We have just come through Mother’s Day, and we are heading toward Father’s Day, so in today’s video I want to review some of the parenting resources from our resource desk. If you are new here, my name is Ryan Rench, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Temecula, California. Our resource desk is like our bookstore; we sell or share various resources at our church that can help people bring the Bible home. That is kind of our motto: we bring the Bible home. We do not want Bible teaching to happen only on Sundays; we want you to continue throughout the week with good resources that strengthen your home.
Purposeful Parenting
The first resource I talked about at the resource desk has, I think, since become obsolete; I do not know that we actually carry copies anymore. It was a seminar Pastor Troy Durrell came in and taught, a series of audio lessons with a workbook, called Purposeful Parenting. I love this resource, because as parents we were trying to raise our kids with very few rules, but we kept those rules very, very stringently. That was one of the key takeaways from his seminar when he came and taught it years ago: you do not have to make a new rule for everything, but if you do make a rule, you decide as a parent how many times you are going to repeat it before they obey. If you say the rule three times, you are training your kids to respond after the third time: “Do not touch that thing.” “Johnny, I said do not touch.” “Hey, do not touch that thing.” If they know you will respond with some kind of consequence after the third time, you have trained them to disobey twice and obey the third time. What we learned from him is that you can say things one time, and if they disobey, the consequences can come after the first time. That totally changed our parenting and really helped us solidify some things. We would just say “No” and snap our fingers like that, and the kids would snap to. Even as infants crawling around in little diapers before they could walk, we would say, “No, do not touch that,” and if they looked at us, looked back at that thing, and touched it again, we would get up and whomp them on the diaper. It is that shocking moment when they realize something bad is going to happen if they disobey their parents. We decided we did not want little ten-pound munchkins to rule our home; we full-grown human adults wanted to rule our home, and it has made for such a peaceful, wonderful home. So I appreciated the teaching we got from Purposeful Parenting on that exact topic, and I would really recommend it if you can find a copy.
Habits of the Household
Next, and we do have this one at our resource desk, is Habits of the Household. We would not agree with everything in it; we have a bookmark in it with a disclaimer listing some of that. But I appreciated what he calls the liturgies of the home, the routine, habitual practices you go through in your home that really make an impact. Those are the things the kids will remember. Simple things like holding hands and praying before school teach them to treat each day as if we are going into the mission field. I think he approaches each chapter as a routine: bedtime routines, mealtime routines, screen time. He focuses on the various habits of the household, hence the name. So I appreciated the practical and slightly different twist on some of the teachings in this book.
Walt Brock’s Books
Next is Dangerous Parenting Detours, written by the founder of the camp we go to, Camp Ironwood. His topics are all centered around D words: delayed discernment, defiling bitterness, dishonorable deportment, disobeying duties, dominating discontentment, distracted parents, driving children to despair, deprived discipline. These are all dangerous parenting detours. It is good, practical, down-home advice, and I just appreciate the approach he takes in writing. Next is Teaching Obedience, by the same author, Brother Walt Brock. This was the most helpful book in figuring out how to exercise discipline with our kids: What are the areas? Where are the lines we want to draw? Is this so bad that the child deserves a spanking, or is it not bad enough? He goes through a few categories, for example disrespect, disobedience, and destructiveness, some of these D words, to help you recognize when they have crossed the line, so they know there will be consequences. Teaching Obedience is a very good, practical, helpful book, and we recommend it.
Mother and Son and Parenting
Next is Mother and Son by Emerson Eggerichs. He is the author of Love and Respect, and here he writes from the respect viewpoint, for a teenage son especially. It is really good. My wife practices this with our son, and it is good to get into the mind of a man, even a little man of five or seven or nine years old. Boys speak these developmental manhood languages without even realizing it, the language of respect, which a mother does not inherently speak but needs to learn. So this is helpful for a mother trying to relate to her son in a special way, and we have recommended it over the years at Mother’s Day and other times. It is a really, really helpful book. Next is simply called Parenting, by Paul David Tripp. He says he has written the same book under different titles, because every one of his books talks about the gospel and brings things back to the gospel. As with all these books, there are things we disagree with, but I appreciate the focus on the gospel, that when he disciplines his children he brings it back around to the gospel. This really helped change my thinking when I discipline my children: to train them, not just punish them, and to help them see that their sin has caused this disciplinary action. If my kids are sitting on my lap crying, it is, “Well, you know what? You disobeyed Mom and Dad. You broke our hearts. You have sinned, but Jesus still loves you. He died on the cross for the sin you just committed.” You can have gospel conversations even in the middle of discipline, helping them sense and know the love of Christ even when we fail Him, and that the relationship is restored through that action. It is not just about discipline; every chapter focuses and refocuses on the gospel, and I appreciated that focus in Parenting. It is more philosophical than practical, although he weaves in a lot of stories from parenting across a wide gamut, from childhood all the way to the teen years and even into adulthood, with good recommendations.
Passionate Parenting
And last (not in any order of importance; I just went by the size of the books in the stack) is Passionate Parenting. Over the years, when we were working with the teens, we gave this book to the parents of the teenagers. I appreciate its practical insights, even some of the scientific studies on the changes in a teenager’s brain, what kids go through, and the grace you need to show as they go through these rapid changes. I appreciated that side of it, the humorous stories in it, and the practical teaching on what to do in this or that situation. And I appreciate the approach of not parenting passively but passionately, actually leaning into your parenting instead of just letting it happen, taking your hands off, and saying, “I do not know what to do.” One of the best takeaways was that purposeful look at every aspect of my parenting. So those are the six or seven books at our resource desk that focus on parenting. We will probably add more over the years, and I appreciate any little tips and tricks I can get. If one of these made you think, “Oh, I need to look more into that,” maybe we will do a deeper dive on some of them, but that is at least an overview of our parenting resources. I hope it is a help to you. God bless you, and we will see you in the next video.
