Last week I asked everyone to let me know the very best parenting or child training book they have read. Here are the results:
The book with the most votes was For the Children’s Sake by Susan Schaffer Macaulay. This book was instrumental in shaping my homeschooling philosophy as well. I remember the wonderful educating advice, but I don’t remember that much about child training. So I will have to re-read it.
The second runner up was not actually a book, but a video series by Gary and Marie Ezzo. The name of the series varied: Preparation for Parenthood, and Growing Kids God’s Way. I did look up the Ezzos on amazon.com, and they do have books out. The comments are very divided. I will read these with interest.
The third runner up was Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Ted Tripp. This book has been out a while, and I have heard a lot about it.
Books with more than one vote, but not in the top three, include Hints on Child Training by H. Clay Trumball, The Mother at Home by John S. C. Abbot, and Home Grown Kids by Dr. Raymond and Dorothy Moore.
The book I read when my children were little was Dare to Discipline by James Dobson, a book which received no votes. Disciplining was out of vogue in those days (80s) and most of the books out were about understanding and reasoning with your toddler. !?!! An approach obviously advocated by someone without toddlers of their own.
As our children became teens, we discovered Dr. S. M. Davis and his videos and dvds on biblical family relationships. These are wonderful and would have received my top vote if I was voting. And then, representing the newest generation of parents, my daughter has dog-eared her copies of the parenting books by Dr. William and Martha Sears. So I will add these three: Dare to Discipline by Dobson, the parenting series of videos by Dr. S. M. Davis, and The Complete Book of Christian Parenting and Child Care by Sears, to the six already mentioned; the top three by Macaulay, Ezzo, and Tripp, and the honorable mentions by Trumball, Abbot, and Moore, to evaluate. I will post on my progress through the books.
My plan is to read (or view and takes notes on, as the case may be) these nine recommendations. I will evaluate each of them with a fresh eye, with the Lord’s help, based on agreement with Scriptural principles, and what I have learned about child training, from the real life experience and hindsight angle. I will post my top three recommendations from the nine, and why. Also, I will post why the bottom six did not make the cut. This will take me a few months, so stay tuned! Thank you everyone for participating!
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