The premise of the book is that the middle-years (8-12) are the time to invest in our children so that our children land safely in the teen-age years.

The authors handle well three areas in the book. The first area they deal with is the recognition of the changes that characterize the child’s life and the family’s life during this period. They highlight and discuss the changes in a child’s thinking, bodies, hormones and peer relationships and how these changes will affect their behavior. The book also raises areas where parental expectations of the child should change, such as a change from an obedient child to a responsible child. Also, parents are challenged to consider their own parenting styles. Instead of parenting from authority, parents should be transitioning to parenting by influence. The authors also emphasize the need to explain the moral principles behind the instructions given to the child.

The second area Ezzo and Buckman stress is the need for a strong family identity. They call for the parents, especially the father, to be willing to sacrifice and spend the time and energy to create a strong family unit. To build this sense of family, the authors emphasize the need of parents to spend individual time with each child, spend time as a family, and spend time developing a healthy marriage. The authors assert that a strong sense of family is not only needed to develop a child’s sense of well being, but it is essential for the child to withstand negative peer pressure.

The book also contains numerous practical ideas to try and help the reader implement some of their ideas. However, the reader must use their discernment in this area. Some ideas are good, such as the appeals process, where a child can respectfully introduce new information that might result in the parent changing his command. On the other hand, some suggested solutions to issues are shallow. The proposed solutions often focus more on changed behavior than helping the child understand the biblical principles involved.

Critique: My biggest critique of the book is that Ezzo and Buckman have lowered the goal of biblical parenting. The authors’ goal of parenting is to raise moral children, not children who love God and others. Therefore, because their goal for parenting is off the mark, some of their ideas become suspect. For example, because the goal in parenting is to raise moral children, the authors stress the need to protect children from inappropriate influences in our culture. I agree there is a need to protect our children. However, given the fact that God wants to use our children to communicate His love to the world, we need to teach our kids how to interact with and critique the culture we live in. This type of instruction is absent from the book. While this book contains some worthwhile material, it must be read with a critical eye.