Education consultant and parenting expert Dr. Christina Christian offers an enlightening discussion and practical workbook aimed at offering ways to change a child’s behavior through more effective parenting. Christian’s “parenting ministry” outlines steps to socialization, a responsibility she feels has been abandoned by modern parents and increasingly left to the schools.
Poor socialization has created national “vulnerability,” posits Christian. The pervasiveness of fractured families, academic decline and societal division “from the heights of the White House and Capitol hill, to the street corners where a multitude of churches sit empty…to the depths of the ghettos riddled with violence…” has forced schools to take on “unconventional roles and responsibilities.” Given this crisis, Christian’s mission is to change parenting practices, since they play a critical role in socializing children “to accept those values and mores that once ensured our nation’s strength and collective independence” (i.e. respect, responsibility, and compassion).
Christian presents abundant statistical evidence showing how media (“the new parent”), single parenting, and poverty cause academic decline. Using a combination of “psychology, biblical proverbs, and engaging activities” for parents, she encourages readers to evaluate their parenting style (whether Authoritarian, Neglectful, Authoritative, Permissive), and provides exercises and self-assessment tools, such as journaling, goal-setting, and charting behaviors, to raise self-awareness and facilitate change in parenting practices. She also shares anecdotes from her personal journey to better parenting.
Christian makes a convincing case for “traditional socialization practices” to rescue a nation at risk that is “no longer held together by an unshakable belief in God and devotion to Christian precepts.” Her guiding principle of Christian nationalism may raise a few eyebrows, and readers may find her premise somewhat alarmist and the workbook exercises for better parenting over-simplified.
However, many teachers, counselors, church leaders, and parents seeking to identify and transform substandard parenting habits will find a practical and accessible framework here to take back parenting from the nation’s overburdened schools.
Also available in hardcover and ebook.
