Instructing a Child’s Heart… My take on it

I bet you thought I gave up reading now that I have a job and all? Nope! I am still going strong slowly but surely. The library just happened to get both of the books I requested on Inter-Library loan at the same time, which meant I was forced to read them stat! (You can not extend Inter-library loans, so you pretty much have to read them fast) The one that was due back first, therefore the one I read first, was "Instructing a Child's heart" by Tedd and Margy Tripp. Tedd Tripp wrote "Shepherding a Child's Heart" also. So here is my take:

Things I liked about the book:

• The overall premise is that we need to correct a child's heart not simply their behavior. I fully agree with this.
  
• The last half of the book is more practical and walks you through what this may look like in everyday life.
  
• It focuses a lot on the why of correcting a child… and on how we need to be careful not to correct children just because we don't want to be judged by their behavior. This is a ministry, caring for children, and we need to remember what the goal is.
  

Things that annoyed me about this book:

• I am not sure why, but I just don't like their writing style. It just comes across as so drab and dull. It took a lot for me to keep reading.
  
• The first several chapters say the same thing over and over and over! I hate when books do that! If you are going to read it, just read chapter 1 and then skip to chapter 4 or something.
  
• Still not enough examples of how to do this in everyday life. Since this is not a parenting style you see often, I feel like I need more examples to see how it would really play out.
  

Overall, I only moderately liked this book. Again, I really like and agree with the teaching they are putting forth, but they just put it forth so boringly! If you are going to be a parent soon, or you are a parent of a young child I would recommend reading it, even though it's boring, just for the teaching value of it.