Do you know my friend, Desiré from When You Rise? If you don’t, you need to:) She is guest posting here today. Desiré shares my heart and passion for teaching our children about Jesus and the only gospel that saves. In today’s post, she puts words to my own thoughts about all the parenting books that are out there.
“Do A, B and C and you’ll have a new kid by Tuesday!”
So I try… and I don’t.
<Sigh>
Parenting books can leave me so discouraged. They often lead me to believe that I’m either a) not consistent enough with the “method” or b) my child is worse than most or c) I stink as a parent in general.
I like to read. A lot. But in the past few years I’ve become increasingly picky about what I read. If that “good advice” found in a lot of parenting books isn’t tempered with solid, biblical truth, it can leave this mama deflated and defeated.
I know why I’m drawn to them. I’m practical. I like people to give me a list of what to do and exactly how to do it. But for some reason it’s hit me in a very real and fresh way the last few weeks why it might be the wiser choice to avoid books that offer lots of methods and promise results. Why?
First, results are limited.
While most of the parenting books I’ve read have some helpful insight, no parenting tactic is fool proof. When I first started to discipline my oldest son, Isaac, I relied heavily on some books that offered the “right way” to do it. While there was good advice and helpful approaches, I found myself feeling like a failure on a regular basis because, try as I may, I began to feel like a drill seargant trapped by my own set of rules. I would see some results and then throw my hands up in exasperation when he would regress. So I’d look for the next parenting book that offered results using a different method. Maybe theirs would work.
Second, they don’t usually have the right goal in mind.
These books do have their place. Honestly, I’ve gleaned creative ideas for helping to correct children with various bents from books of these kinds. It’s not using the discipline methods that are wrong, it’s the goal.
And what exactly is the goal in the overwhelming majority of these books?
Kids who behave.
Okay, so I absolutely want my kids to obey me and do the right thing. It makes my life easier and makes them more likely to be productive members of society someday. Those are both good things. Christian books often go at it from the angle of doing what God tells us to do. And that’s not bad… necessarily…
What I’ve found is that something MAJOR is missing from many popular parenting books.
My child’s heart.
What if I found a “method” that worked beautifully for one of my boys? What then? They act appropriately and obey in most situations. Yay! But that doesn’t do them a bit of good in the long run apart from Jesus Christ. They could be the most moral, obedient, submissive child on the planet, but apart from a Savior their good works gain them nothing.
I’m convinced that pointing my kids to Christ is the best parenting “method.” But much to the dismay of my practical personality (and crazy love for my boys), results can’t be promised with this method.
Results can’t be promised when a real life human being’s heart is involved. I don’t have any guarantees over God’s work in their lives. There are some encouragements like, “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Pr. 22:6). But Proverbs is not a book of promises. This verse is a truism (meaning it’s typically true or likely to happen), but not a guarantee. We’ve probably all known people who’s kids have gone astray despite their upbringing, not because of it.
That’s why I now run from parenting books that promise results. I’m not going to give you a long list of books that I could bash or pick apart, but instead direct you to a few books that have been encouraging to me in embracing a Christ-centered mindset that parents to the heart. (And by the way, there are things that could be debated and argued in these books as well, but they’ve all helped shape some aspect of my parenting and I think they’re worth a read):
Give Them Grace by Elyse Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson
Loving the Little Years by Rachel Jankovic
Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp
(You can read reviews for all of these books on When You Rise under the Resources page if you’d like to know more about them.)
So, I read and I strive to parent well and I ask God to give me his eyes to see their heart the way he does. To remember to look past the behavior (bad or even good!) and point them to Jesus as I discipline. I pray that my methods will be shifted to a mindset that desires to point my kids to their Savior.
Desiré is married to her best friend Matt and gets to be “Mommy” to Isaac (4) and Silas (almost 3) with a Caleb joining the mix in just a few weeks. She loves chocolate, running (when she’s not gigantically pregnant) and reading! She blogs at When You Rise, a site dedicated to sharing fun ideas for teaching kids the Bible as well as sharing the lessons God is teaching her on this parenting journey. You can find her on Facebook and Pinterest as well.
A friend just recommended me “loving the little years” and I liked what she told me of that mother’s heart. I love “the discipline book” by dr sears as there are so many practical tips. I also don’t entirely believe that smacking is biblical, at least not in the way we recommend it these days (I interpret the rod verses with the context of the deuteronomy example of the age/method/reason for corporal punishment). I TOTALLY agree on what you said about books having the primary goal of teaching obedience rather than the love for Jesus that will inspire future obedience, and our primary goal as parents
Thanks, Gem! And I second your friends recommendation of “Loving the Little Years.” I felt like I got to be a fly on the wall in some of the messy stories of her life and some of the wisdom she shared I used daily in my parenting (especially her chapter about sharing).
Hmm, just read that over. Looks like I am ready for bed, that was hard to understand! Ha!
I completely agree! What’s more, I have three boys and one of them has autism. I’ve determined that a book needs to be written that addresses the heart of an autistic child. “Typical” how-to’s just don’t address these kids. And like you said, the goal is all about their behavior. I want to affect change in my child’s HEART, and there are NO books out there that address this issue for parents who have special needs children. So… I’m writing one!
Not a how-to, just our own story. I’m happy to say that I feel there is some merit in what I have to say because just a couple weeks ago, my 7 year old son with autism decided on his own that he wanted to pray and ask Jesus to take away all of his sin and live happy forever with Him. 5 years ago at diagnosis when he could not speak, I did not think that God could break through the wall of autism, though He authored it in my son’s life. God is much bigger than autism, or any of our stubborn hearts walled by sin. So glad I am not the only one who feels this way about parenting books!
What a great testimony! I pray God uses your book for his glory and to encourage many Christian families!
This is such a struggle for me as well. Especially since I am a learner…a forever student. I love to read and gain ideas. I see how I can be prone to want to follow what I read as a prescription. However, I’m slowly learning to allow the things I read to just create a toolbox for me to pull from should it be necessary. Because every child is different. I only have one right now, but I used to teach and know from that experience that what worked for one didn’t always work for another. I have two right now that are my favorites. The first is Family Driven Faith by Voddie Baucham which does a great job of explaining what a Christian (God-centered) Worldview looks like and how to create a family environment that encourages God-centeredness. The other is Wild Things: the art of nurturing boys by Stephen James and David S. Thomas. I have a son. I did not have any brothers. I need some advice on boys. I just love this book!!! It really dissects the makeup of boys-as God created them. It gives practical tips with LOTS of true life stories to go along with them. BUT-the whole time they consistently reinforce that every boy is different. There is no one way to do it. And while most boys will go through similar stages of development, they won’t all do it on the same timeline. This book really provides me with great tools to pull out as I need them, if I need them without ever giving a “prescription”!
My husband has a favorite called The Modern Day Knight which is about dads banding together to raise sons to be real men of God. It was incredibly inspirational to my husband as a father.
Thanks for this Desire. It can be so hard to keep in mind. Especially right now with our son. He’s 1 1/2. Right now I mostly have to ask him to obey for the sake of obedience. He’s not quite ready for me to explain how this relates to Jesus, yet. And it can feel like I’m just wanting good behavior. I pray that is never the case for us. I pray that we saturate our lives with “God-talk” so that he never seeks “only” to behave. And a concept in the Family Driven Faith book that was helpful to me (my paraphrase): our children will not learn to obey God if we don’t teach them to obey us. I pray that I always expect obedience with this in mind!
Thanks for the recommendations. I love your use of the word “toolbox.” What a great way to emphasize that we don’t have to throw the baby out with the bath water.
There are so many good parenting books out there but I agree, so many I quickly discard. First, I don’t read any general parenting book that isn’t from a Christian perspective. Why bother? There’s so much good material by Christian authors. Second, I quickly dismiss any book that gets bogged down in preferences (ie. you have to cloth diaper, be a vegetarian and homeschool to raise godly children) instead of focusing on the absolutes (ie. we want to raise children who love God, others, and themselves). My husband and I lead many parenting workshops and retreats. At these talks we recommend the following books: Family Vocation by Veith, Parenting by the Book by Rosemond, Raising a Modern Day Knight by Lewis, Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Tripp, and Generation to Generation by Rice. We are also adoptive parents so have several favorites in this category that we reference often. Unfortunately, on this subject, there is very little from Christian authors on how to parent wounded children so we have to utilize secular research. On this topic we recommend: Wounded Children, Healing Homes by Schooler, The Connected Child by Purvis, Parenting the Hurt Child by Keck, and Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew by Eldridge
I agree. Preferences can often get muddled with the absolutes and come across as mandates. Thanks for the book recommendations!
Amen sister! I love all the books you mentioned, but even have to take those with a grain of salt. I always said that if Tripp’s wife wrote his book it would be better!
LOL! Love this post and the encouragement to seek out God’s ways ourselves over someone else’s interpretation of God way’s.
“Parenting is Heart Work” video series and book is really great.
You named probably-my-top-3
We love “Everday Talk” by Younts as well…
In the middle of Rachel’s new book…it’s good too.
Great post and I agree!
I have read 2 out of 3 of the ones you recommended, and I wholeheartedly agree with the rest of your post. I’ve been coming to the conclusion lately that formulaic parenting is not God’s design….for a reason. Formulas are a little neat package of DIY material we apply to our lives, and when we get everything handled on our own, we no longer need God.
But, it’s really hard to keep the long view in mind when you have toddlers and pre-schoolers, and so much of the expectation is on outward obedience….I could go on such a tangent about this…but it’s an everyday battle for me to set aside my fear of man issues, and faithfully go after the hearts of our boys.
I’ve also been having a lot more success with my 4 year old since I’ve been reading “The 5 Love Languages of Kids” and trying to express love to him in the ways he seems to receive it best.