kids, right? We need to pass down our faith to the next generation.
Janel Greig (27:04):
Yep, that’s on point. And that circles back to, it kind of brings it back to your initial opening too of why the conversations are important. If you don’t know what the challenges are, you don’t know how to prepare for it. And I would shout out, Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side is fantastic. Each chapter is bite size. It’s a great place to start for parents to just dive in.
And Natasha, we’re about out of time, unfortunately, because I could keep asking you questions and I think people are just gleaning from you. It’s absolutely fantastic. So thank you for coming on this show for sharing your insights, your stories and expertise today. I know our listeners got a ton of value out of the conversation, but before we do a wrap up, can you let everyone know, let our listeners know where they can find you online, follow your work, check out any of your resources?
Natasha Crain (27:58):
Yeah. My website is NatashaCrain.com and Crain is C-R-A-I-N. And you can find out about my podcast there. It’s The Natasha Crain podcast, very easy to find. And I also just got started on YouTube finally after several years of really resisting it. So if you’re a YouTube person, I don’t promise anything that looks super professional, exciting, but you can follow me on YouTube also.
Janel Greig (28:22):
You’re great. I love it. Natasha, thank you. Thank you for your time today. And listeners, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of Upside Down Parenting. We hope today’s conversation encouraged you to lean into intentional, faith-filled dialogue with your kids and also reminded you that you don’t need all the answers to start meaningful conversations about God. As Natasha shared, it isn’t about being perfect. It’s about showing up with the right heart posture, asking thoughtful questions and creating the space for honest conversations with your kids that help them build a lasting faith over time.
If you found this episode helpful, consider sharing it with another parent who could use some encouragement today. And don’t forget to subscribe so that you never miss a future episode. We’d also love to hear from you. You can reach us at podcast@summit.org. Thanks so much for tuning in. We’ll see you next time.