Give Them Grace by Elyse Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson

I loved the idea of the book Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids With the Love of Jesus before I read it. The little blurb on the back of the book made me excited to jump right into it. Now that I have finished reading it, I’m not so sure. “Why?” You might ask, “what’s wrong with grace?” No, no, no, that’s not what I’m getting at. Grace is wonderful, the gift from God. Let me start from the beginning and do a nice little summary/review of the book. Here you go. . .

The premise of the book Give Them Grace is to use the wonderful grace that God demonstrates toward us as the basis for your training of your children. The authors tell about why the truth of God’s grace and Jesus’ loving atoning sacrifice are what we need to teach our children about, rather than rules and regulations. They give little sample conversations to have with your child after he/she has misbehaved, and give alternate wording for using with your children instead of words like behave, good job, etc. I am so thankful for God’s grace toward us, but I also set rules that my children need to obey. Maybe I didn’t really “get” the ideas they were trying to share. I cannot imagine using little 3-minute sermonettes with my little children in response to a disobedient action or unkind word. The conversation scripts they included sounded lovely and sweet, but honestly I cannot imagine an actual parent using them with their children. As I read the book (and also looked at other people’s glowing reviews of the book) I wondered to myself if maybe I was just disliking the book because it is different than how I “parent”. Maybe. I don’t know. I do know that I want to rely on Scripture to guide my parenting and the requirements I place on my children. The book did bring the thought of God’s grace and how it affects every part of our lives to the forefront of my mind, and that was a benefit. However, the book on the whole was not my style, I couldn’t imagine practical usage of it, therefore I did not care for it. Maybe you will.

I was provided with a free copy of this book by Crossway (www.crossway.org/blog) for the purpose of this review. I was not required to write a positive review. Thanks Crossway for the opportunity!