All Time Favorite Parenting Books

My journey into parenting books started where most parents start.  What to Expect When You’re Expecting.  Oh, I hate that book now.  Well, maybe not hate.  There’s just so many better books on pregnancy and birth out there.  So.  Many.  But back then I devoured it.  I wanted to know all there was to know.  It did have some interesting things on developmental growth in pregnancy, and a bit about what to expect during birth…sort of.  I think from there I read books about baby sleep habits, how to train them, how to do this, and how to do that.

But really, my interest in parenting books skyrocketed to a new level when my kids hit the toddler years.  The big “how on earth to I discipline this little monster” question was paramount.  That was followed by a lot of method books.  How to get your child to do this, how to get your child to do that.  Since we are Christians, the vast majority of them were “what the Bible says about” getting your child to do this or that.  Some were written by pastors, some by Christian psychologists.  But they all had the same thing in common: child behavior.

I think that’s where I got stuck for so long.  That’s where I really started to struggle with what I was reading.  Of course somethings haven’t changed.  I still want my kids to obey, and I still train them to listen to me.  But there was this subtle message in all those books I read back then: get your child to obey so that they can know God.  If your child doesn’t respect you, they will never respect God.  Your child’s soul depends on you teaching them how to obey.

The gospel was in none of it.  Your children’s salvation depended entirely on their obedience, which is a totally different story that what we tell adults.  It was training your children to a works-based faith.  I increasingly felt like a fraud, as I expected my children to be more disciplined than me, make less mistakes than me, hold to a higher standard than me.  All of these books said it was possible if I were just consistent enough.  I saw my kids start to be discouraged constantly.

Then I reached a point of being afraid to share the gospel.  The very idea of saying “God died for all your sins” felt like it would open up pandora’s box in a child’s mind.  It felt like a lack of consistency.  Does that mean all consequences are gone?  Does that mean that rules don’t matter anymore?  Does that mean that it doesn’t matter what I do, since Jesus is already good?

Basically, I was having trouble balancing the “Law and the Gospel” in my home, as we Lutherans call it.  Those are 2 common themes we see in the Bible, not negating one another but completing one another through the cross.  Even then, I had trouble finding any guidance for me in this issue.  All I read was “Keep correcting.  Be consistent.  Expect obedience.  Punish disobedience.”  While these are not bad things to do, it was completely lacking in the grace I wanted my kids to see.  All parenting books I found were law based.  All the grace-based parenting books were looked on as…lenient.

It started to feel more and more like my home was this test tube, or little world for this “law and gospel” theory to be played out, but the gospel part scared me, because I felt like if I let that in, I’d lose all control.  It was like this rubber-meets-the-road part of our theology.

I have in the last few years found a treasure trove of books that have greatly influenced me, and encouraged me along this journey.  I’ll warn you, these are not method-books.  They will not train your kids how to be perfect.  They will train you to lean more on God and his Word as you parent.  You could say they are more parent-training books than child-training books.

It’s taken me a few years to realize that I am responsible to God for how I act as a parent, and my kids are responsible to God for how they act as a child.  My job is to train.  Their job is to obey.  My job is not to manipulate them to obey.  It’s to train.  It’s a subtle but important difference.  Manipulation just gives the appearance of obedience, while training actually gets to the heart of disobedience and is transformative.

Do you want to know my favorites?

The Ministry of Motherhood by Sally Clarkson

This book is underlined, dog-eared, and re-read.  It profoundly influenced my heart.  While so many books focus on obedience, this book focuses on discipleship.  It gives a clear outline of how Jesus discipled the 12, and gives example to how this could apply to discipling young children.  My favorite was when the author, Sally, asked her husband, Clay, in frustration, “When are the kids going to stop doing this!!!  When are they going to get it?” to which her husband said, “I’m not sure.  What age was it exactly when you stopped sinning?”

Bam.  This.  Your kids are sinners, just like you.  You cannot fix that.  You cannot manipulate that out of them.  There’s a greater power than you out there that deals with sin.  Our ministry, our calling, our purpose is to train the child while they are still sinners.  Not get them to stop being sinners so that we may present them to God.  Not get to the good stuff, and the gospel and whenever when they have their act together.  It’s loving them where they are at, teaching them where they are at, and serving them where they are at, while they are still sinners.  It doesn’t mean they are never disciplined or civilized.  It means we need to know what we can do, and the spirit in which we should do it.  It’s all about discipleship.

Parenting is Heart Work by Dr. Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller

This book met me in a very discouraging time and was inspiring and healing for me.  While they encourage you to train your child to obey, they say flat out that teaching them to obey is surface work, and God has called us to something deeper with our children.  It’s not mean the surface work is ignored, it means you need to go beyond that.  While some may say it’s hard enough to control their actions, to have to control their hearts seems an unattainable feat, the answer would be yes, and yes.  We are to guide their actions, and guide their hearts.  That is the whole point.  But more importantly, how do you reach that deep heart level, and where does the Holy Spirit come into all of this?

It’s a must read.  I will read this book at least 5 more times before my kids are grown.

Heartfelt Discipline by Clay Clarkson

I’m going to come right out and admit that Knut put this one on the list.  I haven’t had a chance to read it yet.  I bought it for him at a conference, and he has been soaking it in for over a year, marking it, and pondering.  I haven’t had a chance at it yet.  He says it’s the best book on Biblical discipline he has ever read.  It’s not so much a method, or how-to book as much as it is a scholarly dive into what the Bible has to say about discipline.  It’s not an easy-application, grab a truth-nugget and go on your way book.  The impression that I get from Knut is that God’s command for parents to discipline their children is broader, deeper, more involved than the simplistic, legalistic formulas that contemporary Christian culture craves and loves to embrace.

I think that’s because Mr. Clarkson had more than one out-of-the-box kids, and asked God what he had to say about that, when so many in their Christian community told them to follow the formulas that all the other parents in church were using.  Those formulas didn’t help his kids, and he felt like clinging to the formula was missing what God intended and hurting his kids, and wrote this book out of his study of “what is God’s plan for discipline” without any cultural expectation overhang on it.  If you want Knut’s favorite?  He’ll shove this one in your hands.  When he finished reading it, he asked me to buy 5 copies to keep on hand just to give to people.  (We might just be shove-books-in-peoples-hands people.)

Age of Opportunity by Paul David Tripp

OK, I’m going to admit, I didn’t get that excited with “Shepherding a Child’s Heart” for younger children.  It turns out that’s a different Mr. Tripp.  Maybe they’re brothers.  At any rate, this book, by this Mr. Tripp is great.  It was recommended to us by one of our pastors.  It is geared towards raising teens, and it was recommended to us by one of our pastors.  I’m so glad he mentioned it because I think it falls in line with this whole heart-training thought, but with some fresh guidance in the developmental brain of “What to Expect.”  As we have a wonderful pre-teen in the house, and we feel like we have no idea what we are doing in this new phase, and it’s scary, this book makes it so much less scary and so much along the lines of taking advantage of every opportunity to disciple your kids, and discipleship at this age looks like this…

It hasn’t made parenting easy.  But it’s made it less scary, and I feel more equipped.  I’m pretty sure parenting is tough no matter how you slice it.

This book is very practical, Biblical, without falling into some kind of formulaic, legalistic trap.

What’s funny about this book is that it was recommended to us by one of our pastors, who does not homeschool his children.  It was written by Mr. Tripp who does not homeschool his children, nor was he endorsing it.  And yet the whole time I read it, it felt like I was reading a homeschooling book.  I’ve read dozens of homeschooling books and I kept forgetting this wasn’t one.  It talks about how the home is the central educational community for a family.  It’s so good and so grounded, wherever your child attends school.