Answering Your Kids' Toughest Questions
This book was given to me by Bethany House for the purpose of reading and writing a review about it.
You may wonder why I chose a book about answering my kids' questions. In reality, Nicole doesn't need any questions answered, she could answer many for me if I were given the opportunity to ask her. Someday, I will have that opportunity and I will have questions. But, maybe someday, we will have children that do have questions and besides I am always interested in hearing an author's take on the big questions of life.
Elyse Fitzpatric and Jessica Thompson are a mother/daughter team that wrote this book and I would have to say they did a good job. They talked about each question first and then broke it down into age groups and gave age-appropriate answers to the questions.
The questions were as follows:
1. What is sin?
2. Why do people die?
3. What is Satan? What is hell?
4. Why do people get divorced?
5. Why does the Bible say that? (difficult Bible stories)
6. Why and how do some people sin sexually?
7. Why does God let natural disasters happen?
8. Why do people fight and kill?
It was very interesting to read their perspectives on these questions. The divorce chapter was of interest because it is rare to get someone who believes as I do, but I would have to agree with some of their view points. They allowed divorce on 2 stipulations: adultery/fornication and and unbeliever wanted to split with a Christian. They also allowed that some Christians make no allowance for divorce. They would also have been okay with remarriage, I think. They went under the clause of "most Christians" and I assume they included themselves in this mix. While I don't agree with the remarriage option, I was impressed that they were as strong as they were on the subject.
One other thing I liked about this book was on question 6. They gave some concise, but not overly explicit guidelines for talking to your children about sexual abuse and the areas of your body that are not okay to be touched in any way. This is something I have thought a lot about--how do I teach my children to be aware of these things without creating an unnecessary awareness that they are too young to handle. I don't know if that makes any sense.
I can spend a lot of time analyzing and questioning and discussing with D about child training and teaching our children about God and about His truths. One thing the book stressed is you are not your child's salvation. You are responsible to show them Jesus, but their salvation is through the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives and not your words. So, if you stutter or are eloquent, it's about grace and being an example, but also stepping back and letting God work in your child's life. I thought that was a very good point.
You may wonder why I chose a book about answering my kids' questions. In reality, Nicole doesn't need any questions answered, she could answer many for me if I were given the opportunity to ask her. Someday, I will have that opportunity and I will have questions. But, maybe someday, we will have children that do have questions and besides I am always interested in hearing an author's take on the big questions of life.
Elyse Fitzpatric and Jessica Thompson are a mother/daughter team that wrote this book and I would have to say they did a good job. They talked about each question first and then broke it down into age groups and gave age-appropriate answers to the questions.
The questions were as follows:
1. What is sin?
2. Why do people die?
3. What is Satan? What is hell?
4. Why do people get divorced?
5. Why does the Bible say that? (difficult Bible stories)
6. Why and how do some people sin sexually?
7. Why does God let natural disasters happen?
8. Why do people fight and kill?
It was very interesting to read their perspectives on these questions. The divorce chapter was of interest because it is rare to get someone who believes as I do, but I would have to agree with some of their view points. They allowed divorce on 2 stipulations: adultery/fornication and and unbeliever wanted to split with a Christian. They also allowed that some Christians make no allowance for divorce. They would also have been okay with remarriage, I think. They went under the clause of "most Christians" and I assume they included themselves in this mix. While I don't agree with the remarriage option, I was impressed that they were as strong as they were on the subject.
One other thing I liked about this book was on question 6. They gave some concise, but not overly explicit guidelines for talking to your children about sexual abuse and the areas of your body that are not okay to be touched in any way. This is something I have thought a lot about--how do I teach my children to be aware of these things without creating an unnecessary awareness that they are too young to handle. I don't know if that makes any sense.
I can spend a lot of time analyzing and questioning and discussing with D about child training and teaching our children about God and about His truths. One thing the book stressed is you are not your child's salvation. You are responsible to show them Jesus, but their salvation is through the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives and not your words. So, if you stutter or are eloquent, it's about grace and being an example, but also stepping back and letting God work in your child's life. I thought that was a very good point.
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