How Children Raise Parents, Dan Allender – Allender approaches the topic of parenting from bottom up–parents, then children or parents through children. If we have the right influences or the right principles, won’t our kids turn out right? Allender avers that these are myths that many parents have been taught to believe, and then pass onto their children. He charts a third way, which includes wisdom, embraces failure and suffering, and requires the gospel of Christ. Our children need to witness strength (discipline) and mercy (love), which flow from God through us and point back to God.
Grace-Based Parenting, Tim Kimmel – Recommended by Ross Appleton, father of three, and someone who is striving to model suffering, strength, and mercy to his kids. I just picked it up, but it seems to be heading off legalistic, rule-driven parenting by making grace, not fear the motivation for family harmony and obedience.
Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Superheroes, and Make Believe-Violence, Gerard Jones – Journalist, cultural critic, and contributor to the recent success of Pokemon, Spider-man, and Batman, Jones draws on psychology, parenting, sociology and comicbook creation to address the issue of fantasy violence among children. Should we allow our kids to pretend to kill one another with plastic light-sabers? What of the virtual violence so easily accessible through computer games and X-box? Do these experiences enable children to take control of their anxieties, access their emotions, and lift themselves to new developmental levels?
The Disappearance of Childhood, Neil Postman – Perhaps known best for his conservative critque of our entertainment culture (Amusing Ourselves to Death), in this work Postman turns his penetrating vision toward Western culture’s impact on childhood. Children too quickly become adults through various mature, post-puberty influences–sex charged TV and film, etc. Intriguingly, Postman argues that the division between child and adult is a relatively new one, one that was largely the product of sociology, not biology…
Feel free to add some suggested titles under the “comments”…