Doug Mefford

Our opinion and our experience with this study series (and we went through the whole video series with a group - not just the book) was that it was very harmful for our child. We were seeking Godly principles for raising our only son at the time. But it is our opinion this series taught an approach that may be appropriate for some children but certainly not all of them. The authors strongly promote the concept that all children must be brought to the same standard of behavior. They discount the idea of “personality” differences and I don’t recall them dealing at all with issues of mental health such as ADHD, autism, OCD, or other issues that may make it legitimately difficult (yes, perhaps even impossible) for a child to conform to their “Stepford children” standards In fairness, some of the concepts taught are legitimate - fairness, alignment in parenting approaches, looking at the behaviors you model as a parent, and consistency in messaging and in the application of punishment. But my opinion is that the application of punishment received much more focus than the application of love, grace, compassion and encouragement - all of which Christ focused on much more than he did punishment, and all of which are much more important concepts to teach your children than say, for example, the ability to recite why they should not start eating before others at a meal. The latter is fine, but the former is fundamental. In our case we believe that trying to force unquestioning compliance by our child in certain circumstances led to very hurtful consequences and actions on our part. What we had interpreted as defiance from our child we only learned years later (and through professional counseling) was actually fear that he could not express at the time. He was too young to understand that it was fear that was behind his behavior, and was just unable to express “I am afraid”. Yet there we were continuing to apply punishment trying to force a behavior he could simply not conform to based on that motivation. That is the risk of these “one size fits all” programs. You may have been through it and found it worked perfectly for your child. If so, I’m glad. But having lived it, and seen it’s impact in our child, I simply offer that you should be very careful with this teaching. Our son grew into a wonderful, Christian, well adjusted adult. But it was not because we went through “Growing Kids God’s Way”. It was in spite of it.