I read this book to get ready for our recent series, Homelife.  I read the original Boundaries book years ago.  Boundaries with Kids is a great book for parents.  We used many of these principles and they worked.  Most of it is common sense but I find that many parents lack common sense when it comes to parenting.  When I taught on this at the church many of the parents found the barriers to boundaries very helpful as well as some of the other insight I shared from this book.

The good news for parents today - there are many great resources at their fingertips to help them with thier task.  This is one of them.

This Sunday we will continue the Homelife series by taking a look at The Nursery.  I have several parenting books listed under the Books for Parents Category. In addition, I am currently reading Boundaries with Kids by Henry Cloud and John Townsend.  I read the original Boundaries book by these authors when it came out several years ago.  These books provide helpful insight and information to help you take contlrol and responsiblity of your life.  Learning how to set responsible boundaries is a very liberatiing concept.   This proved to be invaluable to us when our three children were younger.  Reminding ourselves that our goal was to develop character in our children and that the future is now helped us see three extroverted strong willed children mature into young adults.  It was not easy but it is absolutely rewarding

I recently read some comments regarding a book called Children Raising Parents by Dan Allender.  Everything I read indicated that this is a great book.  Dan is one of my favorite authors.  I got to meet him a few years back and my appreciation for his approach to life grew even stronger.

Dr. Kevin Leman is the author of this book.  He also wrote How to Make Your Children Mind Without Losing Yours.

This is a straight forward approach to parenting.  Here are a few of the important principles from the book:

Kids do what they do because they have gotten away with it.

Remember what you child thinks of you about in the moment is not necessarily what they will think about you for life.

The goal of every parent is to raise independent thinkers who have respect for others and for themselves.

Dr. Leman does a great job helping parents determine thier parenting style: permissive, authoritarian, or authoritative.  He gives practical steps for moving to a healthy authoritative style.

This is not one of my favorite parenting books but the testimonies included in the book testify to the effectiveness of this approach.  I would have to say that we have been able to apply much of what we learned. 

Here are some great quotes about teenagers: If you want to recapture your youth, just cut off his allowance.  ~Al Bernstein

The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant, and let the air out of the tires.  ~Dorothy Parker

Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.  ~Erma Bombeck

In order to know whether a human being is young or old, offer it food of different kinds at short intervals.  If young, it will eat anything at any hour of the day or night.  ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

The invention of the teenager was a mistake.  Once you identify a period of life in which people get to stay out late but don't have to pay taxes - naturally, no one wants to live any other way.  ~Judith Martin

Adolescence is a period of rapid changes.  Between the ages of 12 and 17, for example, a parent ages as much as 20 years.  ~Author Unknown

None of these quotes are in this book but it is full of good, practical advice for parents of teens.  Pat and I read this book when our son became a teenager and it was a huge help. So why am I putting it on my blog now – because I noticed I only had one book for parents.  Trust me, there are many more to come.

You will learn the difference between helicopter parents and drill sergeant parents.  We were definitely helicopter parents. In reading, we learned how to balance love and logic.  Love is giving your teens the opportunity to be responsible and empowering them to make wise decisions.  Logic means allowing your teen to experience the natural consequences of their actions. We could have done a better job I am sure but both of our older kids are off at college now.  Pat and I are so proud of the choices they are making and the maturity they demonstrate.  Raising Teens with Love and Logic helped make it happen.

The authors of this book, Shaunti Feldhahn and Lisa Rice surveyed over 1000 teenagers to gather data for this book.  Pat and I read this book as we prepared to raise our third teenager.  We both gained some new insight into teenagers that has proven to be very helpful with our youngest, Caroline.

This book is only 183 pages long.  I found it very easy to read. I recommend it to parents of teens.

This is part of a series of these books which also includes For Men Only and For Women Only.