Don't Make Me Count to 3!

This blog is another book summary, "Don't Make Me Count to 3" by Ginger Plowman, that I wrote for our MOPS newsletter this past month. For those of you who have read “Shepherding a Child's Heart” by Tedd Tripp (another excellent read), this book is based off the same biblical principles and is very similar in content. In my opinion, however, I found Ginger's book a little more practical and “real life”, quite possibly because it was written by a mother who deals with children all day every day.

For those of you who have not read or heard of either of these books, the emphasis throughout both is training your children through heart-oriented discipline. For example, every mom knows that sharing is a major issue and can be very tricky to deal with especially in the moment. Ginger suggests rather than just asking “who had it first?”, to instead try to help both children involved understand what is going on inside their hearts (selfishness, anger, etc) by asking heart probing questions like “what was the nature of the temptation (what were you feeling) when you took the toy from your brother?”, “how did you respond to that temptation – in a Godly or sinful way?”, and “what other ways could you have responded that would have been better?”.

Another great resource from Ginger is a little chart called “Wise Words for Moms”. The chart was designed as a tool to help you teach, rebuke, correct and train your child in very specific situations. It looks almost like a calendar with a list common behavior problems going down the side (complaining, whining, tattling) along with heart probing questions, reproof scriptures (what to “put off”), encouraging scriptures (what to “put on”), and additional verses to look up about each behavior. It costs $4.00 new and you can find it along with her other books on her website (http://www.gingerplowman.com/products.html) if you are interested.

*This is the book review from our October 2008 meeting.*