Borrow 👍
This is not your typical “how-to” guide on parenting. Instead, it is a treasure trove of wisdom on how grace changes everything. You will be you scribbling notes in the margins and highlighting passages to return to time and time again. Woven in each chapter is the profound impact of what God has given us in the grace of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and how that profoundly changes us and the way we relate to and parent our children.
I have not read Paul David Tripp’s first parenting book (Age of Opportunity) and I wouldn’t say it is on my to-do list. But I must admit, I kinda want to read it after he shared something very shocking about it in this book, Parenting. He said he became “increasingly uncomfortable” when he listened to how people applied the advice in that book. So, he decided to write Parenting; a book meant to reorient, to give parents a “new way of thinking about and responding” to the challenges we face, and to provide “vision, motivation, renewed strength, and the rest of heart that every parent needs.” Take my word for it, he accomplishes what he set out to do.
If you want to stop being the sin-police and start being a reflection of the Gospel of Grace, this book is for you.
You cannot ask the law to do what only grace can accomplish.
Parenting by Paul David Tripp
If rules and regulations had the power to change the heart and life of your child, Jesus would never have needed to come!
I do want to point out there is no practical application in this book. Meaning, it’s not going to help you figure out how to get your toddler to stop coming out of the room at bedtime. I do not think that makes this book any less valuable, but I do think it’s worth mentioning.
There is one teny tiny little thing about Tripp’s book that just made me scratch my head: he never mentions the word spanking. Which, in itself is really not a problem, but when he provides a whole section specifically warning readers about “power tools” that parents use to control children, there is no mention of spanking. His list of power tools are: fear, rewards, and shame. I would have expected to see pain or spanking included in that list. Spanking is left off another list of things parents might do in anger: “pinching, poking, yanking, slapping, shoving your child.” He even composes a second list of “tempting” behaviors of later in the book: “to slap their faces, to shove, push, pull, or pinch.” Really Tripp?
Resources for Christian Discipline 
One thought on “Parenting by Paul David Tripp”