Age of Opportunity by Paul David Tripp

I have had fun recently playing w/some of the blog features - changing colors, pictures & the songs on my ipod. I've also been looking for digital scrapbook software and playing on facebook. All of this makes me sound so, well, 21st century! As I look forward to the "middle school years" with my son, knowing that he will encounter technological change at an ever increasing rate, I have tended to concentrate on academics - in particular on the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and math). My desire has been to prepare our son for the 21st century in which he will live out his days. Increasingly, I have had a nagging feeling that something was missing in my approach to my son's education. I have chosen curriculum for next year - math, grammar, language arts, history, science. Still working on Bible. We have music covered with the guitar lessons. Scouting and FLL for those ever "important" extra curricular activities. So why have I felt so disquieted about our approach to education?

I entertained this question yesterday as I browsed a local bookstore. I thought I was just killing time there, but I have found that God has a purpose for everything. You see, I found a book about teen agers - I thought I was "over thinking" when I brought it home, but I quickly found out that God had ordained that moment in time. This book, The Age of Opportunity by Paul David Tripp has already had a hand in changing my spiritual life. I can feel the Holy Spirit peeling off the layers of yuck in my parenting. I'm only on chapter two.

The thesis of the book is that instead of looking at our children's teen years as something to be endured and by measuring success by whether or not everyone survives and the child moves on into independent life, that we are to look at them as the age of opportunity to take part in what God has ordained for our child to learn about Him during this formative time in their lives and then how they apply that redeeming knowledge to their everyday life.

I'll stop here - but I hope I have sparked your interest a bit. I'll try to post updates from time to time as I read this. Feel free to post comments. God has something in store for our family as we go through the teen years.