Great Read!

I have read stacks of parenting books, but A Mother's Heart by Jean Fleming is hands-down one of my favorites. I don't have time to elaborate much on it now, but I have read it twice (am working on my third) and I get so much out of it every time.

One of the things I like the best is her view that children do not come to you as a empty vessel to fill, or as a rebellious tyrant to be "broken." Rather, she sees the child at conception as a unique person, already, essentially, "who they are." The parent is there to guide, to train, to instill character, but all the while knowing that you cannot change who this child is. So many parents' heartbreak and disappointment in the "failures" of their children is merely the failure of their projected ambitions. They looked at their children as a second chance for themselves, a chance to "get it right," especially if they came from a non-Christian background. They raise their child with the faulty logic that, "If only I had had _______, I would have ______/would not have______." Unfortunately, your child is a different person with a different environment, so what may have influenced you to do one thing may either have no effect on them or cause them to do something entirely different. Children are not baked goods produced when a specific recipe is followed, and they are not your second chance at living. Your immortality is only found in your own identity as a child of Christ, not in creating a clone of yourself (or what you wish you had been) in your child.