About the Book

Book: Unison Parenting: The Comprehensive Guide to Navigating Christian Parenthood with One Voice

Author: Cecil Taylor

Genre: Parenting/Family, more specifically Christian Parenting

Release date: September 17, 2024

Singing in unison is when all voices sing the same note, at the same time, to emphasize the text. Similarly, families need to parent in unison to emphasize the message they want to send to their children.

Cecil Taylor uses his personal parenting experience, and those of the families he’s taught and ministered to over decades, to create unique foundational strategies for unison parenting within a Christian context. Learn how to stay on the same page throughout the trials of parenting, provide children with a solid faith foundation, and balance loving nature with firm boundaries to create a warm, stable environment where the child and parent can eventually collaborate to bring the child to full, responsible adulthood.

Whether in a traditional or nontraditional family structure, Unison Parenting leads parents through the ages and stages of childhood into mature adulthood. Additionally, Cecil lays out parenting fundamentals to manage your child’s growing need for independence during their teen years, while gradually building trust through incremental decision-making.

Click here to get your copy!

About the Author

With more than 30 years’ experience as an adult Sunday School teacher and as many in youth ministry, Cecil Taylor has impacted lives in local churches throughout his adult life. He founded Cecil Taylor Ministries to broaden that impact, teaching Christians to live a 7-day practical faith through books, video studies, and speaking engagements. His ministry is cross-denominational, focused on the common struggle Christians face in putting their faith into practice and applying scripture and faith principles to life situations.

Cecil has written three previous books, all of which have been awarded across international, national, and regional contests. For each book, Cecil has created a study guide, a video study, and downloadable free leader guides.

More from Cecil

Would you like to know the surefire, guaranteed way to get your teen to open up and talk to you? You’ll find it in my new book, Unison Parenting: The Comprehensive Guide to Navigating Christian Parenthood with One Voice.

Unison Parenting is the culmination of my fifteen years leading parenting classes in my church, my thirty years of youth ministry, and my raising of three children (one adopted) to adulthood. I taught and tested the parenting advice with seven hundred families that attended my classes, so I am convinced the structure and tips you’ll find in the book are well-proven.

One of those tips is how to get your teen to talk to you. I have never had anyone return to me to say that the technique doesn’t work; in fact, they laughingly complain that the technique works too well, and they can’t get their teen to stop talking!

An overarching theme of the book is, of course, getting and staying in unison as parents, but not only as parents – as a family. Another way to put it is a spirit of collaboration. You begin building this collaboration when the children are young, and as they grow, you expand the collaboration to partner with them on the common goal of helping them become mature adults who make good decisions.

I can tell you from experience that the collaborating spirit of such a family continues into adulthood, fostering solid on-going relationships and a desire for family community, even across distance.

This is not to say that my wife and I were perfect, nor that our children were perfect. We all made regrettable mistakes along the way. Our learnings, plus the positive and negative experiences of families I encountered over decades, will help you avoid pitfalls as you create a unison atmosphere among parenting partners and with your children.

Author Interview

What was the inspiration behind Unison Parenting?

When I was teaching parenting classes to seven hundred families in my church over a fifteen-year period, people would tell me, “You should put this into a book.” Well, here it finally is!

The book doesn’t only consist of the class material that I taught, though that is the heart of the book. I have added information to create something bigger and fresher.

Can you share 5 random facts about this book?

1. It’s the longest of my four books and took the longest to write.

2. The first cover we designed got panned by those closest to me. “It looks like clip art,” they said. I went back and thought about the book’s concepts, and the word “confluence” came to mind. I’m fascinated by the confluence of rivers, so my artist, Connor Walden, and I designed a logo reminiscent of river confluence, as parenting partners come together as one.

3. My children haven’t read the book as of yet. I tried to minimize their stories and protect their privacy. With the rare exception, any stories involving them are presented to illustrate my wife’s and my parenting successes and failures.

4. Early reviewers who know my youth ministry work at church or the friend circles of my children have tried to guess the families that I use as examples with obscured identities and details. I don’t respond to their guesses, but I will say this – no one has been right yet. I knew a LOT of families in thirty years of youth ministry across two churches and twenty-five years of having children in my house.

5. I give credit in the book to Gary Smalley, whose books on family relationships influenced our parenting. My wife and I started with his concepts but made them into something new.

If readers have just one take-away from this book, what do you want it to be?

I want readers to realize that they can collaborate well with their parenting partners. I understand the struggles that occur when meshing personalities and beliefs. It takes work, communication, and humility, but it can be done in most cases. There are always exceptions, unfortunately, but I want parents to start from a place of possibility and hope.

What book made you fall in love with reading? 

I’ll point to two books. One was a daily children’s storybook with 365 stories about a particular family. My dad would read it every night before bed to my sister and me. I learned to read by trying to figure out where he was in the text. The stories hooked me on reading.

When I was approaching middle school age, I encountered Sherlock Holmes and A Study in Scarlet. Sherlock Holmes books then became my first binge reading source.

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. Before you go, where can readers keep up with what’s next?

Thanks for asking! Unison Parenting is much more than a book, and I’m working on bonus material, video studies, book studies, a parenting blog, parenting guest columns, and more. The best starting point for parenting topics is my new website, UnisonParenting.com.

I also provide books, videos, and free content (blogs, podcasts, and more) designed to help Christians live a seven-day practical faith. You can find those materials by visiting my ministry website, CecilTaylorMinistries.com.