The Heritage Household

Should you make your kids share everything?

In this Q&A episode of The Heritage Household Podcast, Marissa Rice answers a practical parenting question that nearly every family faces: What do you do when your children fight over toys?

In our family, we distinguish between communal toys that belong to the whole family and personal belongings that belong to an individual child. But this episode goes far beyond deciding who gets the toy.

These everyday conflicts can become some of the best training grounds for our children.

We talk about teaching children ownership and stewardship, how to ask permission before using something that belongs to someone else, generosity without creating entitlement, reconciliation and restitution when something is damaged, and what to do when siblings simply cannot work out a disagreement.

Marissa also shares how their family approaches sibling conflict using the principles of Matthew 18, why Mom does not need to immediately become the judge of every disagreement, and why sometimes the simplest answer really is, “If you cannot work this out peacefully, the toy goes away.”

We also get into some of the deeper issues that can hide underneath constant bickering: self-control, impulse control, victim mentality, overstimulation, too much unstructured free time, a child who may need more connection with Mom or Dad, and even why having MORE toys can sometimes create more problems instead of fewer.

Because ultimately, the goal isn't simply to raise children who know how to share.

We are raising future adults.

Someday they won't be arguing over a toy. They will be navigating marriage, friendships, workplaces, churches, neighbors, possessions, disagreements, forgiveness, and reconciliation. The ordinary conflicts happening inside our homes today give us an opportunity to prepare them for those relationships tomorrow.

In this episode:

• Should children be required to share their personal toys?
• Communal toys vs. individually owned toys
• Teaching stewardship and responsibility
• Generosity vs. entitlement
• How to teach children to ask permission
• Reconciliation and restitution when something gets broken
• Using Matthew 18 in sibling conflict
• What to do when you don't have time to mediate another toy fight
• Teaching children that “no” is an acceptable answer
• Addressing victim mentality and the words “always” and “never”
• Helping children take responsibility for their own responses
• Self-control, impulse control, and knowing your individual child
• Why overstimulation can increase sibling conflict
• When a struggling child may need more connection
• Why more toys don't necessarily mean less fighting
• Using quiet time and family rhythms to reduce bickering
• Turning ordinary sibling conflicts into opportunities for discipleship

RESOURCES MENTIONED

📖 More Than Virtue by Marissa Rice
A resource for looking beyond outward behavior and considering the heart and character being cultivated in both ourselves and our children.

https://a.co/d/0ei003VJ

📖 The Teachable Heart by Marissa Rice
A resource focused on intentionally developing character qualities in your children.

https://a.co/d/01hg5I6S

🏡 The Heritage Household Blueprint
Coming next month, Lord willing! The Heritage Household Blueprint is designed to help you intentionally think through what you are building in your home, including your beliefs, priorities, family culture, rhythms, and the heritage you hope your children carry into households of their own.

🎧 The Power of Quiet Time
Marissa references the family's practice of quiet time and how giving children space to reset can help create greater peace in the home.

 

THE HERITAGE HOUSEHOLD

The Heritage Household exists to encourage Christian women to faithfully steward their homes and intentionally build households that serve the Lord, not only for today, but for generations to come.

Subscribe to The Heritage Household Podcast for conversations about Christian motherhood, biblical parenting, homemaking, homeschooling, family discipleship, marriage, and building a strong Christian family culture.

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What if one of the best things you could add to your family routine was simply… quiet?

In this episode of The Heritage Household Podcast, I’m sharing why we still practice quiet time in our home with eight children, including older kids and teenagers, and why this simple afternoon rhythm has become such a gift to both my children and me.

We’ll talk about how we transitioned from nap time to quiet time, quiet time baskets for little ones, training children who don’t naturally want to stay quiet, setting clear expectations, separating siblings when needed, and why starting with just 30 minutes may be enough. I’m also sharing why quiet time isn’t only for kids. Through pregnancy, nursing babies, homeschooling, and different seasons of motherhood, this rhythm has given me space to nap, read, work, walk, or simply reset before the second half of the day.

If your afternoons feel chaotic, your children have outgrown naps, or you’re looking for practical Christian homemaking rhythms that bring more peace and order to your home, this episode is for you.

I’ll also share about my book, The Teachable Heart, and why establishing household rhythms requires patient training rather than expecting instant perfection. And at the end, I’ll tell you more about The Heritage Household Blueprint, coming Fall 2026, created to help you intentionally build the rhythms, systems, values, and practices that support a faithful, generationally minded household.

Subscribe to The Heritage Household Podcast for conversations about Christian motherhood, homemaking, homeschooling, family discipleship, household rhythms, and intentionally building a home that serves the Lord.

Does what we wear to church really matter? Can the way we dress for Sunday worship actually influence the way we think, behave, and teach our children to approach the Lord’s Day?

In this episode of The Heritage Household Podcast, Marissa Rice continues the conversation about biblical beauty by asking a potentially controversial question: has our increasingly casual church culture affected our sense of reverence?

Over the years, our family has moved away from dressing casually for Sunday worship and toward intentionally dressing differently for church. Not because dresses, button-up shirts, or suit jackets make us more holy, and certainly not because God loves us more based on what we wear, but because we began to notice something: the way we prepared outwardly was influencing the way we approached worship inwardly.

We’ll talk about Christian liberty, avoiding legalism, teaching children reverence, the influence fathers and church leaders have on family and church culture, and why not every part of life needs to feel casual. We’ll also look at the difference between dressing to impress others and dressing intentionally because something is worthy of honor.

This isn't ultimately an episode about creating a Christian dress code. The bigger question is this: How is your family cultivating reverence for the Lord?

How do our children know that Sunday is different? How do they know worship matters? What are our Saturday-night preparations and Sunday-morning rhythms communicating? And could something as ordinary as laying out our church clothes help remind our families that we are preparing to gather with the saints and worship the living God?

God looks at the heart. Our clothing cannot make us holy. But the ordinary practices of our homes can help shape what our families learn to love, honor, and revere.

I also share about my book More Than Virtue, a short study of Proverbs 31 that looks beyond outward virtue to the heart, character, wisdom, and rightly ordered loves behind a faithful Christian woman’s life.

And at the end of the episode, I’m sharing more about The Heritage Household Blueprint, coming Fall 2026, created to help you intentionally consider your family’s purpose, discipleship, rhythms, responsibilities, stewardship, and household culture as you build a heritage of faithfulness for generations to come.

Subscribe to The Heritage Household Podcast for conversations about Christian motherhood, biblical parenting, homemaking, family discipleship, Christian family culture, biblical womanhood, the Lord’s Day, and faithfully stewarding your home.

Has our culture’s obsession with appearance caused Christian women to become suspicious of beauty itself?

Beauty and vanity are not the same thing. In this episode of The Heritage Household Podcast, Marissa Rice explores a biblical view of beauty, femininity, modesty, and stewardship, and why beauty can actually be a way of serving and refreshing the people around us.

We’ll talk about the difference between worldly beauty and biblical beauty, why modesty is not the rejection of beauty, how our outward lives can reflect an inwardly ordered heart, and why Christian women should resist the culture’s sexualization of feminine beauty.

We’ll also look at beauty within the home, hospitality, caring for our physical bodies, cultivating strength to serve, and the simple ways truth, goodness, and beauty can bring peace and order into everyday family life.

Beauty does not have to say, “Look at me.” It can say, “Let me bless you.”

Plus, I’ll share about my book, The Teachable Heart, and give you a look at The Heritage Household Blueprint, coming Fall 2026, created to help Christian women intentionally steward their homes, families, rhythms, resources, and the heritage they are building.

If this conversation encourages you, subscribe to The Heritage Household Podcast and share this episode with another woman who is faithfully building her home and family.

In this episode: biblical beauty, Christian femininity, beauty vs. vanity, Christian modesty, biblical womanhood, homemaking, hospitality, health and stewardship, motherhood, family discipleship, and building a Christian home.

How do we raise children who can do hard things, persevere when life gets difficult, and respond with biblical character when they fail?

In this episode of The Heritage Household Podcast, Marissa Rice shares a phrase her family has been using at home: character counts twice. Character matters while we are working toward something difficult, but it matters all over again when we fail, face disappointment, or don't receive the outcome we wanted.

As Christian parents, our goal isn't simply to raise children who are successful at childhood. We are preparing future adults, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, church members, homemakers, workers, and faithful followers of Christ. That means our children need opportunities to develop perseverance, diligence, humility, self-control, steadfastness, faithfulness, and courage before they leave our homes.

Marissa shares how homeschooling provides daily opportunities for character development and why her family intentionally studies a biblical character quality each week. By teaching children words such as perseverance, diligence, steadfastness, contentment, humility, and self-control, we give them a biblical vocabulary they can recognize when they encounter these truths in Scripture.

You'll also hear encouragement for resisting the urge to rescue children from every difficulty, allowing natural consequences to become opportunities for discipleship, teaching children to say "I can't do this yet," and helping them understand that hard does not necessarily mean bad.

Because sometimes our children learn more through trying, struggling, failing, repenting, and trying again than they ever could from simply being handed success.

In this episode:
• Why character can matter even more than success
• Teaching children that they can do hard things
• Developing perseverance and grit without promoting self-reliance
• Using biblical character vocabulary in everyday parenting
• How homeschooling can become a classroom for character
• Allowing children to experience appropriate struggle and natural consequences
• Teaching children how to respond to failure and disappointment
• Modeling repentance, perseverance, and humility as mothers
• Preparing children for faithful adulthood instead of merely successful childhoods
• Building an intentional Christian family culture

Resources mentioned in this episode:

More Than Virtue
A short study of Proverbs 31 that looks beyond a checklist of what a virtuous woman does and explores the heart, wisdom, diligence, faithfulness, character, and fear of the Lord behind her life.

https://a.co/d/07YbPQpU

Habits of Grace
A resource created to help children develop the daily habit of studying God's Word while growing in their understanding of Scripture and biblical vocabulary.

https://a.co/d/00BmmbgA

Homeschooling Guide
Marissa also mentions the homeschool resource her family uses to intentionally incorporate weekly character qualities into their homeschool rhythm.

https://raisingrices.com/product/fundamentum-volume-1-a-biblical-foundations-homeschool-guide/

The Heritage Household Blueprint — Coming Fall 2026
The Heritage Household Blueprint is a six-module experience created to help you move from good intentions to an intentional household. Through video teaching and practical workbook exercises, you'll step back and consider your family's mission, culture, discipleship, marriage, home, time, responsibilities, and long-term vision.

The goal isn't to copy someone else's household. The Blueprint is designed to bless and challenge you as you prayerfully consider what faithfulness looks like in the unique household God has entrusted to you.

More details coming Fall 2026.

The Heritage Household
Equipping women to faithfully steward their homes, disciple their children, strengthen their families, and build a heritage that serves the Lord for generations to come.

The advice every Christian mom hears about "just managing the house" is too small. Your home is not a checklist,  it's a legacy in motion, and Marissa Rice is naming the bigger mission behind it.

After years of sharing under Raising Rices, Marissa introduces the new Heritage Household vision and explains why this rebrand is more than a new name. She lays out the heart behind the podcast: helping women move beyond survival mode and into intentional stewardship of marriage, motherhood, homemaking, hospitality, homeschooling, and family culture.

You'll discover:

• Why "household" is bigger than motherhood or homemaking alone
• How stewardship changes the question from "How do I build the life I want?" to "What has God placed in my hands?"
• The difference between building systems and building people
• Why ordinary, repetitive faithfulness matters more than picture-perfect family life
• How to think generationally about what your children receive, carry, and pass on

Marissa also unpacks the biblical meaning of heritage, showing how Scripture reframes the way we think about children, family rhythms, and the daily work of a Christian home. From chores and meals to family worship, discipline, and hospitality, she makes the case that every ordinary moment is shaping something far bigger than today.

If you've ever felt buried under the endless to-do list of family life, this episode will lift your eyes. It's a fresh, honest invitation to see your home as a place of mission, discipleship, and multigenerational faithfulness.

Perfect for Christian women, homeschooling moms, homemakers, and anyone longing to build a home where the Lord is known and served.

How do you build family rhythms that actually work for your household—not someone else's?

In Part 2 of this series on family rhythms, Marissa Rice moves from the “why” behind household rhythms to the practical “how.” Instead of copying another mom's schedule or trying to overhaul your entire household overnight, you'll learn how to identify what matters most to your family and create simple anchors that give those priorities a regular place in your days and weeks.

Marissa shares practical examples for creating household anchors around family meals, Scripture, family worship, marriage, evening resets, homeschooling, rest, and connection. She also discusses why your family's rhythms should change with different seasons of life and why adjusting a routine that no longer works isn't failure—it's faithful stewardship.

Whether you're navigating babies and toddlers, homeschooling, teenagers, work responsibilities, marriage, ministry, or simply a very full household, there is no single perfect Christian family schedule. Biblical principles remain the same, but wisdom helps us determine how to faithfully live those principles within the particular household God has entrusted to us.

You'll also be encouraged to resist the temptation to change everything at once. Choose one anchor. Practice it faithfully. Then build from there. Small acts of ordinary faithfulness, repeated over years, can shape an entire household.

And there is a BIG announcement in this episode: Raising Rices is becoming The Heritage Household Podcast!

Marissa shares more about the heart behind the rebrand and the bigger vision God has been developing through years of conversations about Christian motherhood, homemaking, homeschooling, marriage, parenting, family worship, stewardship, hospitality, and intentional living.

You'll also get a first look at The Heritage Household Blueprint, launching this fall. The Blueprint is being created to help Christian women step back from the endless demands of everyday life, establish biblical direction for their families, and intentionally build households that serve the Lord.

If you're a Christian mom looking for practical encouragement on family routines, biblical homemaking, Christian parenting, family discipleship, intentional motherhood, homeschooling, marriage, household management, or creating a peaceful Christ-centered home, this episode is for you.

Your rhythms aren't the mission. They're tools that help your family live your convictions.

One anchor. One act of faithfulness. One day at a time. That's how we build a heritage that can last for generations.

How do you create a peaceful, intentional Christian home when there is always more laundry, another meal to make, children who need you, homeschool lessons to finish, and unexpected interruptions?

In this episode of the Raising Rices Podcast, Marissa Rice shares why healthy family rhythms can be more helpful than rigid schedules—and why the goal of biblical homemaking isn't getting everything done. It's faithfully stewarding the people, relationships, responsibilities, and opportunities God has entrusted to you.

Marissa shares practical examples from her own household, including morning rhythms, Habits of Grace, family meals, homeschooling, family worship, Sunday rest, marriage, and intentionally creating margin for meaningful conversations with your children.

You'll also hear an important reminder for moms who love productivity and intentional living: biblical homemaking is not hustle culture with a Christian label. Our schedules should serve our relationships, not cause us to steamroll the very people we're trying to love and disciple.

In this episode, we'll talk about creating household anchors, building margin into your days, protecting your marriage and family relationships, prioritizing family discipleship, and evaluating whether your daily rhythms actually reflect what you say your family values.

And as Raising Rices gets closer to becoming The Heritage Household Podcast, Marissa shares more about the heart behind the transition: helping Christian women move beyond simply managing their homes and begin intentionally building households rooted in biblical faithfulness, discipleship, stewardship, and long-term vision.

If you're a Christian mom looking for practical encouragement in homemaking, homeschooling, motherhood, family discipleship, household routines, biblical productivity, or creating a peaceful home, this episode is for you.

Be sure to follow the podcast so you don't miss Part 2 of this family rhythms series—or the upcoming transition from Raising Rices to The Heritage Household Podcast.

In Part 2 of this series on raising children to steward responsibility, Marissa moves from the biblical foundation to the practical application of building a family team. Discover why household responsibilities are about far more than getting work done—they are opportunities to shape character, cultivate faithfulness, and prepare children for adulthood.

In this episode, Marissa shares why not every chore should be paid, how to teach children the difference between family responsibilities and opportunities to earn money, and why serving one another is a vital part of Christian discipleship. Through stories from her own family and farm, she explains how meaningful work gives children purpose, builds confidence, and helps them become faithful stewards of everything God has entrusted to them.

If you've ever wondered whether it's easier to simply do everything yourself, this conversation will encourage you to think long-term. Every towel folded, meal prepared, animal cared for, and act of service is helping shape the men and women your children are becoming.

You'll also hear about the upcoming launch of The Heritage Household Blueprint, a brand-new course and workbook designed to help Christian families build intentional, Christ-centered homes where faith, responsibility, and discipleship flourish for generations to come.

Topics include Christian parenting, biblical stewardship, family teamwork, raising responsible children, teaching children to work, chores and character, family discipleship, biblical homemaking, intentional parenting, preparing children for adulthood, and building a Christ-centered household.

In this first episode of a two-part series, Marissa shares why Christian parents should focus on raising contributors instead of consumers. Children were not created simply to be entertained, served, or kept comfortable. They were created to grow in responsibility, faithfulness, service, and stewardship.

This episode explores the biblical purpose of work, why household responsibilities are an important part of discipleship, and how chores can become one of God’s classrooms for building character. Marissa also explains why parents must think beyond childhood and intentionally prepare their children for adulthood.

You will hear practical encouragement for building a family team, assigning age-appropriate responsibilities, teaching children to notice needs, and helping them understand why their work matters. Whether your children are toddlers, teenagers, or somewhere in between, this episode will encourage you to begin training them to faithfully steward what God has placed in their care.

If it feels easier to do everything yourself, this conversation will help you step back, think long-term, and remember that the goal is not merely getting the work done. The goal is raising capable, Christ-centered adults who know how to serve their families, churches, workplaces, and communities.

Topics include Christian parenting, biblical responsibility, children and chores, raising capable kids, family teamwork, stewardship, discipleship in the home, teaching children to work, preparing children for adulthood, and building an intentional Christian household.