Customer Reviews

Discover Your Children's Gifts

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book is a great resource for parents. I intend to give copies as baby gifts to new parents, it's just that helpful. With it you will begin to understand your child's strengths, their weaknesses, those "little things they do" that exasperate you. Sometimes, I've learned from this book, that annoying habit is a key to their bent, their greatest strength. It will help you direct their interests, know how to discipline them better, understand their friendships, and communicate with them better.

I found this book a practical and easy to use help in discovering my children's natural giftings and personality traits. It helps explain why their personality "quirks" are really evidences of their own God-given gifts. It helped me better understand them and accept them. I feel I can help guide them better as I understand them better. I can Cooperate with God in helping them live up to their potential, rather than my expectations.

I've found this book very helpful in determining my "gifts" as well as my seven year old son's "gifts." It describes him to a tee! It has been a wonderful tool especially in the area of schooling; it gives good insight into strengths and weaknesses, areas of interest, and why children may do certain things that don't always make sense to us as parents. It certainly gives me more patience when teaching my son as a homeschooler.

My late husband and I used this material to raise our kids. They are both in their 20's now, and very strong Christian men. The amplified version of Proverbs 22:6 "Train up a child in the way he should go {and in keeping with his individual gift or bent}, and when he is old he will not depart from it." lets you in on the idea that we all come out of the womb with different giftings and bents. This book helps you understand your child's gifting or bent early and helps you not make mistakes! My oldest son and I share the Administration gifting. Without this book, we would have butted heads all of his life and I would have done damage to his Compassion gifting. We love to be in each others presence even now as I become a grandmother. His wife also took the test before they were married to help them understand each other. My youngest son shares the Teacher gifting with me, it is the know it all gift. We made it through loving each other more because we also worked on the negative traits together. For the adult, you need the other book "Discover Your God Given Gifts", so that you can take the adult test and grow with your kids in understanding yourself and them.

The book material is great; however, I bought the book used and there was a lot of highlighting, notes, etc. It's condition should have been rated "fair."

Most will find this book to be readable and practical. The information it presents about the gifts should help parents and teachers relate in a productive manner with their children. I have recommended this book for many years and continue to use it in my counseling practice.

This book, and the others in the "gifts" series by the Fortunes, take an errant view of the Spiritual Gifts as presented in the New Testament...certainly dangerous ground to start off on. They begin with scripture in Romans 12:6-8 and re-name the Spiritual Gifts as "motivational gifts." They further claim that all people have them (not all people do, only Christians), and that the gifts are given at conception (they aren't, they are given when a person becomes a believer in Christ). Their research to develop the profiles for each "motivational gift" is based upon a self-completed questionnaire that leaves out any questions about a person's conversion to Christianity, or walk with Christ, and it seems that the surveys were given to the general population, not just born-again believers. Information about leading your child to Christ - a foundational issue related to the Spiritual Gifts - is way back at the back of the book, where it is relegated to a mere sub-section of a larger chapter. In the New Testament, Paul is very clear that the primary purpose for the Holy Spirit's giving of the gifts is for the edification of the church...for Christ's glory, not for self-glory or self-discovery. This book reads somewhat like a horoscope quide to tell you what your child might be good at, what career might be suitable for them, what grades to expect from them in school and subjects they will likely excell in, who they will likely get along with and not, how to discipline them, etc... There is very, very little about what they could do for the body of Christ if these gifts are indeed present in them, and how to help a child find a ministry opportunity. The issue of pinpointing natural, personality traits gets muddled with the possibility of what could be present in a child by supernatural means by the intervention of the Holy Spirit. A MUCH better book regarding the TRUTH about Spiritual Gifts is "19 Gifts of the Spirit" by Flynn. If you want a great combo personality type/Spiritual Gifts survey that does handle this issue of doctrine appropriately, and further gives you ideas of how to find a ministry opportunity to employ your Spiritual Gift, look into the D.I.S.C. profile system. Flee far, far away from this book...if I could give it less than 1 star I would. These books have been around since the 80's, and are in multiple printings...my theory about why that is so is because they tell people what they want to hear, not what is the truth. They are certainly not the first, and I'm sure won't be the last...I'm just sorry I wasted money on it!

I ordered this book, but received "Charles, Prince of Wales" instead. I pointed out the error, but have never received the correct book!

Better than their first effort, and easier to understand, this book explains some of the reason children behave the way they do and how to "train them up in the way *they* should go". Two little quibbles--spanking is not an effective method of *discipline* (discipline's root is disciple--you *don't* hit your students--at least I hope not) and their insistence on putting homosexuality and masturbation on a list of sexual sins. But those are things that can be ignored, and the rest of the book is very well done.