I think every mother at some point or another has doubts about how she is raising her kids. It seems like every other mother we know has all her ducks in a row and never seems to have that stressed out, hair pulling moment where we feel like we are totaling blowing this whole motherhood thing.
On top of that, we read books about how to schedule our kids days so that they will never throw temper tantrums,disobey, or flush another valuable item down the toilet again. Or we read websites about games to play with our children that will have them ready for college by age 4. More guilt - another thing we are not doing right.
This book is not one of those books. It offers practical thoughts on real life parenting and I found myself challenged and encouraged by it but not guilty!
The book is divided into four sections:
Core: Getting to know ourself better. How has our childhood effected our parenting; Our strengths and weaknesses; how we deal with stress; taking care of ourselves and other topics that deal with helping us parenting from our individual personality.
Finesse: The really practical part! Instead of rules to follow, seeing the big picture of what our real goals are in parenting. Forming attachments with our children and just the day to day things of life - doing them to fit our goals and our children - not a prescribed method or formula.
Circle: Building relationships. Marriage, Family and Friends all play a big role in our parenting. This section works on improving and building those mutual relationships.
Grandscape: Probably the most important section, it deals with how our relationship with God is essential to our relationship with our children.
There are so many things I liked about this book. Hearing what other mothers said through surveys, the nice SHORT divisions so that when someone has a potty accident I always have a good stopping point close by, and the practical questions that help to apply the ideas to my own parenting.
I highly recommend this book to any mother - especially ones with younger children!
Available June 2010 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.
A big thank you to Revell for the free copy of this book to review!
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