Book Review: Raising Real Men:Surviving, Teaching and Appreciating Boy - Hal & Melanie Young

Book Description:

"Six boys!" folks say in mock horror, "Well, better you than me."
We answer them cheerfully - we love our boys and they're a gift from God...a reward.

Privately, though, we admit to ourselves it's not always rosy. Teenaged boys put away a startling amount of groceries. Young boys can be downright destructive. They're noisy, unconcerned with personal hygiene, and the dog has a longer attention span - or so it seems, some days.

If this is God's chosen gift to us, then why does it seem so hard? How can we prepare these boys to serve God when we can barely make it through the day. Isn't there a better way?

The answer is yes.

Raising Real Men looks beyond the untied shoes and dirty jeans to what the Lord means your son to be. Learn how to help him focus on schoolwork, find real heroes, stand alone when he needs to, and become a real man one day. Don t just survive raising boys, succeed at it and learn how to love them as they really are.

My thoughts:
Raising Real Men: Surviving, Teaching and Appreciating Boys by Hal & Melanie Young is a book full of practical advice for parents of boys. The first half of the book covers such topics as manliness, heroes, adventure and recklessness, playing, leadership, discipline, and competition all with a Biblical perspective. The second half continues with how to teach your boys about "real life" and to also instill in them the desire to be God's man. The authors reminded the reader that many things that drive us crazy about our boys are manly virtues that need to be understood, cultivated, disciplined, and practiced.

It is reassuring to know that something that especially annoys you about your son, when it is trained in the right way, can become his greatest asset. I found Raising Real Men: Surviving, Teaching and Appreciating Boys to be an encouraging read and a book that I will be referring to again and again as my husband and I  continue our journey in raising our "real men".