Member Reviews
It's no surprise that Sally's words of encouragement and guidance in her newest book has left us all with a renewed spirit and greater desire to create a spirit-led home for our children to grow. Sally has touched on ministry of parenthood, homeschooling tips, a home and dinner table that offers life and goodness, encouragement for the weary moms, ideas to ponder. Now, she has gifted us with this, the concept of not only building a home with God at the center, with good books, art, and music...but with words. Another beautifully written book to add to your bookshelf that will inspire and motivate you.
Sally has done it again! Her and Clay have a wonderful way with writing about words that just makes sense. I’m so glad that I have found this book at this time in my life. Such knowledge and wisdom. Would recommend to anyone and everyone!
As a parent one of the most important jobs you are given is to raise your children with them knowing God. This is not an easy task as there are so many influencers or voices in this world that your children are exposed to. This book clearly gives biblical principles and personal wisdom from the Clarkson's, that helps any parent understand how to use their voice effectively.
"Giving Your Words" is a must read for any expecting couple, parent and grandparent as it is a daily job to be the voice in your childrens life.
As a mother of two young children myself, I just love reading books that help you to be a better Christian and a better parent. This book does both.
“Parents do not need to teach their child how to speak—God has taken care of that. Parents do, however, need to teach their child what to speak, or how to communicate—that is the challenge and the influence of a verbal home.”
Some of my children come with a history of foster care, the words they heard we not life giving, praiseworthy, nor should be repeated. Even with all of that, they were fearfully and wonderfully made, in the image of our Creator. Looking forward to learning so much more in this book.
I enjoyed this book but I would have to say that it isn’t my favorite by Sally or Clay Clarkson. I am a huge fan of their material and this book proved to have a lot of wisdom and scripture and practical insights as do their other books. However, I found this one to be really dragged out and maybe too much information about linguistics and words themselves.
This was a book I really need to read. Sally and Clay Clarkson gently taught me how to use my words to be a better parent. They used scripture and examples from raising their own children to accomplish this. I was so impressed with the amount of effort they put into having a plan on how to speak to their children. At times the book was a little repetitive, but I didn’t mind this because it was not excessive, and it helped drive the point home. I am thankful that this book will help the parent and child relationships and also assist in developing the children into kind adults who follow God’s Word.
I love the heart behind this book, it's something that God has been making pop up in a lot of places in my life so the reading of this book was very timely. Unfortunately I struggled a bit with the wiring style.
If you've read Clarkson's work before Giving Your Words is similar to previous works. The writing style and the importance of being intentional are all the same. Personally didn't enjoy this as it's tedious and somewhat repetitive.
*I received a dARC from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
DNF. Unfortunately I found this book to be really tedious. I love the Clarkson family and jump at the chance to read any of their books, but for some reason this one read differently.
Giving Your Words is such an inspiring and thoughtful book. We often say that our actions are more important than our words but after reading this book I realized both are important for me. How our words can shape the hearts of our kids. Using the Word of God in our daily lives to help our kids built a strong and healthy Christ centered identity.
We often hear that we speak too much and get ourselves into trouble. However, this book looks at words with a whole new positive perspective that is totally refreshing and renewing. Thoughtful, contemplative and constructively intentional words spoken by Christian parents are the key message I "took home" from reading this book, Giving Your Words.
Words matter, so speak them with care. God spoke, the authors said and our world came into being, much like we read in C.S. Lewis' Narnia series - only much better, of course. Words that come with non-verbal gestures and facial expession tell the children so much about a parents' thoughts and level of care about them.
Sally and her husband Clay Clarkson, who co-authored this book of parenting, suggest that storytelling, much the same as Jesus telling parables, will have greater impact than our haranguing of words. An expression used at one point is "dadly wisdom". I really like that. Both parents involved and communicating words of faith and godly wisdom, coming from the head of the family.
I also like how these parents have developed several acrostics to help themselves, and which they share in this book, to give godly wisdom to their offspring in a systematic, yet flexible manner. One of these is WORLDS among several others. Each chapter has a key verse to consider and ends with what the authors termed, "parenting verbalologistics" (great word), which is a significant conclusion to the major points of the message of that particular chapter, in a nutshell, or even to some more hands-on suggestions. Really though, don't miss all the explanations from introduction to conclusion. There are also delightful blurbs from each of the authors' children which give testimony to which particular aspect of their parents' parenting impacted and nurtured them the most throughout their growing up years. Another analogy that gladdened my heart was the story about Daniel in the Parent's Den but, ha, ha, I'm not going to give it away.
All in all, a very wholesome book which I wish I would have been able to read when my own children were in the nest. So Christian parents with young families out there - here is a wonderful gift of words for you, lending godly guidance to raising your children on a firm foundation of faith in a world ever increasingly determined to snatch them away.. God bless.
~Eunice C., Reviewer/Blogger
Disclaimer: This is my honest opinion based on the review copy given by NetGalley and the publisher.