At a glance: this is a 17-week study and discussion guide for Parenting by Paul David Tripp, with 120 questions organized by reading assignment. Week 1 is free to read, with no card required.
Paul David Tripp's Parenting is not a how-to manual. It is, as Tripp himself puts it, a book about you — the parent — before it is a book about your children. Built around fourteen gospel-centered principles, Parenting argues that the deepest problem in every home is not a behavioral problem in our kids but a heart problem in us. We come to parenting with our own sin, our own fear, our own pride, and our own need for grace. Tripp's central thesis is that God is the only one with the power to change a human heart, and that recognizing this truth is the beginning of genuine freedom and joy in parenting. When we stop trying to manufacture life-change in our children and start embracing our role as instruments of God's grace, the whole enterprise of parenting begins to feel less like a burden and more like a calling.
This study guide is designed to take you through Parenting one chapter at a time, over fourteen weeks (plus an introduction and closing review). Each week, read the assigned chapter before your group meets or before your personal study time. Then work through the discussion questions, pausing to journal your honest responses before sharing. If you are going through this guide with a spouse, a small group, or a parenting class, resist the urge to jump to the practical takeaways before sitting with the harder diagnostic questions — Tripp's book is most powerful when it is allowed to examine the heart before prescribing action. Each week closes with a prayer designed to bring the chapter's themes before God honestly.
By the end of this guide, you will have a clearer vision of what God is actually doing in and through the parenting season of your life, a more honest understanding of how your own heart shapes your household, and a deeper confidence in the grace that is sufficient for both you and your children. You may not walk away with a five-step formula — Tripp deliberately avoids giving you one — but you will walk away with something better: a gospel-rooted framework that can give you wisdom, hope, and even joy on the hardest days of parenthood.