An Amateur Parent Reviews a Parenting Classic

Last updated on: June 30, 2014 at 5:09 am by Coyle Neal

An Amateur Parent Reviews a Parenting Classic 2014-06-30T05:09:05-06:00 Coyle Neal

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Review of Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Ted Tripp

Two necessary precautionary disclaimers:

As of this writing, I am the parent of a one-month-old. Which means I have exactly zero real-world experience when it comes to raising children who can do more than eat and scream and poop.
There is little about shepherds and nothing about sheep in this book. You’ll have to look elsewhere if you want to learn more about Biblical ovine care.

With those disclaimers in mind, Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp is an excellent book. It is both theologically sound and (from what I can tell as an amateur parent) practically useful. Tripp neither gets caught up in obscure doctrinal points nor overdoes the personal examples. Instead, he does a fantastic job of balancing Biblical exposition with direct application. Even better, Tripp is a good writer. Some Evangelical books can be either too chummy or too formal. Tripp maintains a good balance of narrative and style without sacrificing substance. At no point was I bored or irritated with the flow of the text.

Tripp breaks the book into two sections: “Foundations for Biblical Parenting” and “Shepherding through the Stages of Childhood.” In the first section, he highlights a number of false approaches to parenting that the world and our own sinful hearts encourage us to pursue. These false approaches, including both false goals and false methods, are set in contrast to the Biblical charge to be continually turning our children to Christ. Through a combination of communication and discipline (a note about the latter in a second), Tripp explains the Biblical teachings on how we are to model, point to, and preach Christ to our children.

The second section (“Shepherding through the Stages of Childhood”) applies the principles outlined in the first through infancy, childhood, and the teenage years. Which might be a slightly misleading way to put it, because this is not a typical “how-to” manual. Although there are many practical suggestions given through the book, Tripp primarily emphasizes the mindset of the parents as we engage in the act of parenting and the mindset that we would like to see develop in the souls of our children. Specifically, both parents and children should have a God-oriented mindset. If we lose that focus along the way, we can’t expect any parenting tricks or tips we pick up to be particularly useful in the long run. Tripp encourages us to maintain our focus on the Lord as parents and help shepherd our children into developing such a focus themselves. And his admonishment is very, very effective.

With that said, there are a couple of minor quibbles I had with the text. (And again, I’m a new enough parent that you are free to dismiss me a newbie and walk away at this point.) First, the chapter on spanking made me hesitate just a bit. Don’t get me wrong, I am definitely a supporter of spanking when necessary and appropriate. But, I would be slow to say that it is the only Biblical way to discipline children. Based on Proverbs 29:15 (and similar verses), Tripp writes that the “rod” spoken about in Scripture is:

A parent, in faith toward God and faithfulness toward his or her children, undertaking the responsibility of careful, timely, measured, and controlled use of physical punishment to underscore the importance of obeying God, thus rescuing the child from continuing in his foolishness until death. (104)

My hesitation is the “physical punishment” part. Replace that with the more general term “discipline”, and I am in full agreement. Again, I am not against spanking, but I also think that parents should approach the issue on a case-by-case basis. Some children certainly need to be spanked when being disciplined, while others may be set right by a verbal reprimand, and others by some form of being grounded. “Discipline” is essential; “physical punishment” may or may not be.

I guess in that sense, I’d be more likely to read the “rod” spoken of in the Bible as a stand-in for “discipline” in general (not just letting our kids to whatever they want whenever they want to), rather than as absolutely always and only meaning “physical punishment.”

But with that said, Tripp’s suggestions for how to discipline (whether through spanking or in other ways) are excellent.

One final quibble: Shepherding a Child’s Heart implies always parenting with a deeply serious tone. As is probably obvious even from this review (and certainly from others I’ve written for Schaeffer’s Ghost), I believe that there is merit to taking a fairly light-hearted side to life. Taken by itself, this book could lead to some fairly dour parenting in the long term. Given my own personality I’m not terribly worried about that in my case (though God help my kid if he ends up being a delicate flower of any kind), but I would encourage others who read the book to remember that we should also be encouraging out children to laugh (kindly) at themselves and at us and at the world. We should speak seriously with our children about sin and salvation, but we should also speak unseriously with them about these things. They’re far too important to always treat with gravity—we must also engage our children in serious affairs with joy and delight and good humor. I suspect that Tripp would agree, and may very well say so in other works (again, I’m a new parent and am still working my way through the stack of parenting books).

Like I said, those are just quibbles. Overall, Shepherding a Child’s Heart is an excellent book and well worth your time and attention.

This book was provided for free by King of the Blog Paul Miller. I was required to write a review (he strongly implied in the subtext of his email that my knees would be broken if I did not), but not necessarily a positive one.

Dr. Coyle Neal is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, MO, where he is building an army worthy of Mordor one infant at a time. The army currently consists of one.

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