Customer Reviews

The Faithful Parent: A Biblical Guide to Raising a Family

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

 

 

Those of you who are familiar with The Exemplary Husband, by Stuart Scott and The Excellent Wife by Martha Peace will be interested to know that Scott and Peace have teamed up to come out with a third volume. The Faithful Parent: A Guide to Raising a Biblical Family is the title of this new volume. As helpful as the previous two titles have been for marriage and family issues/counseling, this latest book is just as helpful.

The purpose of the book, as the title indicates, is to provide a guide for raising a biblical family. If this was the goal, then Scott and Peace accomplished the goal. This book is filled with biblical principles as well as practical examples of how those principles are played out in everyday life. This is a book that, as a parent, I benefitted from. And it is a book that, as a pastor, I will recommend to parents.

Scott and Peace set the tone for the book by providing the biblical basis for faithful parenting. maybe the most important point made in this section of the book is that "The goal for the Christian parent is to be faithful to God's Word by his grace and for his glory. You see, in Christ we have the great hope that we can be faithful whether our children are faithful or not." (4) They also point out that "faithfulness, not perfection, is rewarded by the Lord." (5) This is a helpful reminder for parent, myself included. Theologically we would frown upon pragmatism, however we often become pragmatist looking for results in the realm of parenting. The authors do a good job of helping the reader to focus on faithfulness to God, and then to trust God with the results.

After providing the biblical basis for faithful parenting the authors spend the bulk of the book focusing on "the everyday life." (chapters 3-8) In this section the authors dedicate a chapter to each stage of development in a child's life, and provide very reasonable advice for each stage. For example, speaking about disciplining an infant, the authors point out that

Just because babies cannot talk does not mean they cannot learn to listen and obey. They are always able to comprehend more than they can express verbally. Because of this, parents need to teach their babies "no" from the beginning. (44)

This is just one example of the age appropriate advice that is found throughout the book.

There were not a lot of weakness in this book. However, two small items did stand out to me. First, the authors gave some excellent advice on the specifics of spanking, however they did not speak much on the issue of spanking (i.e. why you should do it). Not a big deal, but I thought it might have been helpful for those families trying to work through the issue. Second, and this is really "nitpicky", at times the two author dynamic made the writing style a little clunky.

The strength of this book lies in its ability to deal with biblical principles and how those principles play out in everyday life. Some book are really good at bringing out the principles of Scripture, but they don't provide much in the area of how those principles should change our lives. Other books are really good a providing lots of helpful tips, but don't do a good job of using Scripture (these are more dangerous). However, this book did both, and did it well.

Scott and Peace do a wonderful job of showing the biblical principles of parenting. The job of a parent is to be faithful to parent as God directs us to. Nothing more or less. Particularly helpful is the help given with concern to different age groups. There is much help and hope with this resource. Easy to read. Very useful. You will want to keep it close.

Three word description:

Simple

Biblical

Practical

This is just solid biblical advice for parenting. But it's not just theory - Peace and Scott get practical by walking through the development stages of the child and giving specific biblical advice as well as personal suggestions in dealing with that stage. And the resources toward the end of the book are priceless.

I was introduced to the writing of Martha Peace when I read The Excellent Wife last year. At that time I was on a journey to become a more Godly wife and mother, and the book made a huge impact on me. It is very evident that God is working through the writing and speaking ministry of Martha Peace. After my experience of reading The Excellent Wife, I went out and bought Scott's book, The Exemplary Husband as a gift for my husband. I have not been disappointed in either book. As you might guess, I was very excited to find out they had teamed up to write a parenting book.

The Faithful Parent is not your everyday "how to guide" to parenting. There are already an over-abundance of those types of books on the market. I would go so far as to say it is a "how to" for the spiritual component of your family life. One of the biggest things I took away from The Faithful Parent is that it does not matter how much I tell my children about God, if they don't see my life modeling what I am saying, it's not going to mean a thing! Yes, my relationship with my children and my husband are important (and so they should be) but it is my relationship with God that is to be number one. This point is mentioned on a number of occasions throughout The Faithful Parent.

One thing that I absolutely loved about this book is that it gave practical and everyday ideas and tips for each stage of parenting - infant, toddler, preschool, school age and teen years. There is something in this book for all parents. There are a lot of issues covered, from spanking to temper tantrums and more, and though I did not agree with everything the authors said, I felt overall the book was great.

The authors also used a lot of scripture to back up their thoughts, which I truly appreciated. Very easy to read, very well organized and a book that you will reference for years to come and throughout all your parenting challenges that will come.

If you are looking for a detailed, thoroughly Biblical book on parenting, I highly recommend this book!

What I like the most is how practical a Biblical approach can be. The book doesn't simply quote a bunch of statistics on children, but spends more time mapping out practical and usable principles that work in the raising of children. It requires Christian parents to embrace the worldview that is an integral part of their faith. If you are looking for a "10 easy steps" book you have come to the wrong place, but if you are a committed Christian parent desiring Biblical guidance this would be a great place to start.

The first step you as the parent must decide before reading this book is if you simply want a quick fix to make your parenting life easier (which will ultimately fail), or if you desire to guide your child's heart through slow, consistent, and Biblical direction.

I am highly recommending this book to parents and even potential parents!

[...]

I try to always read any book that I give as a gift or a "pass it on". I did find this book helpful and have passed it on to a young Mom.

I had high hopes for the book since it was written by

authors with great books of their own. Personally,

I found Voddie Baucham Jr's "Family Driven Faith" more

useful.Family Driven Faith: Doing What It Takes to Raise Sons and Daughters Who Walk with God

The Faithful Parent by Martha Peace and Stuart Scott has a very cute cover. Who doesn't like seeing a bunch of shoes (in pretty neat order) on a hardwood floor. Makes me envision children in the home, playing and having fun. I liked the cover, but then we all know, never judge a book by its cover.

This book started out well. The authors stress the importance of teaching scripture to our children, of teaching them the saving grace of Jesus, who He is, how He loves us and how we are to worship, honor, and love Him. My initial impressions were that this is not your typical parenting book out today. This book stresses the importance of children developing a relationship with God rather than academic or athletic excellence. A faithful parent will teach their children scripture and encourage their children to have a relationship with God. I agree with that wholeheartedly!

Things were going fine with the book up until the spanking section. When the authors suggested that parents give a little "pop" to an infant for discipline, that's when they lost me. (They gave an example of a mother "popping" her 6 month old daughter while on the changing table) I could never get past it and it haunted me for the rest of the book. I can not imagine spanking an infant and I can't fathom that hitting an infant is biblical.

Strike two came when the authors started to dispense medical advice. They suggest that women should not take Reglan to increase breast milk production because they could "possibly go berserk and develop some psychiatric disease". This is based on their experience of meeting 3 mothers who appeared to develop anxiety after taking Reglan. I think it is inappropriate for them to draw that kind of conclusion from a population of 3.

The advice given by the authors is a mixed bag. Some of it is good and practical and some of it is not, such as "if your teen drives an automobile, you might want to consider one that does not go super fast." What does that mean? Most cars these days go fast, even the older ones. I won't waste your time with other examples.

While the authors intentions are good, I can not recommend this book. This is disappointing to me because I love the idea of teaching our kids about Jesus and making that our number one priority as a parent. This book attempted to get that message across, but failed to deliver.

This book was received free from P & R Publishing for review.