Chapters 8 & 9 of Shepherding a Child’s Heart are all about communication.

I love the way the author paints the picture of how vital communication is in shepherding the hearts of our children.

The first objective when correcting our children must be to tell them how you feel about what they have done or said.

We must strive to get inside their minds and understand what is going on in there because the Scriptures say that it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks. We must engage our children to know what is going on inside of them.

When correcting it is not venting our anger towards them that helps them. Instead, it is understanding the nature of the inward struggle your child is having that is going to allow you to shepherd their hearts towards the ways of God.

We must help our children learn to express themselves.

How? By taking the time to talk to them.

We can’t stop at “How was your day at school?”.

“It was good.”

We must go deeper than that and to go deeper than that, it takes time.

We live in a very busy society. We rush from one activity to another. We wake up, get everyone dressed and ready to head out the door to wherever they need to go, come back home for dinner or through the drive-thru, head to this practice and that practice, dance and whatever else the kids might be involved in after school. Then we get home, exhausted, scramble to get homework, chores, and baths done before it is bedtime and time to do it all over again the next day.

There is nothing wrong with all the activities we put our children in. I just don’t ever want to find my family so “busy” that we don’t have time to just be. I don’t ever want a schedule where we have something going on every single night of the week! Now, Little Bug, would probably enjoy that immensely, but I think there is something to be said for families carving time out in the busy week to just be.

I don’t want life to ever get so busy in the shuffle from this activity to the next that I don’t have time to be in tune to what is truly going on inside my girls’ hearts and minds.

These chapters of this book just really opened my mind to this.

I must keep the lines of communication open between myself and my children. I want them to know that I am always here and very present in their lives. That doesn’t mean I will never enroll my daughters in dance or swim lessons. It just means I want to always be conscience of how we are spending our time as a family so that we are never so busy that life feels like a rat-race!

My parents did an excellent job of making sure we had time as a family. We did extra curricular activities as children but there was still time for communication between child and parent. Even when my mom worked full-time, she still made us priority and the lines of communication were always wide open.

Chapter 9 goes into some specific types of communication we are to use to shepherd our children.

Encouragement helps them understand the promises of God. Correction helps your children to understand God’s standard and teaches them to assess their behavior against that standard. Rebuke censures behavior when you say, “It is wrong for you to speak those words. I never want to hear you speak in such a way again.” Entreaty is an earnest pleading of a father or mother who is willing to bare his soul in earnest pleading for his child to act in wisdom and faith. Instruction provides a lesson that will help your children to understand their world. A warning can enable a child to both escape danger and learn in the process. Teaching is imparting knowledge to our children. Praying with our children gives us a window into their souls.

We must spend time talking with our children. Communication is a dialogue not a monologue! It is not us just talking to them. We have to hear our children to know where they are and what they are struggling with in order to be able to shepherd their hearts towards the ways of God.

I covered just a couple of the basic principles discussed in this book in my Shepherding a Child’s Heart series that I have written here on my blog, but there are many more!

I strongly encourage anyone who desires to learn more about Biblical parenting to get a copy of this book and read it cover-to-cover!

As Babywise is my #1 go-to book for information about infants and getting on the right track with eating and sleeping patterns, Shepherding a Child’s Heart is my #1 go-to book on Biblical parenting information.

- Elaine