The Passionate Mom: Dare To Parent In Today’s World is a parenting book written by Susan Merrill, Director of iMOM. (iMOM was the very first parenting blog I ever followed and it changed my perspective of motherhood a great deal.) Anyway, I’ve been following the blogs of the author and her husband for more than 2 years now and I was excited at the opportunity to review this book.
I love gleaning life lessons from the Bible, and the fact that “The Passionate Mom” is based on the book of Nehemiah, made it all the more interesting. The author likens parenting to the way Nehemiah built the wall around Jerusalem. Taking the reader verse-by-verse through the book of Nehemiah, she describes the qualities Nehemiah possessed that are essential for parenting our kids well.
“Nehemiah had what every mother needs to parent well in today’s world, and he provided a pattern for us to follow.” ~ Susan Merrill, The Passionate Mom
There are 10 essentials the author recommends that all parents develop:
- Perception
- Pondering
- Passion
- Prayer
- Patience
- Preparation
- Purpose
- Planning
- Problem Solving
- Perseverance
Each chapter refers to one of these topics as a brick in the wall we are building in our children’s lives. And as bricks need mortar to hold them together, the author also includes in each chapter, qualities/traits we parents need to develop to keep the bricks in place.
The author discusses practical topics such as electronics and dating that are very relevant to parenting in this day and age. However, I do believe this book would best be appreciated by parents of tweens and teens. There was some valuable advice I took to heart as a mother of 5 year old boys, but I’m sure the wealth of information in this book will be very handy when my boys are older.
Altogether, a good read – practical and very helpful!
Disclosure: I received a free Kindle version of this book from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are entirely my own.