Love & Respect in the Family By Dr. Emerson Eggerichs

I read a lot of books. And since I have been down with a cold the past two weeks (maybe its just the crazy weather), I had a bunch of time to review yet another book through BookLook (previously BookSneeze). This title immediately grabbed my attention. I read the book Love & Respect which is written for the marriage relationship, it helped us understand a lot of our communication issues and shed a huge amount of light on why we were offending each other so much in the first couple years of our marriage. 

So when I saw this new title by the same author on a similar idea for the family, I totally grabbed it. I read parenting books fairly regularly, hopefully someday they will come in handy for us personally, but I also work with children and have done for several years now. 

I loved it, honestly. Dr. Eggerichs talked again about the love and respect principle and how it relates in a parent child relationship this time. He uses biblical wisdom and scripture to tackle common problems within the family unit and how children and parents can get into a crazy cycle where no-one feels loved or respected. It was very practical and approached a whole range of topics including discipline, encouragement, supplication, giving, understanding and instructing. I know it is going to be a great resource for years to come for me personally. 

I loved his emphasis on the fact that children are not a reflection of their parents. The mom in the grocery store with three screaming children is not a failure because she can't stop her toddler's tantrums. Children are humans and they make their own decisions. He talked a lot about what it means to parent unto Christ. How to raise children and see as doing the Lord's work, but not getting caught up in the idea that only good parents have good kids. 

It was easy to read as well with shorter chapters, making it my go-to for nighttime reading for a few weeks. It was helpful to me, although perhaps you mommies with more experience may know a lot of what was in here. But either way I thought he gave some great ideas to think about and practical ways to implement them, a refresher on truths about parenting and scripture interspersed throughout to show His ideas were completely biblical. 

I think its a great one to add to my list of biblical parenting books. 

Have you guys read any great books lately??