My daughter, Madison, and I attended a "Secret Keeper Girl" event at our church last year.
Dannah Gresh created the Secret Keeper Girl events as a way for moms and their "tween-age" daughters to connect while learning about modesty and honoring God.
Madison and I had a great time at the event, and it came along at the right time for us: before Madison was a teenager and while she is still eager to hear what we expect (and what God expects!) regarding her clothing, modesty, and spiritual life.
We laughed a lot, shared a lot, and learned a lot.
It was a great beginning to an ongoing series of discussions about how she should dress and how she should behave in order to honor God.
We came home with the book "Six Ways to Keep the 'Little' in Your Girl: Guiding Your Daughter from Her Tweens to Her Teens" by Dannah Gresh.
I cannot even express what a wonderful resource that book has been for my husband and me.
We learned how important it is to keep our children safeguarded from the insanely sexual culture we live in these days.
We learned to teach them God's views about sex and marriage rather than the world's views.
We learned ways to encourage our children to interact with each other (and other kids) in positive ways rather than staying plugged into video games, Facebook, and the internet all day.
We learned how easy it is for our girls to develop negative body images because of what they see on TV and in magazines.
And it emphasized the importance of parents in our children's lives.
So when Dannah Gresh's latest book, "Six Ways to Keep the 'Good' in Your Boy: Guiding Your Son from His Tweens to His Teens" was released, I bought it immediately.
I devoured every page.
It is just as good--if not better--than its female counterpart.
It's mainly written for mothers, but Dannah's husband contributed to the book, and his insights are invaluable.
My husband is reading the book now and is loving it.
The Greshes hit all the hot topics that we need to deal with regarding our tween boys.
These are lessons they need to learn long before they are adults or even teenagers.
Our boys need to learn many of the things our girls do, but there are so many issues they will face that aren't typically faced by girls.
Pornography addiction and never-ending video games are just two of the major topics that are hit hard in this book.
Also discussed is the need for actual (preferably outdoor) playtime for boys, the importance of "guy time" with their dads (or another male role model), and how to teach them to become a man who focuses on caring for his wife and children.
There are statistics in the book (especially regarding porn) that scared the heck out of me.
I was glad to read ways to help our sons learn to respect women and to see women how God sees them, rather than as sex objects.
I'm so thankful I got my hands on this book while our boys are still 7 and 10.
This book really convicted me to make sure I encourage our boys to get plenty of quality time with their father.
I was also convicted to really enforce rules regarding internet usage and video game/screen time.
By reading this book, I also felt a lot of reassurance for many things we already do.
We will never raise perfect children, but my husband, Ryan, and I definitely want to do everything we possibly can to raise our kids to be God-honoring adults.
Ryan and I make it a habit to include good parenting books in our reading rotation because we think parenting is one very high calling that we need to learn about regularly.
We studied in college for four years (or more!) for a career...
why wouldn't we want to do more than that to prepare ourselves to be good parents? I am looking forward to reading more books from Dannah Gresh as our kids get older.
If you are a parent and haven't read any of her books yet, I highly recommend her!