With All Their Heart: Teaching Your Kids to Love God

Rating:
Summary: I thought I'd read it all...
Review: I thought I'd read it all on parenting as a former MH case manager and now a pastor. Christine's book stands apart from the mountains of works offering the latest parenting techniques. While parenting techniques are necessary, their overemphasis can reduce parenting to a heartless, mechanical venture. We can inadvertantly reduce our children into objects to be managed.
Christine Yount offers an organic and spiritual approach to parenting. The goal of "With All Their Heart" is to inspire parents to raise children who have a passionate love of God. Christine's perscription is for us to engage our own hearts into the parenting process. She does this inviting us into her home. Christine writes with emotional vulnerability. As the editor of Childrens Ministry Magazine, Christine has experience and authority to offer us a "how-to" clinic. Instead, the reader is allowed to see the highs and the lows of parenting in the Yount home. Stories of a child's request for a tongue piercing, the soccer league, and failed cooking attempt all let us know that the Younts are parenting in the same world that we are. The stories gently unlock the doors of the readers' hearts and provoke self-inventory. At this point, scripture is applied our point of need. Each chapter ends with prayer based on a Scripture that guides to appeal to God on behalf of our children.

I have to confess I didn't read this book as it was designed. The chapters are brief so busy parents can gobble up a chapter while they wait for a child's practice to finish. I lost myself in the vivid story telling and read through the book in two evenings. I plan on a second read this summer work through the daily prayers and the "Reflections" sections.