Book Review: Praying for Boys

I recently had the pleasure of reading Praying for Boys: Asking God for the Things They Need Mostby Brooke McGlothlin.  I LOVED this book.  LOVED it.  I cannot recommend this highly enough.  If you are a mama to little boys, then this book is most certainly for you.  Not that dad’s couldn’t benefit from reading it- I will pass it on to my husband to read- but I think that Brooke has a special way of speaking to the experience of being a boy mom.

From the get-go, Brooke had my heart.  I read a devotional where she makes this point about how we sometimes feel like we are constantly fighting our boys (yup, I’ve been there!).  But then she reminds us that our sons are not our enemies.  They do have an enemy who is seeking to destroy them (John 10:10) and it is our jobs as mothers to battle for our sons on our knees in prayer.  It doesn’t sound very profound when I write it out here or when I repeat it but this truth has helped me make an important mental shift lately.  I’m not as upset at my son and I’m able to react more calmly because he’s not my enemy.  Through more time spent in prayer for him (and myself too) I am coming to a place of greater peace about the whole situation.

I’m not saying it’s all peaches and cream over here, or that Praying for Boys is some sort of cure-all, but I feel it has helped better equip me as a mom.

Praying for Boys has 21 chapters in which Brooke focuses on 21 things that boys need and we should pray for them for.  She chose these 21 things based on the premise that we should pray for the things that God says our boys need in His Word, so she took verses from the Bible and left a blank apace for moms to insert their sons names into the prayers.

I love praying through the Scriptural prayers for my sons.  In the past I have found the ideas of books of prayer and praying prayers that other people have written for me to be a little weird.  It just felt a little inorganic, a little impersonal.  But I love praying God’s Word.

Brooke has various suggestions for how you can use the book and she includes guides for leading a study on it in the back of the book.  I like praying through one of the 21 sections each day.  Initially I had the idea that I would copy the prayers onto index cards and attach them onto a ring so that I could flip through them easily each morning during my quiet time.  When I was in Target this past week I saw these little notebooks and I decided to use them to copy the prayers into.

I inserted my sons initials into each one and I love that I will have this to flip through each morning as I pray for them.  They are also the perfect size for tossing into my diaper bag and taking them with me when I’m out and about.

Each chapter also features some thoughts on each of the 21 things boys need as well as reflection questions.  The stories Brooke shares and the reflection questions spurred a lot of thought for me.  I found the experiences she shared about teaching her sons obedience to be extremely helpful.  That page is one of the many that I dog-eared and will refer back to in the future.  In it, Brooke provides a beautiful example of how to speak to our sons about obedience.

In the Gentleness Chapter Brooke relates how getting ready for church on Sunday mornings can be stressful for her family.  I honestly thought it was just us!  I’m glad to know that we’re not alone in this and I love her idea of pausing when we pull into the parking lot and praying as a family to ask God to prepare our hearts for church.  We will be trying that out this Sunday for sure.

What I love most about this book is that Brooke is one of those authors who comes along side you as a fellow mom and she helps you to feel like you can do this whole mom thing, even when you’re tired and you feel like you’re just not good enough as a mom.  She helps you to be a mama who fights hard for her boys by helping you to pray scriptural prayers for your boys and by providing you with practical parenting ideas that back those prayers up.

Mama to mama, this is a book that I recommend that you add to your parenting library.

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