Monday, May 28, 2012

Book Review: Buildiing Family Ties with Faith, Love & Laughter

Building Family Ties with Faith, Love & Laughter
By Dave Stone
Thomas Nelson, 2012
English, 160 pgs


Description:
Creative ideas, real-life stories, and Scriptural guidance for being the family that loves being together. 
Building Family Ties with Faith, Love, and Laughter is the second in the Faithful Family series where Dave applies his practical, conversational, and humorous approach to the challenge of building strong spiritual ties to each other as a family. Topics include: Contentment, Security, Loyalty, Gratitude, Spontaneity, Communication, and more.
Preaching is his gift, but Pastor Dave Stone's family is his life's blessing. And after raising three kids of his own, as well as shepherding the diverse families of his congregation, his heart and passion for building strong families rings louder than ever. He knows that raising faithful families is a key to the future of the church. 

Review:
 This is the second book from Stone for building up our relationships within our families. The first was Raising Your Kids to Love the Lord. There is a third promised in the series.

Our family has been experimenting with the ideas in this book (unbeknown to them!) for the past few weeks and we've been having a blast. We've been turning off the TV and other electronics that get in the way and spending more time just playing, laughing and sharing.

My 5 year old, in particular, has been a different kid. We've been seeing less temper tantrums and lots more smiles. I know that it's not a hard concept, but everyday things seem to get in the way. Turning them off and making our family a priority makes a difference.

We always eat dinner together anyway, but we've been using the time to share about our days. We've been talking to each other about ideas and things we want to learn. Dinner has become less of a "feed trough" and more of a bonding time. We even made ourselves "special" placemats for a reminder of the time we share. (Construction paper and clear contact paper.)

I like the idea of forming a family mission statement. That's something we're going to work on in the next few days. I like the idea of having a stated focus for our family to work toward together. The idea of a weekly family evaluation is pretty cool too. I like that it keeps parents accountable to our kids as well as them to us.

As a whole, we've had more fun, seen more thankful and respectful children and become closer as a family. I wholeheartedly recommend this book and look forward to the third in the series.

I received a copy of the book in exchange for a review. No additional compensation has been received and I was not required to write a positive review.


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