Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp takes a hard turn away from the modern approach to childrearing and urges the reader to take seriously what the Bible has to say. The key, according to the author, is to turn the child’s heart toward God and to teach them to obey authority.

Rediscover the Bible’s vision for parenting and watch your children grow in the Lord.

Being a parent can be the scariest and most joyful time in life. You bring home a child who is yours to raise, guide, and care for in every way. In today’s society, the authoritarian styles of a generation ago are not effective or accepted, but the hands-off approach is not working either. Many parents may be looking for a way to teach their children and guide them to the ways of God but are unsure where to start.

In Shepherding a Child’s Heart, author Tedd Tripp takes us back to the Bible for guidance. God’s Word, he reminds us, offers a wonderful paradigm of parenting.

In this summary, you will learn:

  • how to understand your child’s behavior as a reflection of the heart;
  • ways to correctly discipline, not in anger but as God’s agent; and
  • how to appeal to your child’s conscience and teach the problems of sin.

Parents make a mistake when they focus primarily on outward behaviors rather than the heart of the child.

The behavior a person exhibits is an expression of what is in the heart. This includes children. Behavior is not the real problem, but rather behavior is a symptom of what is in the heart. We can look to Luke 6:45 or Mark 7:21 to understand the importance of having a pure heart – it is the control center for life. This observation demonstrates how effective the Bible can be as a parenting guidebook because the Bible addresses the heart.

Parents often are sidetracked by certain behaviors when instead they need to understand that the behavior is simply a reflection of what is in the heart. A change in behavior without a change in heart is condemnable. Jesus denounces this in the Pharisees as those who wash the outside of the cup, but the inside remains dirty.

Parents often make this same mistake in childrearing by demanding a behavioral change but never addressing the heart that drives the behavior. But the heart is the wellspring of life, and as a parent, it is your job to be concerned with shepherding the heart. This requires working back from the behavior to the heart, exposing the real issues, and helping children gain a clear focus on the cross of Christ.

Keeping this in mind will guide every parenting decision and inform your methods to shape your model of how your children develop. What we need, therefore, is not a step-by-step guide but a basis for parenting that will bring God into the equation to address the heart and not just outward behaviors.

But the heart of the child is not without external influences that help shape it. Every occurrence, every person, every happening in a child’s life has the potential to be what the author calls a shaping influence. Shaping influences are those things that prove to be catalysts for making a child who they are, but the shaping is not automatic. How a child responds will determine the effect that an event has on them, and the response is a direct reflection of the Godward orientation of the heart. This Godward orientation is a natural and unavoidable spiritual dimension of everyone’s existence, and it means that the child will either worship the true God or succumb to idolatry in some form. So what are some of these shaping influences?

A child’s heart is both shaped by external influences and also carries an innately religious orientation.

Shaping influences come from many different sources and means. The structure of family life is the first influence. This is a huge influence on a child as they may be from a single-parent home with traditional or non-traditional parental roles, a nuclear family, a multi-generational household, or any variation of these and more.

The next influence is that of family values. The most important question, though, is whether God is the center of the home since this can make a huge difference in values.

Moving forward, family roles within the family unit serve as a shaping influence. Though the roles may not necessarily be spoken, they are seen and defined.

Family conflict resolution is a shaping influence as well, and this can often be learned simply by watching and is usually carried into adult relationships by the children. Is conflict solved by leaving, yelling, or gifts, or is it ignored? Children observe and learn.

Another area is that of the family response to failure as childhood is filled with awkward attempts and failed efforts that need to be handled correctly. How these failures are handled will become a shaping influence on a child.

Finally, family history can be a shaping influence. Whether the family is stable, new life, death, marriage, divorce, and so much more can shape a child.

Making mistakes in interacting with shaping influences cannot be avoided. No one is perfect, but mistakes should be addressed. There are two main mistakes made. These are, first, viewing shaping influences deterministically, and second, denial of their impact. To see them deterministically is to assume that the child is a helpless victim of circumstances. Denial, however, means saying the child is unaffected by early childhood experiences. Neither of these is correct.

If we adopt Christian determinism, then we are assuming the child is inert and that the correct environment will assure a proper child. But we are not dealing with a passive child. Children are active responders according to the Godward focus of their lives. If a child knows and loves God, she will respond constructively, but if not, she will try to satisfy her thirst by “drinking from a cistern that cannot hold water” (Jeremiah 2:13)…

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