Loving Our Kids On Purpose: Making A Heart-To-Heart Connection
by Danny Silk
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Book Summary Information
Author: Danny SilkForeword: Bill Johnson
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-12-01
ISBN: 0768427398
Number of pages: 192
Publisher: Destiny Image
Book Reviews of Loving Our Kids On Purpose: Making A Heart-To-Heart Connection
Book Review: Not recommended for young parents looking for a sound Biblical guide to raising their children.
Summary: 1 Stars
My father-in-law recently had heart surgery, and now takes a blood-thinning medication. Strangely, this medication has the same active ingredient as rat poison. My Father-in-law takes it to thin his blood; the rats take it to travel to their eternal home.
Whether something acts as a medicine or a poison, whether it helps or kills, depends on the dosage! I think this book has the potential to do either; used very sparingly and discerningly, it could help you out. Taken as a whole, it could be very harmful to your family. While there is good within the book, Loving our Kids on Purpose, by Danny Silk, is definitely not for young parents looking for a sound Biblical guide to raising their children.
First, the good: The book rightly sees and emphasizes the priority of having a heart connection with our children. Unquestionably, we need to have our child's heart, in order to show them the way to walk. The book also rightly reminds us that compulsion is not the master tool. Silk rightly criticizes an approach to raising our children that is like having a tool box of only different sized hammers. Definitely, not every problem is a "hammer problem." We cannot beat our children into the kingdom!
Silk strongly encourages us to train our children to make good choices, by giving them the ability to choose, and live with the consequences. I'd say this is the practical thrust of the book, and with some qualification, I'd say this is helpful. I have known some parents who didn't do a good job at this, and when their children were older and they suddenly released them into all sorts of new freedoms and choices, the results weren't pretty. The kids went wild. They had not been progressively trained to grow into freedom and so when they finally had it, they responded with a lot of bad choices.
So what is bad in the book? The book offers us a number of false or misleading dichotomies. According to the author, we can either choose to:
* Base our child training on compulsion, force and fear, or love and freedom
* Make a priority of our relationship with the child, or make a priority of the child's obedience to us
* Address external behavior, or address internal heart issues
* Enforce a power-based approach to parenting ("red truck"), or respect our children as people
* Parent the Old Covenant way, or parent the New Covenant way.
According to Silk, under the Old Covenant (OC) in the Bible, God's people related to Him in an external way, punishing disobedience and rewarding obedience The New Covenant (NC) way, in contrast, is the way of freedom. God has changed the way He relates to us in the NC, and "punishment, wrath, and intimidation have all disappeared from His attitude towards us. God is a safe place (p. 43)."
I think this is bad theology. First, according to the Bible, God doesn't ever change "His attitude towards us." He is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8). Second, God has never been content with mere external conformity, He has always sought our heart trust and obedience. As He says through Isaiah: "...this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me (Isaiah 29:13). Third, in His relationship with us, God is and always has been gracious, always bearing with us and our failings. In both the Old and New covenants, He overlooks our sins because of the atoning sacrifice of Christ. When he sees His people, He sees the righteousness of Christ with which He has clothed us. He doesn't punish or intimidate His people. Contrary to the author, He never has! Jesus has born the punishment for both Old and New Covenant saints.
The great glory of the New Covenant is a new creation in which we are given new hearts! And with this new heart we have the ability to receive God's good words and have them indwell us (Jeremiah 31:31-37). Jesus has won a great victory and now the Holy Spirit indwells us, and the law is written on our hearts. The law, which once was written on tablets of stone and stood outside of us and condemned us since we had no power to keep it, is now written on our hearts. It is now a light to our path and lamp to our feet.
What this means, and contrary to the author's dispensational approach to the Bible, is that the whole Bible, Old and New Testaments, is God's word to us, and "All Scripture is breathed out by God, profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and training in righteousness that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:16). This means, contrary to the author, that we can profitably apply the Proverbs when they say things like:
Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him. (Proverbs 13:24)
Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him. (Proverbs 22:15)
The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother. (Proverbs 29:15)
Contrary to what the book implies, using corporal discipline is not "introducing violence into a relationship as a way to make me more powerful than you" (p. 75). The Bible says that corporal discipline is an important way that we love our children.
Love is at the bottom of all Biblical discipline. It is not a matter of "Spank `em often and they'll turn out fine." All corporal discipline will produce bad fruit unless it is done in love. When we spanked our children, we held them afterwards and spoke words of love.
And of course corporal discipline it is not the only way you train and love. As if a hammer could ever suffice for all the carpentry work at hand. Tender heartedly, we are to give our children words of life: "When I was a son with my father, tender, the only one in the sight of my mother, he taught me and said to me, `Let your heart hold fast my words; keep my commandments, and live'" (Proverbs 4:3-4).
Corporal discipline will be necessary, especially in the early years. But it is not enough. We are to teach God's word throughout every aspect of our life: when we sit in your house, when we walk by the way, when we lie down and when we rise up (Deuteronomy 6: 6-9).
The author places much emphasis on "absolute freedom" but little emphasis on our calling to live in imitation of Jesus. Jesus said: "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me" (Luke 9:23). Christ lived a sacrificial life, so that others might live. We are called to this same cruciform-shaped life.
I believe that Silk rightly describes the outcome of his approach to child-training when he gives the following example of his daughter's attitude: "Dad, do you want me to sit on your stuff, or do you want to move it" (p. 151). This is not the kind of statement a Christian parent should ever want to hear! This is the opposite of Jesus's call for us to lay down our lives for others.
I think following this book's approach would result in teaching our children to be self-centered. The constant provision of: "You can either do this, or you can do that. Which option do you want choose?" trains the child to always place himself, and his concerns, at the forefront of every decision. The Bible says that we are to learn to deny ourselves, and to teach our children to deny themselves. They need to learn to lay down their lives. They need to learn that they are not the center, but that Christ is.
The Apostle Paul says: "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right" (Ephesians 6:1; sa. Colossians 3:20). In the command to obey parents God establishes an authority structure. Parents and children are not on the same level. It is not a matter of big people and little people. It is not a matter of old versus young. It is a matter of Parents being given a mantle of authority to represent God.
Strangely, there is little or no emphasis in the book about a parent's authority. It seems as if parents are simply there as more mature facilitators, and our function is to present options.
Silk says: "When you try to control another human being, you are sowing seeds of disrespect. I don't care if you think you are the parent and the King of the planet, it doesn't matter. You don't get to control another human being. There are no yellow trucks in Heaven!" (pp 105-106)
In contrast, the Bible says that parents have authority. We are not dictators, but we have been entrusted with lives to shape. We are called to rule our households. Paul says that the qualifications for an Elder are that "He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive (1 Timothy 3:4)." Management of our household includes controlling the behavior of our children. We do this through a variety of means, including our example, our showing love and affection, our teaching, our encouragement, our rebukes, and our administering corporal discipline.
And this we must do in humility, knowing how far short we fall! We do it all in reliance on the Holy Spirit.
The approach Silk advocates seems to leave the child on the throne of his own life. But our role as parents is to teach our children to allow Jesus to reign in their hearts. The point of Christian discipline is to teach our children who God is, and who He has created them to be.
The author speaks of "the inferior priority of obedience" (56). He says: "Jesus promoted relationship above the rules" (p. 35). But Jesus says that our relationship with Him can't be separated from our obedience to Him: "If you love me, you will keep my commandments" (John 14:15). Obedience is the way God requires we show our love to Him. If we are not obeying God, we are not loving Him. And obedience is also the way God requires our children relate to us. It is not an inferior goal, it is in fact what God says pleases Him: "Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord" (Colossians 3:20).
In the place of obedience, the author advances something he thinks is superior. That is, a heart motivation to "protect our relationship no matter how far out of my presence you are" (p 57). I don't think he is entirely wrong here. We ought to want to protect our relationship with God, and in a sense this is why we obey. But he seems to extend this in a way that is not helpful. Parents should teach children to "protect their heart." This is true, but we shouldn't understand this to be apart from reference to the word of God. Our children should desire to please us and protect his relationship with us because he or she is intent on pleasing God. In other words, their relationship with me is secondary to their primary relationship with God. I am not the most important person to please. God is.
Without this qualification, the "protecting your heart" approach exalts the relationship above the truth. And God has joined relationship with truth! God's word is filled with exhortations to admonish, instruct, and even rebuke one another. God calls us to put our relationship with Him above our relationships with others. The Bible does not emphasize "protecting one another's hearts" but rather "speaking the truth in love."
The "options approach" that Silk proposes may well teach the child to control his behavior to get what he wants. For example, we can teach our children that "We shouldn't disrespect people, because when we choose this option, people don't feel good and it's not good for us if they don't feel good." And if I teach and model this, my son may grow up to be a man who shows respect. But this misses the heart of the issue! And my son is the poorer for it. This approach deals with externals and not internals. As Silk notes with approval, children trained this way will begin to give options to other people! This is not a sign of maturity or self-respect. It is a sign of self-absorption. The child has never been taught to confront the sin nature within himself. He still thinks it is all about him. The child has not been taught that he needs to respect because God has spoken and God has said this is good.
It is an odd thing that Silk does not seem to address the issue of sin. This is our principle battle. In baptism God unites us with Jesus, and His victory is our victory. God has given us spiritual weapons in this warfare. Our lives are spent working out this victory as we trust and obey our Lord. Somehow this central battle - which is also the central battle in our children's lives - does not find much if any prominence in the author's approach to child training.
Of course, we ought to give our children choices. As they grow in maturity, we should give them more and more choices. You don't do this for the reason Silk suggests: because children "need power in their relationship with us" (p 118). The Bible never talks about our relationships being a matter of power, but rather of love. You give more and more responsibility and choices because you want him to grow up and mature in his ability to love. You give him more and more freedom and choice because you want your child to learn wisdom - which is applying God's word by the Spirit to all his decisions and situations.
But when you give him choices is important. This is a qualification that the author rejects. He says: "If I build an external control system around you, then you will depend on it and I won't be able to remove it from you, because you won't be able to control yourself (p 59)."
There are many choices a young child is not yet mature enough to make. He can't really understand the long-term consequences of not eating his veggies. He can't really appreciate the value of an 8:00 PM bedtime, piano lessons, or doing math times tables (all of which are a pain). He needs many decisions made for him. They are made for him so that he grows in strength and maturity and can grow in his ability to make good decisions on his own. The discipline of a bedtime, eating your veggies, doing the music lessons, and practicing your times tables opens up many more options for him or her in the future. You are limiting today's choices, and the reason you should do this is to teach self-control. And as they progressively masters self-discipline and grow in maturity, you release them into more freedom.
Conclusion
There are some helpful things in this book, but on the whole, I think the author's approach is deficient and ultimately harmful. If you were to follow the approach of this book, your child may well grow up to be a self-assured and competent decision-maker. But the Christian parent should be after far more than this! God has a far more glorious calling for your child! You want him to learn to make responsible choices, but you want more than this. You want more than for her "to live absolutely free... in an environment of unlimited options" (p. 36). You want to raise a young man or woman who loves God with all his or her heart and wants to please God with every breath. You want to raise a young adult who knows God, and being filled with the Holy Spirit, he or she uses his freedom to sacrificially walk in love.
Summary of Loving Our Kids On Purpose: Making A Heart-To-Heart Connection
You CAN raise good kids!Loving Our Kids on Purpose combines the principles of the Kingdom of God and revival to form a powerful strategy for parents.
Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom (2 Corinthians 3:17). Rather than the traditional approaches that train children to learn to accept being controlled by well-meaning parents and adults, this book teaches parents how to train children to manage their freedoms and protect their important heart-to-heart relationships.
Children were designed with the core need of freedom. To deny this or live ignorant of it eventually destroys the trust connection between parent and child.
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love (1 John 4:18 NKJV).
Loving Our Kids on Purpose introduces paradigms, perceptions, skills, and ideas that will help parents reduce fear by eliminating the tool of punishment and strengthening the core character of their children by empowering their self-control and value for their relationship with their parents.
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