Motivate Your Child Book Review

Nagging. It’s exhausting business, wouldn’t you say? It’s a problem in my house for sure. Unfortunately, the need for parental nagging has become an unrelenting habit filling way too much space in my home. A continuous lack of motivation from my children has caused a bit of an uproar which has even stalled our homeschool. We are all in need of change. This is why my latest review has proved to be a Godsend. The National Center for Biblical Parenting has just released a new book called, Motivate Your Child: A Christian Parent’s Guide to Raising Kids Who Do What They Need to Do Without Being Told. While actually getting our children to do what they are told without nagging may sound like a fairytale, many answers to overcoming a lack of motivation may be found in this new book! Surprisingly, I’ve found this book provides the empowering boost that I need to get the change going in my home.

I’ve read a lot of books about parenting…even gone to my share of “parenting” conferences and seminars. Typically, these tools advise parents on all sorts of ways to produce better behaving kids. While there are a couple of resources that I think hold some truth and value, most of what I’ve read and listened to fall short of what is needed to inspire true and lasting character building moments for our kids that will take them into adulthood.

Honestly, the ineffectiveness of some of the parenting suggestions I’ve initiated has a lot to do with me as a parent. I’ll be the first to admit it. I’m not that great at being the lovey-dovey parent that is a never wavering bundle of cheer. I’ve got a lot of growing to do as a mom. I pray that I grow enough to do the good God wants me to do before my kids move out of the house. With that out in the open, I think a lot of the parenting resources available are missing the point – missing the mark. Unfortunately, a lot of families are struggling and have had a hard time finding the right tools to get through their challenges. A lot of us are in the same sinking boat.

While I have found some behavioral modification parenting practices useful for a time, I find that these only take care of a symptom of something temporarily rather than dealing with the source of all the trouble to begin with. This seems to be a common practice in our culture. Treating symptoms usually doesn’t get rid of the problem.

This is where Motivate Your Child proves to be a much different parenting approach. The advice from authors, Dr. Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller, RN, BSN, have a unique flare that places their suggestions and wisdom at a completely different level. Instead of providing a common step-by-step “reward verses consequence” plan to parental success, these two have put the focus on something new. They’ve nailed it dead on with what most other child-rearing books miss. They’ve put the root cause under the microscope! In this case, that is the heart – the hearts of both parent and child.

The hashtag, #heartparenting, represents the Motivate Your Child message throughout social media. “Heart Parenting” is perfect description of the book in a nutshell. While Motivate Your Child is a parenting book which ultimately has a goal of growing children who have strong, biblically sound moral and spiritual development, the role of being mom and dad plays a huge part in the subject matter throughout the 260+ pages. What a concept! This seems so simple but I know I’ve lost sight that I actually have a bigger impact on my kids than I realize.

The main themes present have to do with how to cultivate our children’s conscience so that they act in a right way. This is a special kind of motivation that has nothing to do with a reward or consequence system. People, this is gold. I have always felt a bit off with having to reward my kids to get them to act. Of course I love blessing my kids with rewards but I SHOULD NOT have to do that to get a positive response. That’s bordering on nagging in disguise. It’s almost like a child form of blackmail when kid says, “I will only be good if you give ____!” And I’ve learned that consequences only go so far until they completely flatlined altogether. Interestingly, that very concept about how consequences fail to address the issues is talked about a lot. This awesome change in our children begins with us, the parents.

Overall, Motivate Your Child has countless pearls of biblical wisdom and encouragement, so much so that I can’t possibly share it all with you in this review. Key focuses include integrity, compassion, encouraging kids to take initiative, God’s plan, leading our kids to God, and even a section specifically for parents who are going at it alone. There are many resource extras that can also be viewed and purchased to go with the book including those for the parents as well as for the kids.

Dr. Turansky and Mrs. Miller provide story after story of different families who have overcome their trials as well as offering solutions for these typical scenarios. One thing that spoke out to me was that we as parents need to be frequently sharing our faith with our kids – that this is the beginning building blocks to a strong conscience. While that may seem like pretty typical advice and I am aware of this, what is found in the book is a little bit different take on how to actually do this.

Sharing faith does not necessarily mean preaching the bible or something similar. That may actually hinder a Christian parent’s ultimate goal. Instead, sharing God’s love and how much we love Him is the priority. What Turansky and Miller add is that this faith sharing starts with loving relationship building between parent and child. When pondering that, I realize this is something that has lacked a lot in my home. We’ve just been so busy. And while I am with my kids a lot because of homeschool, I have neglected the fact that I need to actually be building a relationship with them.

My kids and I need to be racking up the “social points” with each other. I can’t ever effectively share God’s love to my kids without having the strong relationship as a foundation. Only after building relationship will my teaching of the bible and encouragement of learning about God go onto truly open minds and ears. Without sharing my love with my children, I can’t possibly share God’s love with them. How then, will they develop that Godly, sound conscience that they need and how then, with they truly know God’s love? This is the key to producing an authentic motivation within our children. This is the key to ending the NAG-infested home. We parents need to change before we expect our children to change.

BOOK DESCRIPTION

Authors: Dr. Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller, RN, BSN

Publisher: Thomas Nelson

Release Date: January 27, 2015

Learn What Internal Motivation is and How to Develop it in Your Child

You will learn:

• How to build a strong conscience to strengthen internal motivation
• How faith changes kids impractical, down-to-earth ways
• Ways to help self-focused kids think of others
• A strategy to help kids who tend to blame, rationalize, or defend
• Ways to use consequences for heart change
• Specific heart-based strategies to develop responsibility and initiative

I suggest this book to ALL Christian parents. It is one of the very best parenting books I’ve ever read. It makes perfect sense and I wish I’d been able to read this at the beginning of my mommy journey before I made so many mistakes. Tomorrow Today, I commit to start over and parent the heart! I know it will be a process and not a quick fix but I’m ready for the challenge. Will you join me? Motivate your child! #heartparenting

Heather

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