Grace Based Parenting, Recap

While a good book, this was not an earth-shattering book for me. A fact which is mostly due to my own parents and upbringing. Grace Based Parenting is a "big idea" book. It does not tell parents what to do when their toddler has a meltdown in the grocery store or their teenager gives them the silent treatment for weeks on end. It does help establish a foundation on which parents can make those type of decisions.

The main idea of the book is that parents should act towards their children in the same way God acts toward his children--with grace.

In order to silence some critics, Kimmel spends a chapter giving examples of families who have erred on the side of too little grace and families who have mistaken cheap grace for true grace. If you really want to understand true grace, I would not start with this book. Start with Romans, The Discipline of Grace by Jerry Bridges, this message by Erin Bird, or The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

A few nuggets I appreciated:

• Definition of love: "Love is the commitment of my will to your needs and best interests, regardless of the cost."
• You should not be surprised or ashamed when kids sin; expect it. They have a sin nature.
• Don't just protect kids; protect and prepare them. Parents lead and encourage kids to live a great spiritual adventure, which is not safe. Teach them confidence in the fact that God is mighty and able to overcome all the sin and evil in you, me and the world.
• I also appreciated Kimmel's focus on the big ideas. As I always heard my dad say: "Major on the majors; minor on the minors." If you get the big things right, won't the small things either fall in line or not matter?

A few things I didn't like about the book:

• Kimmel provided many negative examples (what not to do) and not as many positive examples (what to do). It's easy to see mistakes that parents make. I'm reading a parenting book so that that I know what to do instead of continuing on in the dark.
• Kimmel suggested parents hold a "What's Your Beef" Family Night, in which they encouraged their children tell them anything they had done to hurt them. Then they could not defend themselves. His purpose was to give kids the opportunity to be candid and vulnerable. I think it'd just be weird and awkward. (And as a friend whose family practiced this when she grew up shared...it just didn't work. It was more aggravating than enlightening.)

As I said at the beginning, this book wasn't earth shattering because my parents understood a lot of this. Thank God for my parents and the ways they gave me a foundation of truth and understanding of God's grace!