Katherine Koonce - Parenting the Way God Parents: Refusing to Recycle Your Parents Mistakes

I have spent my entire career in the toy business trying to make kids happy But in this insightful, heartfelt, and practical book, Katherine Koonce shows what really matters for raising healthy children in todays world.

M ARK B UTTON
Cofounder of The KOOSH Ball Toy Company
Author of The Letter Box, Surviving parent of three

Being a parent is the great privilege of putting my handprint on another persons life. What a rewarding and yet terrifying opportunity! I am so thankful for this kind of resource to help navigate the waters through parenthood. Parenting the Way God Parents is refreshingly free of formulas, and packed full of wisdom and valuable insight. I will reread it for myself and recommend it again and again in my practice.

D AVID T HOMAS
Child and Adolescent Therapist
Coauthor of Becoming a Dad:
A Spiritual, Emotional and Practical Guide

Knowing and watching Katherine as a gifted teacher at the school my children attend, its evident that she has a great deal of wisdom and insight. Thankfully, she takes the time to share her gifts with all of us through this book.

S TEVEN C URTIS C HAPMAN
Singer/Songwriter

Raising children in the hectic pace of life is hard, but Katherine Koonce brings divine truth about parenting down to earth.

K IM H ILL
Worship leader, recording artist, and single mom

Katherine Koonce directs us to our heavenly Father for the wisdom and purpose we need to parent well. With biblical insights on how to reach a childs heart, she shifts the parental paradigm from our human experience to our one true Parent. Read this book and youll parent betterand so will your children someday.

D R . R AYMOND C. O RTLUND J R. AND J ANI O RTLUND
Authors and senior pastor, Christ Presbyterian Church,
Nashville, Tennessee

Even though Im not a parent, the concepts that Katherine illuminates are really helpful for kidless people, too! Her wisdom and practical adviceserved up in an engaging and witty styleis pertinent for all of the relationships God calls us into.

L ISA H ARPER
Author and speaker

Katherines ability to state the realities of parenting in a clear and concise manner makes her book meaningful and practical for all parents. Her teaching has touched many lives, and this book will allow many more to benefit from her wisdom.

S USAN S IMPSON
Homeschool materials publisher,
Common Sense Press

PARENTING THE WAY GOD PARENTS
published by Multnomah Publishers, Inc.
Published in association with the literary agency of Mark Sweeney & Associates, 28540 Altessa Way, Suite 201, Bonita Springs, FL 34135 2006 by Katherine Koonce

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from:
The Holy Bible, New International Version 1973, 1984 by International Bible Society, used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House

Other Scripture quotations are from:
The Message by Eugene H. Peterson, Copyright 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved.

Multnomah is a trademark of Multnomah Publishers, Inc., and is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
The colophon is a trademark of Multnomah Publishers, Inc.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout prior written permission.

For information:
MULTNOMAH PUBLISHERS, INC.
601 NORTH LARCH STREET SISTERS, OREGON 97759

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Koonce, Katherine.
Parenting the way God parents : refusing to recycle your parents mistakes / Katherine Koonce.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-56293-7
1. Child rearing-Religious aspectsChristianity. 2. ParentingReligious aspectsChristianity. I. Title.
BV4529.K67 2006
248.845dc22

2005025586

v3.1

To the one who partners with me daily in this odyssey we call parentingto the wisest man I know.

I dont know you. I dont know anything about your past, your lifestyle, your level of income, your likes and dislikes. I have no idea what aspirations and dreams you have, what hopes you hold for the future, what plans youre making. But I know you are a fellow parent, and this tells me much about you.

This tells me that you have been charged with the weighty task of raising your children, and that you want to do this well. Whats more, I know that God your Father has called you to the task, and that He will equip you for it if you will simply learn from Him as you go. I expect that you, like me, have made many mistakes in your parenting, some of which you bitterly regret. There are days when you can think of nothing you would rather be than a parent to your children and other days when you long to be alone on a beach somewhere, far out of reach of those same children. Youve both laughed and cried with your children; youve rejoiced over them and wept over them. Youve disciplined them fairly at times and unfairly at other times. I know you sometimes feel adequate for the task and sometimes woefully inadequate. There are times you wish you could stop time and gather your children to you and hold them forever just as they are, and there are times you cannot wait for them to get through the difficult stage theyre in. But most of all, I know your Parent, your Abba-Father. He alone holds the truth and the wisdom and the purpose you and I need in order to parent well.

Your Parent, your Abba Father, alone holds the truth and the wisdom and the purpose you and I need in order to parent well.

At any given time, I could point out some specific difficulty in my own homearguing siblings, tension between us parents, financial stress, difficulties relating to each other for any number of reasons. Could you say the same about your family? Family stress is not unique to my family, nor is it unique to yours. But even when all we see is stress, if we look with the eyes of Our Father, we can see growth, we see relationships being built, we see a legacy of love being passed from Our Father to us and from us to our children.

To understand our own families, we have to acknowledge God as the creator and sustainer of the family. God designed the family in such a way that our parenting would follow the pattern of His parenting. Throughout history, God has parented His people, been angry with them, forgiven them, taught them to cooperate with one another, reprimanded them, required them to make things right when possibleand He has had to do it over and over and over again. Sound familiar? These are the tasks that are ours when we parent our own children.

Psychologists tell us that without conscious effort, we will parent the way we were parented ourselves. We will recycle the parenting, particularly the mistakes, of our own parents. For lack of another plan, we simply do what was done to us. Sometimes this can be good and right, and it brings back sweet memories of our own childhood. Sometimes it is harsh and confusing, and we are alarmed that our parents mistakes with us are being recycled and used in our own parenting. Like it or not, parenting the way we were parentedthe good, the bad, and the uglyis exactly what we do when we have no other plan.