Do Christians parent differently than non-Christians? Sometimes it can be hard to tell. Often our discussions with other parents reveal our real priorities: our children’s academic achievements, musical or sporting success, and popularity with peers. Perhaps we think more like the world than we care to admit! In light of this, Ed Drew’s Raising Confident Kids is a timely offering that seeks to identify the ways in which Christian parents have succumbed to worldly views. Drew attempts to reorient us back to God’s perspective on parenting our children.

Drew has his finger on the pulse of the issues currently facing parents. This is not only due to his extensive experience with families, both as a long-term children’s worker and as a parent to his own three children, but also because of his role as the Director of Faith in Kids (UK), an organization that helps parents and churches raise kids to trust Christ.

Although the book’s title, Raising Confident Kids in a Confusing World, might initially suggest that Drew is a proponent of the self-esteem movement, its subtitle, A Parent’s Guide to Grounding Identity in Christ, encapsulates what the book is really about: helping Christian parents “to raise kids who are confident that they’re forgiven by Christ and that his Spirit is at work in them, rather than raising little Pharisees who behave well, especially when others are watching, and are proud that they’re good” (p. 85). To this end, he aptly diagnoses how the search for identity drives both parents and their children, and each chapter gives parents the opportunity to think deeply about different aspects of their parenting.

In chapter 1 (“This Is Me”), Drew goes to the heart of society’s most pressing need: identity. He contrasts the “spirit of our age,” which encourages you to “be the person you want to be”—“Follow your own path. Create your own path. Follow your heart” (p. 16)—with the path of “the Shepherd-King,” Jesus Christ, who gives us “the promise of life to the full” (p. 18, emphasis original). For this reason, Christians “have a better story to tell: one of redemption, hope and purpose” (p. 17). Because our identity is grounded in Christ, our kids can “be confident in who they are because they know whose they are” (p. 22, emphasis added).

In chapter 2 (“What They Do Is Not Who They Are”), Drew begins by distinguishing between “religious” and “Christian” parenting. While “religion makes an identity out of actions and behaviours” (p. 28) and says that “good behaviour is what matters most” (p. 29), the Christian gospel insists that “behaviour change will never be enough without a change of identity” (p. 31). Otherwise put, Jesus “is not primarily in the business of behaviour improvement…. He is in the salvation business” (pp. 31–32). Drew stresses that “Christianity is not about what we do but who we are” (p. 36) and behaviour is an outworking of that.

In the third chapter (“Made to Belong”), Drew highlights how parental love and the acceptance of our children “is a shadow of their heavenly Father’s love” (p. 52). Moreover, “if we do our job properly,” he writes, “our children will learn to obey us because we will be modelling the steadfast love that God offers them” (p. 52). While this result is not, of course, guaranteed, the importance of faithful parenting is further emphasised in chapter 4 (“Made to Love”), where Drew explains how the gospel of Christ is diametrically opposed to “the ‘gospel’ of the Western world.” The former shows our kids that their “biggest problem is following their sinful desires,” while the latter tells them that “their biggest problem is not following their own desires” (p. 56, emphasis added).

In chapter 5 (“It’s Ok to Not Feel Ok”), Drew names what many parents may have already, and often painfully, realised: “Parenting exposes the sin in our own lives in a magnified way” (p. 78). Christian parents, therefore, need to rely on the work of the Holy Spirit, not only to change the hearts of their children, but also their own hearts. When it comes to children, however, Drew’s counsel to parents is clear: “focus on the heart, not on the behaviour” (p. 75), for it is out of the heart that good behaviour comes.

Drew addresses the difficult issue of seeing our children suffer and struggle in chapter 6 (“Truly Body Positive”). He wisely advises that what they need is not always solutions, but to know that “there is one who does understand them” (p. 102); namely, the Jesus who walks with them. Refreshingly, Drew urges us not to “see suffering as a deviation” (p. 103), but as part of God’s purpose to train in Christlikeness (p. 104).

In chapter 7 (“I Am Forgiven”), Drew urges parents to be “the front line” when it comes to having conversations with children about the beauty and goodness of the bodies God has given us (p. 108). In a world full of body-confusion, he helpfully reminds readers that “we have a better story, a positive story, to tell about our bodies, about sex and about gender” (p. 111). “Everybody, however broken … is fearfully and wonderfully made” (p. 114).

Chapter 8 (“I Can Change”) deals with issues surrounding friendship. While “every parent wants their child to have friends,” this can also create challenges as their children are exposed to the values of other families. For example, “Christian parents will see that popularity was never a goal for Jesus,” and so we “might need to care less” about many of the things that other parents do (p. 133, emphasis original). In a similar vein, the brief discussion about sex, marriage, and singleness that concludes the chapter ends with an encouragement to parents to never lose sight of the fact that “what our kids need most is Jesus” (p. 143).

Chapter 9 (“Boys, Girls and Gender”) gives parents a good grounding for discussions with their children about the very current, and often confusing, topic of gender. Grounding gender in the body, Drew exhorts us to realize that “God has given us that body as a good gift, and so we thank him for the distinctives of our gendered body, because if he chose and made them, wonderfully and fearfully, then we can learn to share his delight in his handiwork” (p. 149).

Drew’s book is sensible, practical, and liberally dosed with good humor (starting with a hilarious apology to American readers) and is strewn with numerous vignettes of his own parenting successes and shortcomings. He consistently supports his conclusions with Scripture and provides good questions for reflection at the end of each chapter, making the book suitable for group discussion as well as personal rumination. Drew’s conclusion gives parents both comfort and confidence: “Jesus is not surprised or defeated by the 21st century, and his people needn’t be either” (p. 159).

No parenting book can be all things to all parents! This is a book for the average Christian family and, as such, may be inadequate for those struggling with serious family dysfunction. For example, there is no remedy offered for those whose children steadfastly reject the prescribed heart-training. Similarly, the tension between training the heart and expecting obedience from our children could have been more fully explored.

Nevertheless, Raising Confident Kids in a Confusing World is a good “all-rounder” and will be helpful and accessible for most parents bewildered, as we often are, by the baffling nature of parenting in this current age.

---