Ready for Responsibility: How to Equip Your Children for Work and Marriage

Parents, this is an outstanding book, valuable for everyone wanting to raise helpful, well-adjusted children who are ready to work and relate to others in a meaningful and significant way. Barnes is great - straight shooter, practical, and humorous - and he drives home his points with excellent examples and poignant stories. He talks about everything in this book - from teaching children responsibility with money to sex and tons of stuff in between! Barnes uses what he calls the ICE principle - Instruction (clearly telling children what is expected), Consequences (holding them responsible for falling short of the standard established) and Experience (allowing children to begin to "cut the grass" and make decisions for themselves). I have also had the pleasure of listening to Dr. Barnes present this same message as part of a CD series ordered from his ministry's web site - the 4-disk CD series is entitled Positive Parenting and is available at www.sheridanhouse.org and is an excellent tool, especially for those unable or unwilling to read the book. One of the fundamental elements of this book is its focus on communication - the parent's ability and willingness to openly communicate with their children and a child's ability to communicate effectively with his or her peers. Barnes addresses the issue of emotionalism and its adverse impact on communication head on and helps the reader see conflict as opportunity instead of tragedy. Barnes writes not only from personal experience, but also drawing wisdom from God's Word and does a great job of making parenting the high calling that it is! This is a wonderful resource and tool for parents.

I heard Bob Barnes at a parenting conference. I bought this book and read it in a short time (it's not a long book). This book gives you such straight forward ideas on how to to prepare your children for the responsibility of the real world. He shows you by example how to lay out what is required and what the consequences are and then how to follow through in order to put the responsibility on your child. It then becomes your child's choice. It eliminates nagging and issues of punishment because they is no question...it was already decided, you just need to follow through.Definitely read this and "Who's in Charge" if you want to raise responsible children who respect you as their parent!