Raising An Original

Parenting Each Child According to Their Unique God-Given Temperament

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Julie Lyles Carr’s Raising an Original is a valuable tool for equipping parents to understand their child-rearing styles. Through candid chapters on her own experiences as a mom, the author teaches parenting practices that illustrate the value of embracing your children’s unique individuality–no matter what mold society tells us they should fit into.

Parenting to Your Strengths, and Theirs

Raising an Original offers personality assessment tools (ROPES) that help you discover not only what your own strengths are, but also what your children’s gifts are. And as a result, how you can parent them according to both of your strengths. It also tackles challenges parents face and offers solutions for dealing with things like school and work, and just letting go.

I really like the way this book is written and the way the author weaves the metaphor of the thread of lace throughout the book:

“We all begin life on a fragile string. A thread–a life-sustaining, nutrient-giving thread. This thread connects the fragile to the established, the dependent to the provider. A curious thread. About twenty inches long and three-quarters of an inch in diameter, the umbilical cord is the literal lifeline between mother and child, the circulatory cable that allows life to exist in darkened maternal seclusion. A marvelous, miraculous, curious thread, ingeniously designed. And, ultimately, a thread that must be cut” (p. 20).

The writing style is easy and fluid, yet beautifully descriptive. The author includes thought-provoking quotes and scripture references. She also provides constant reassurance that it is okay to break away from the idea of perfection and to accept that your imperfect children and imperfect parenting are really perfect in their own unique way.

The publisher provided a review copy of Raising an Original.