Jim Burns - 10 Building Blocks for a Solid Family: The Homeword Guide to Parenting

2003, 2010 Jim Burns

Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com

Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

Bethany House Publishers edition published 2014

ISBN 978-1-4412-6595-1

Previously published by Regal Books

Originally published as How to Be a Happy, Healthy Family by W Publishing Group in association with Yates and Yates, LLP, Literary Agents, Orange, CA, 2001.

Ebook edition originally created 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansfor example, electronic, photocopy, recordingwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Other versions used are:

THE MESSAGEScripture taken from THE MESSAGE. Copyright by Eugene H. Peterson, 1993, 1994, 1995. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

NKJVScripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

NRSVThe Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

For Cathy
You continue to amaze me and inspire me.
Thank you for your sacrificial example of making our family your priority.

Of all the influences on the maturation process, none is more important than the family. Healthy families tend to produce healthy individuals. Conversely, dysfunctional families tend to produce troubled individuals.

Human development studies in recent years have focused on the dysfunctional family so intently that most people now believe they grew up in one. Most of the people who come into my counseling office say during the first visit, I grew up in a dysfunctional family. Then they proceed to bring out the tangled wires of their past and seek to make sense of their present. I am deeply sympathetic, and I invest a great deal of my life trying to help them find their way. Yet, in the last few years, I have had a growing awareness that many in our day have no clear picture of a functional family. They know the pain and problems of dysfunction, but they do not know what a healthy family looks like.

When your local bank trains employees how to spot counterfeit bills, it does not show them samples of the counterfeit. Instead, it leads them to focus intently on the authentic billsto study every detail and visualize the image of the true until it is imprinted on the mind. With this mental imprint of the real bill, bank employees are more likely to spot the counterfeit. I believe the same principle applies to helping people develop healthy families. For the past few years, our focus has been on examining the counterfeitstudying the elements of the dysfunctional family. There is benefit in this process, especially in terms of helping those who grew up in such settings, to identify the elements of family relationships that molded their social and emotional patterns. But when there has been some measure of healing, there is the desperate need for a new model. What does a healthy family look like? Until we have a clear picture of a healthy family, we are not likely to create one.

How refreshing to find in the writings of Jim Burns a focus on the real thing. Bringing together contemporary research and biblical foundations, he focuses on those elements of family life that create healthy families. Trained as a professional, he writes in the language of the layman, with an emphasis on the practical. You will not have difficulty understanding the 10 principles of families that succeedthough, admittedly, implementation will require time and effort.

Here is a book that answers the question, What does a healthy family look like? Its a book I can recommend enthusiastically.

Gary D. Chapman, Ph.D.
Author of the bestselling The Five Love Languages
Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Special thanks to:

Cindy Ward

Cathy and I are blessed by your partnership in ministry and your incredible friendship.

Carrie Hicks Steele

You constantly work far above and beyond the call of duty. You are a blessing and a gift sent straight from God.

Christy, Rebecca and Heidi Burns

You bring me the greatest joy of my life. What a delight and privilege to be your dad.

Dr. Jon Wallace

You are an inspirational friend and hero.

David Peck

What a joy to work together to change the world!

The Board of Directors of HomeWord,

as well as the thousands of supporters and friends who have helped create this worldwide, grassroots movement of family-based youth ministry

You are making a difference.

Kim Bangs

You are a treasure who makes all with whom you come in contact feel special. Thanks for being my go-to person at Regal/Gospel Light.

The day our oldest daughter, Christy, arrived home from the hospital, I panicked. How do I hold her? How do I change her? What do we do with her for the next 50 years? Today she is a young adult, and Im still panicked.

Parenting isnt easy. In fact, it is humbling. Parenting has brought out the very best and the very worst in me. If you are having an easy time as a parent, then something is probably wrong. Yes, our children have brought Cathy and me closer together than we ever imagined, and yes, our strongest disagreements have come to us compliments of having children.

Christy Meredith Burns arrived weighing in at 6 pounds and 10 ounces. No one had sent us to parenting school, so we started making up what to do and how to react. The problem was that we came from typical dysfunctional families and found ourselves copying behavior we had actually resented growing up. We decided we needed help. Cathy had a degree in child development and I had one in youth and family ministry, but we were still lost.

So we came up with a great idea. We would look for lessons from mentors. We examined the finest books on family written during the past 25 years. We interviewed hundreds of couples and young people. We dialogued with colleagues. As we explored high and low for the right way to parent, we learned two very important things: (1) there is no perfect method to parenting, and (2) most parents are doing a very adequate job of parenting but dont know it. We also concluded that there are basically 10 essential ingredients for a solid, healthy family. What came out of that search is the content of this simple parenting book.