Parenting is Heart Work

Recently the National Center for Biblical Parenting began a new initiative to launch parent training centers in local churches, and I wanted to help. As a part of that initiative, I was given a copy of the book Parenting is Heart Work to review and to share my thoughts about, and so that’s what I’m doing today.About the BookParenting is Heart Work is the fundamental cornerstone of the National Center for Biblical Parenting’s work on heart-based parenting. Turansky and Miller begin by devoting the first four chapters to understanding the heart. They discuss the nine different functions of the heart over the course of two chapters. Then, they discuss the strong-willed versus the unmotivated child and how to make modifications for each child. The final chapter in this section discusses how to spot what is inside your children’s heart by their speech, behavior and interests.So, you might be wondering, why is there so much emphasis on the heart? It’s because there are over 750 verses in the Bible that mention the heart, and a careful study the Bible quickly reveals that a person’s heart is their deepest spot you can reach a person and that it’s the center of their lives. However, as parents, Turansky and Miller think that we make a critical mistake. In their words:Instead of working on the heart, many parents settle for simply changing their children’s behavior. After all, you can see behavior and, most of the time, you can control it.So, Turansky and Miller make a strong case for the importance of the heart in children’s behavior and reaching the heart.The second section of the book is called Connecting with the Heart. Throughout this section, Turansky and Miller discuss the importance of emotions. They discuss having emotions, the place of emotions, making emotional connections with your children and the different levels of connection that can take place in conversation. By the end of this section, you’ll have a good handle on what the purposes of emotions are and how they figure into our heart issues and those of our children.The third sections of the book is called Working Out Heart Change. In this section, Turansky and Miller discuss how the things we say to ourselves become what our heart is made up of. These things that we say to us are in substance the feelings, thoughts and emotions that our hearts have. As a part of this, they also discuss how, as parents, we can teach the heart without discouraging our children. The give us tools for giving children things they need to meditate on to effect heart change. They also share with us how to use the Bible as a primary tool in effecting this heart change.The final section of the book is called Touching Your Child’s Heart. This section addresses correction as a tool for heart change, repentance, confession and how to manage a child who needs a break to clear their emotions and be ready for heart change.My Thoughts on the BookEven before I got out of the introduction of this book, I knew that it was going to be a book that was valuable for me. I loved the illustration of Aaron with the breastplate given in the introduction. Thanks to it, my new resolve is to never say that my children are getting on my nerves again, but to instead always place them over my heart and cover them with prayer.I think that I’ve also always thought that my children’s problems were “their problems,” and I never stopped to consider how I had to turn to them first. I’ve never realized that I can’t expect my children to turn their hearts to me if I haven’t turned my hearts to them first.Another thing that I realized is that far too often, I’ve fallen into a justice mode of parenting because I thought that was what I was supposed to do. I thought that I wasn’t doing my job if I didn’t set up punishments for for things that my children have done wrong. I’m not saying that I’ll never use a consequence again. What I am saying is that sometimes, in my thought that I needed to use a punishment for me to be effectively teaching my children, I’ve ended up alienating them from me, and I’ve ended up driving them further into their sinful behavior.I’ve also far too often fallen into the trap of emotionally responding to an emotional child and saying things that I’ll regret forever just because we both were mad. I will be leaning on God for help in not making those inappropriate responses again. I will also never sacrifice my relationship with my children just on the altar of getting my to-do list done, in having a cleaner house or making it to an appointment on time.This book is full of practical examples, and I’ve just barely scratched the surface of things that I’ll take from this book. I’ve found many of the concepts and examples to be teaching to me, and I have underlined, highlighted and taken copious notes as I’ve read. If you want to be challenged, touched and inspired to become a better parent, I would recommend that you buy a copy of this book, and be prepared to take many notes and make many changes in your household as you journey through its pages.

This book is a phenomenal book on Biblical Parenting based completely on scripture from the Holy Bible. Many explanations and examples on how to parent from a Heart-Based approach.

I am a coach with the Biblical Parenting Coaching Program. Our 2 months program have just been concluded. It has been a wonderful experience for me, working with my parent volunteer. This is a powerful program which works on the heart of children and parents, too.When I first read this book, it was an eye opener and a total change in my perspective of parenting. Most parenting programs work on behaviour modification. I have a neurodiverse child. The therapies I have been to will touch on how to work on child's behaviour and strategies to curb on child's behaviours. But for heart parenting, it works on the conscience of the heart of the child and brings long lasting results.The parent volunteer that I worked with reported that she has less power struggles, less nagging moments and witness internal motivation in her child, in which she does not need to nag her child to do her homework, which was one of the issues she faced, before the start of this program. All Glory to the Lord!Even for my own child, I face less nagging moments and I do not have to "scream" to get things done. All Glory to the Lord!

This book was very helpful. I would recommend it to any parent. It is not too late for heart change

Great!!

I was well-versed in behavior modification techniques from my studies with animals so I thought raising kids would be easy. Boy, was I wrong! Animals and kids aren't the same beast at all, these little people I have really do have minds of their own so what works for one doesn't always work for another. This was the first book I read that discussed the difference between reaching a child's heart and just getting them to look good on the outside. I've always wanted to raise my kids to know right from wrong and to be able to one day leave my home with some confidence that they'd be able to choose what's right instead of what's convenient, what I didn't necessarily realize was those decisions would come earlier than I'd ever given thought to and would take more work reaching them. I hadn't realized how much I'd appealed to my kid's inner selfishness until I read some examples, "if you do this, then you get that" or "I'll give you this if you do that" and began to hear how their responses reflected exactly what the book says, basically "what's in it for me?" every time they were given an instruction. I have one strong willed child and one more easy going child, but they both need heart work. This book has helped me understand why I need to reach their hearts to help them form convictions (because we all have convictions) and how to do that. Using the break has been family changing for us! I'm so grateful that this book has opened our eyes to reaching the hearts of our children!

Many parenting books and programs talk about reaching the heart and shepherding the heart of a child for effecting true change, but many fall short in helping the parent identify aspects of the child's heart to work on. This is where this book's strengths are. Two full chapters at the beginning of the book help to identify components of the heart from a Biblical point of view--values, temptations, emotions, determination, guilt, passion, intimacy, to name a few. Also there are practical tools at helping the child identify the heart as a wrestling place, and knowing how to seek God-honoring change in a child's heart. Practical, incisive, Biblical tools.

The book I got is not this cover so that’s a little misleading. Other then that excellent condition and very good material in book.