As a teaching parent you, more than many others, have recognized that parenting is more than childcare. You teach your own children because you know that in the absence of Biblical instruction, secular instruction steps in. But have you thought of it outside the realm of textbooks? Your children are voracious learners, and what they learn is largely controlled by who or what you allow to speak to their hearts. We are all made to worship, either we will worship ourselves and our  possessions, or we will worship God.

Instructing a Child's Heart, the sequel to Shepherding a Child's Heart, teaches us how to engage our children in formative learning, learning that provides for our children a Biblical framework for interpreting and responding to the culture around them. Instructing a Child's Heart has three sections: the call to formative instruction, the content of formative instruction, and a "how-to" section that focuses especially on the application of formative instruction during corrective discipline. If you want your children to be dazzled by God and to respond to Him in awe, you will find key teachings on how to get there in  Instructing a Child's Heart.

From interaction with their peers to the instruction and correction that they receive at home, children interpret their experience from a worldview that seeks to answer their fundamental questions: Who am I? What do I exist for? Where can I find joy? We need to provide our children with a consistent, persuasive, biblical framework for understanding the world God has made and their place in it.

Instructing a Child's Heart is essential to Shepherding a Child's Heart. The instruction that you provide for them not only informs their mind; it is directed to persuading their hearts of the wisdom and truthfulness of God's ways. Impress truth on the hearts of your children, not to control or manage them, but to point them to the greatest joy and happiness that they can experience—delighting in God and the goodness of his ways.