A book review of So How Do I Parent This Child? Discovering the Wisdom & The Wonder of Who Your Child Was Meant to Be by Bill Hendricks and Bev Hendricks Godby
Stars: ***
Moody Publishers (2021)
Parenting/Christian
256 pages
Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This post contains affiliate links.
Summary: Parents don’t determine who their kids become. They steward them into who they’re meant to be.
One of the most common myths in parenting books—you see it everywhere—is that parents are responsible for who their children turn out to be. Proper input yields proper output, or so the thinking goes. But that mindset works with machinery, not people. The truth is, your child has a unique set of traits—their giftedness—that only they possess. The parent’s job isn’t to crank out a product, but to point an individual human being toward a healthy, flourishing life.
In So How Do I Parent This Child?, brother and sister duo Bill Hendricks and Bev Hendricks Godby team up to help you understand the difference between producing a product and parenting a person. They take you through all the stages of child rearing—from diapers to driver’s licenses to diplomas—to give you a comprehensive look at how identifying giftedness and helping your children discover it for themselves makes all the difference.
As a parent, you’ve got a lot of challenges ahead. But with intentionality and an individualized approach, you’ll see your kids grow up to become the mature and confident adults that they’re intended to be.
So How Do I Parent This Child?
This book is about finding your child’s giftedness but it’s not exactly what you’re (probably) thinking. If your child is good at math or art or sports for example, that’s not your child’s giftedness. It’s how your child is expressing their giftedness. For example, “someone who is born to solve problems can express that giftedness through any number of occupations.”
The book isn’t talking about giftedness like it’s something only a select few children (or adults) have. Everyone has a giftedness, something they are good at and/or they like doing. But they can express this is many ways.
The book has separate chapters for early years through to teenagers. However the book would be best read by someone with a young child. The authors suggest using a notebook to keep track of anything your child is really interested in or good at so you can help identify their giftedness. This is a good idea and I wish I had read it when my children were younger.
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