Book Review by a Mother

"I do have a teenage daughter who will be 16 in less than two weeks.  I have been very fortunate that I have not run across any problems with boys, sex, or behavior problems with her.  I will say that I did learn a lot about communication with her from your book.  After reading the section on Communication I was glad to know that I am not the only parent in the world that has a child that answers every question with one word.  In that section you also talked about how the parents job drains 60 percent of their energy and there is not much left when you get home.  I recently noticed this happening with me and I called a family meeting and we all sat and tried to brainstorm to think of ways that everyone could step in and help.  However I will take some of your ideas and use them to help with our communication.  I did learn some tricks to rephrase my questions to make her elaborate more on her answers.

 In your Introduction you spoke of being a role model for your children and coming off as a hypocrite.  This is something that should be acknowledged because all parents do this, but we are only trying to show our kids what we did not have.  We are better able to teach them through our mistakes and I feel that is what we need to get them to understand.  Everything boils down to our presentation – how we present things to our kids.

 Signing Contracts – This is also something that I have “googled” as an incentive to try to get my children to be serious about their chores, homework and obligations to try to teach them responsibility.  I agree with your statements and it does show them integrity and follows them through life with commitments to come.

 Sex – I learned some things in this section myself.  My daughter did receive HPV vaccine and I learned more from your book than we did from the doctor’s office.  Also, with learning to talk about sex with my teen there was so much useful information found.

 I found your book to be very informative, even with ideas that I stated that I had researched your book only gave me other avenues to explore with my situation.  One thing that I have learned is that all parents “parent” differently and as long as the bottom line is the same is all that matters.  To me that bottom line is having my child to be the best person they can be – including being a good student with excellent morals, being a good citizen and pursing their hopes and dreams.  We also want to make sure our children are not naïve to the world and the bad things that happen and keep them out of danger.  Your book is a great tool for so many of these things.  How we present our opinions and information to our children is so important.  This book is something that I will read in its entirety and go back to reference time and time again."

Andrea White, Parent