Thursday, May 21, 2009

a question for you

My daughter is now 10 years old, and she's turning 11 in October. The teen years are fast approaching!

I'm wondering if you can recommend:

  • any good books, Christian or otherwise, to prepare a child for puberty (the changes in his/her body and emotions)
  • any good Christian books about biblical womanhood to read with a girl in her pre-teen or early teen years (I'm reading Beautiful Girlhood at the moment, and I've read Girl Talk)
You can comment here if you have any ideas. I'd love to hear from you!

5 comments:

Katrina said...

These books are not specifically girl focused, but I would highly recommend "Shepherding a Child's Heart" by Tedd Tripp for the younger years and "Age of Opportunity" by Paup Tripp for the teen years.

I admire that you're giving thought to this now and "studying", if you will, for the years to come.

Jean said...

Thanks, Katrina, for your helpful suggestions!

Anonymous said...

Hi Jean,

I second Katrina's recommendations. They are both great. I'd love to know if Beautiful Girlhood is helpful. Sounds lovely!

We've used the 'God's Design for Sex' books by Stan and Brenna Jones, published by Navpress, and we've read them together. There are 4 books in the series, 'The Story of Me', 'Before I Was Born', 'What's the Big Deal?' and 'Facing the Facts'. What I particularly liked about What's the Big Deal? is that it is written with two kids and mum and dad asking and answering questions, so we got the kids (well, boys so far!) to read out the kids' part. It sort of gave them a model, if you know what I mean, for asking us about sex, body changes etc. Having read out a question in the book, somehow it seemed easier for them to ask another that wasn't in the book. And having a script for the mum and dad was helpful at times too! Although if I remember correctly I added some comments/info in.

The boys really appreciated us working through the books, and one of them said that he was glad to have started talking about it, as he had presumed sex wasn't good, just because it wasn't on the agenda. Whew! We talk about it a lot more now.

Apparently they also wrote a guidebook: How and When to Tell Your CHildren About Sex, but I haven't seen that one.

It will be interesting to see what else comes up.

Jo

Bec said...

I can highly recommend having a look at the website www.purityparadigm.com.au

It has lots of articles and resources that help us as point our children in the way of God's design for our sexuality and purity, rather than the simple 'just say no' message and the how far can can I go with out going too far? mentality.

Under the homegrown resources section there are 2 great booklets to guide a conversation between a mother and daughter, and father and son about the changes occurring during purity. These are done beautifully, keeping the child as innocent as possible (without lots of anatomical drawings, etc.) while providing them with the much needed information and opening up pathways for communication. They are Australian, which is good too!

Hope this helps,
Bec :-)

Jean said...

Thanks, Jo, we have the first of these but I bought the others today. They look great.

Thanks, Bec, I'll check out that website for sure!