Scott Turansky - Motivate Your Child: A Christian Parents Guide to Raising Kids Who Do What They Need to Do Without Being Told

Praise for Motivate Your Child

As president of an organization that works with college students, I can clearly see that we need more books like Scott and Joannesbooks that coach parents to develop strong character in their children that will last the rest of their lives.

Alec Hill, president of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA

As a Christian psychiatrist, who takes a Bio-Psycho-Spiritual approach to diagnosis and treatment, Scott and Joanne have come through again like the cavalry to the rescue. Using sound science as a tool to break down powerful but too big biblical life management and transformation principles into digestible, practical, and easy to implement action steps, they equip parents to have a divinely powerful strategy and weapon in the spiritual war for our childrens minds and souls.

Karl Benzio, MD; psychiatrist; founder and director of Lighthouse Network

[This is] an exceptional booka proven GPS programmed for your childs heart. The practical, real-life examples will guide you throughout the parenting journey. Your children will enjoy lifelong direction and motivation.

Mark Steiner, president of DiscipleLand.com

Some parenting books make me feel more guilty than empowered. Turansky and Miller offer practical insight to help parents find attainable ways to motivate their kids with the big picture in mind and not just the crisis at hand. Great blend of challenging us but making spiritual parenting doable.

Ron Hunter Jr., executive director and CEO of Randall House, D6 Conference Director, and coauthor of Toy Box Leadership

Motivate Your Child combines a solid foundation of prayer and scripture with Scott and Joannes real-life experiences counseling hundreds of families. Begin by picturing a preferred future for your children. Learn how to tweak daily interactions to build healthy daily relationships. Free up energy the family once spent on disobedience, correction, and selfishness so together you can serve others and live in obedience to God. I strongly recommend this book!

Kirk Weaver, president of Family Time Training

Motivate Your Child is a book that I recommend to you because of how it helped me as a father. God used the scriptures that Turansky and Miller share to give me a greater passionand a sharper planto help my children develop a godly, Scripture-driven conscience, which will serve them throughout their lives.

Dr. Rob Rienow, Visionary Family Ministries

[This is] a compelling book that can easily become the go-to resource for parents hoping to intentionally raise up children who make good choices for the right reasons and who become adults who live out their faith in Jesus Christ with integrity and compassion.

Rev. Dr. Orlando Crespo, national director of InterVarsity Latino Fellowship (LaFe)

2015 National Center for Biblical Parenting, Inc.

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Nelson Books, an imprint of Thomas Nelson. Nelson Books and Thomas Nelson are registered trademarks of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.

Thomas Nelson titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail SpecialMarkets@ThomasNelson.com.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from THE ENGLISH STANDARD VERSION. 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the Holy Bible, King James Version (public domain).

All emphasis in Scripture quotations are the authors own.

The names of people who have come to the National Center for Biblical Parenting for counseling have been changed. Some illustrations combine individual stories in order to protect confidentiality. Stories of the authors children have been used by permission.

ISBN 978-0-529-10074-0 (eBook)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Turansky, Scott, 1957

Motivate your child : a Christian parents guide to raising kids who do what they need to do without being told / by Dr. Scott Turansky and Joanne Miller, RN, BSN.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-529-10073-3

1. Child rearingReligious aspectsChristianity. 2. ParentingReligious aspectsChristianity. 3. ObedienceReligious aspectsChristianity. I. Title.

BV4529.T885 2015

248.8'45dc23

2014023482

15 16 17 18 19 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Happiness may be found in the destination, but character is built in the journey.

T he camera pans across snow-capped mountains, zooming in on a resort with happy skiers on the Colorado ski slopes. The scene then shifts to a sandy beach in Hawaii, with two people laughing as they play in the waves. As you watch the beauty, you wonder, What is this commercial about, anyway? It sure looks inviting. At that same moment your answer comes on the screen. Its an advertisement for a travel agency.

When a travel company creates a commercial, they dont display the inside of their office. Instead, they show you where they can take you and the places you can go. Delightful beaches, majestic mountains, and exotic locations provide a vision of new possibilities.

In the same way, we want to invite you to take the next few minutes to catch a vision for what happens to you and your family when you work on internal motivation with your kids. Frankly, youll likely need to make some changes in the way you parent, so its helpful to get the bigger picture. When you recognize the impact by looking at the destination, youre more likely to make the commitment.

In this book youll learn how to develop self-motivation in your children. When parents deliberately work on spiritual and moral development, their kids accumulate new resources in their hearts. The heart contains a childs operating principles.

Gods GPS

Moral and spiritual development increase internal motivation. Amazing things happen when you teach and train your child in those two areas. Specific parenting strategies will adjust common relating patterns, and youll watch the changes take place in your childs heart.

If you imagine the destination, youll think about where you want your child to be in twenty-five years. Close your eyes and try to think into the future. What will your child be like? Do you think of a job or marriage? Who knows what that might be like? But you can also imagine things like integrity, a strong work ethic, responsibility, and a healthy faith. If your son or daughter has those things, then whatever else comes, your child will be prepared. Keeping the destination in mind provides you with greater motivation in the challenges you face and the decisions youll make in the next year, month, week, and even today.

We know you want your kids to be successful. Thats why you carefully consider schooling options, encourage extracurricular activities, and help your children choose friends wisely. But some parents define successful as having a good job and being happy in life. They confuse the destination with the journey. If you try to give your kids the destination by providing them with all the toys that come with human success, you may find that your kids lack the character to manage them.