Heartfelt Discipline by Clay Clarkson is a 256-page book written on the subject of child discipline. This book is not specifically for homeschoolers, but it could certainly be used by homeschooling parents who want to read a book about discipline.

Heartfelt Discipline had some wonderful ideas on how to gently guide and train your children. Parents are encouraged to look at a child's heart before giving punishment and to evaluate whether or not the heart motive was pure. Through this book I have learned not to be so quick to judge but to be a little more compassionate when training is needed.

To be completely honest, while I was able to glean some wonderful parenting tips from this book, I had a very hard time getting through it because of the author's interpretation of Scripture. Clay Clarkson takes what the Bible says about spanking and uses his own interpretation to come to the conclusion that spanking is not at all what the Bible means and that we as Christians should not use this method of discipline. In the end, he does say that spanking in very extreme cases is all right, but it's not a method he advocates.

While I have really enjoyed some of the other books written by Clay Clarkson, I cannot recommend Heartfelt Discipline to homeschoolers because of the erroneous interpretation of Scripture found within its pages!

Product review by Charlsie Swadley, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, November 2009