27 Jan Parenting – Chapter 9
Parenting: 14 Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Family by Paul Tripp
Chapter 9 – Karen Alston
“As a parent you are never dealing just with the words and actions of your children. You are always also dealing with the thing that controls their words and behavior: the heart.”
Our temptation, since we can’t see the heart, is to spend much time and energy on controlling and directing our children’s behavior. Their lives, like ours, are controlled by their hearts. As difficult as it is, in the rush of life, as parents (and teachers) we must remember two things: 1) Our children’s problems (and OURS) are HEART problems, not behavior problems, and 2) lasting and real change in behavior will occur only if there is heart change, a new heart.
Proverbs 22:15 tells us that: “Folly (foolishness) is bound up in the heart of a child…” Foolishness is what causes us and our children to have it all WRONG, but be convinced that we are right.
The author warns against threatening, manipulating or inducing guilt in our children which can produce behavior change, but never a change of heart. Instead we are to use these times of misbehavior and disobedience to parent our children with the Gospel which has power to change the heart, the source of behavior.
The chapter wraps up with four key words: Glory, Wisdom, Story, Welcome.
Using these four words, Tripp beautifully demonstrates how to parent our children’s hearts, beginning first with confessing our own foolishness and need for God’s grace and forgiveness to soften our own hearts.