Sade Tagbo's Blog

How Children Raise Parents

How Children Raise Parents is a parenting book by Dan Allender. If you are looking for another formula on how to raise perfect little "Christian" children, read no further. This book does not have a list of do's and don'ts. Rather, it offers the complete reliance on the love, grace, acceptance and forgiveness of God and the extension of the same to our children as the basis for parenting.

It is the most beautiful and 'full of Grace' book that I have ever read on parenting. I have vowed to read it at least once a year from now to remind myself what parenting is REALLY all about.

Excerpts:

The Music of a Godly Marriage:  Wherever parents fail to grow as human beings, we also refuse that growth opportunity for our children. We can't take our children any farther in life, relationship and love than the point we have chosen to progress in our own and in our marriages. But if marriage is to bear the marks of holiness that will invite children to become what they are meant to be, it must suffer three core issues. These issues involve the complexity of sin and redemption, freedom and responsibility, and intimacy and independence. These irresolvable conundrums do not bow to a linear, black-and-white, easy-answer mentality. They demand the willingness to live in the midst of tension.

Delighting in Dialogue:  Again, being successful in letting our children raise us relies on carefully listening to their voices, both what is directly spoken and what is communicated through their God-given bent. At no time is this process limited to our voice instructing and correcting our children. Dialogue, after all, requires two voices - with both parties speaking and listening. In dialogue new things rise to the surface that would never have come if only one person were speaking and the other merely listening. It is the joint act of creation - of naming and being named, hearing and seeing in new ways. In every case, it is rare and holy.

Grace and Peace!

Sade.