Parental Teaching and its Effects on Children's Development

This book is intended to establish the importance of teaching children at home and how this affects children’s lives as they grow from infancy to adulthood. The author points out that the home is the first classroom where a child is shaped through teaching by parents. She believes that teaching at home is a daily routine and can happen whenever the parents are spending time with their children. Every activity in the home can be a teaching moment. The author looks at teaching from both the Old and New Testament and also from an African perspective; focusing parents’ teaching in the areas of morals, courteousness, sex education, friendship, responsibility and discipline. She suggests several methods of teaching children as through storytelling, songs, family rituals, symbols, role modeling, questions, listening and games. She cites various challenges encountered while teaching children at home such as: technology, death in the family, divorce, negligence by parents or care-givers and lack of time with children.