Amy Scribner

Memoir

On the front lines of motherhood

Feature by Amy Scribner

We mothers know it isn’t an easy job. You struggle to find work-life balance. Your house is a wreck. You haven’t had a full night of sleep since Clinton was president. But these inspiring, honest and heartfelt books will remind you that raising children is both a blessing and a challenge—and that you deserve to celebrate Mother’s Day each year.

A FRESH NEW VOICE
In this wry, warts-and-all memoir, Good Housekeeping contributing writer Kyran Pittman offers up snapshots from her life, and she is nothing if not very, very human. We’re barely into the first chapter of Planting Dandelions when she reveals that she cheated on her first husband. Later in the book, she writes about very nearly cheating on her second husband, and she is equally candid on plenty of other topics, including nearly losing their house to foreclosure.

Yet this confessional tone is balanced with her clear affection for family life in all its messiness. Now a mommy of three, Pittman is just as passionate when writing about life in suburbia as when musing on postpartum sex.

“The slope of my nutritive backslide can be plotted by each of my kids’ first birthday cakes,” she writes. “When the oldest turned one, I made him a whole wheat carrot cake with pineapple-sweetened cream cheese on top. Two years later, it was a homemade chocolate layer cake, frosted with buttercream, for my middle child. Three years after that, I ran by the warehouse club and picked up a slab of corn syrup and hydrogenated vegetable oil, spray-painted blue, for the baby.”

Being a mom isn’t always (or even usually) glamorous, but Pittman recognizes the beauty of family life in this interesting, funny and fresh entry in the mommy memoir genre.

ADVICE YOU CAN TRUST
I’ll be honest: This book reminded me why I will never, ever have another baby. I was exhausted just reading the section called “A baby’s life: sleeping, eating, peeing and pooping,” with its accompanying chart on 24 hours in the life of a newborn. On the plus side, I was glad to learn my stomach wouldn’t be in any better shape had I used cocoa butter during pregnancy.

The Mommy Docs’ Ultimate Guide to Pregnancy and Birth is full of such useful tidbits, penned by three Los Angeles OB/GYNs whose TV show “Deliver Me” airs on Oprah’s new network. With common-sense information and advice on everything from breastfeeding to baby blues, these are the doctors every new mommy wants at her side.

The comparisons to the seminal What to Expect When You’re Expecting are inevitable, but the Mommy Docs write in a more conversational, matter-of-fact tone. With anecdotes sprinkled throughout the book, authors Yvonne Bohn, Allison Hill and Alane Park share their own experiences as mothers and doctors. They do occasionally lapse into medical jargon, but mostly this is a thorough and useful guide from conception to pregnancy and delivery.

THE GIFT OF LOVE
This book touts itself as “dispatches from the ridiculous front lines of parenthood,” but it’s actually more like “dispatches from two incredibly selfless and loving humans.” Astonishing and deeply humbling, No Biking in the House Without a Helmet is two-time National Book Award finalist Melissa Fay Greene’s account of raising four biological children and five more adopted from Bulgaria and Ethiopia.

After their eldest biological child left for college, Greene and husband Don worried they’d be empty nesters before they knew it. Some might solve this by planning a home remodel or a retirement vacation. Instead, the couple brought home five more children over the next decade.

“Donny and I feel most alive, most thickly in the cumbersome richness of life, with children underfoot. The things we like to do, we would just as soon do with children,” Greene writes. “Is travel really worth undertaking if it involves fewer than two taxis to the airport, three airport luggage carts with children riding and waving on top of them, a rental van, and a hall’s length of motel rooms?”

But Greene is no Mother Theresa (thank goodness). In one of the most affecting chapters, she writes candidly about her struggles after bringing home their new son, Jesse. He doesn’t speak English and is developmentally delayed from years in a Bulgarian orphanage. Greene anguishes over her decision, at one point thinking, “If I leave right now, drive all night, and check into a motel in southern Indiana, no one could find me.”
Needless to say, Jesse eventually fits into the family as one of many puzzle pieces. In the end, No Biking in the House Without a Helmet is a lovely patchwork of moments from a house filled with love, life and acceptance.

LIFE GOES ON
“Four months ago I saw my husband lying in a coffin. Tomorrow I get to hold my baby boy in my arms for the first time.”

In Signs of Life, a clear-eyed account of the months following her husband’s accidental death at age 27, author Natalie Taylor recounts what it was like to be a five-months-pregnant widow, navigating a strange new world with humor and honesty.

A high school English teacher, Taylor turns to classic literature to help tell her tale. It’s a neat trick that works surprisingly well. She compares her sense of powerlessness to that of migrant farm worker George from Of Mice and Men, and her grief and frustration to the scene from The Catcher in the Rye when Holden Caulfield breaks his parents’ windows after the death of his brother. Pop culture also figures in Taylor’s imagination, as when she fantasizes about a version of the popular TV series “The Bachelor,” which she would call “The Widowette”: “I’d insist that the entire show be filmed here in Michigan, in the middle of February when the days are gray and bleak and snowy and no one has a tan,” she writes. “The first guy to wake up early and scrape the ice off of my car and shovel the driveway gets a rose.”

Taylor’s story really kicks into high gear after she gives birth to son Kai. Through sleepless nights and maternity leave, she struggles to find her new normal. This is a story remarkably free of self-pity, instead focusing on the power of relying on others and drawing on the strength you didn’t know you had.

We mothers know it isn’t an easy job. You struggle to find work-life balance. Your house is a wreck. You haven’t had a full night of sleep since Clinton was president. But these inspiring, honest and heartfelt books will remind you that raising children is…

ParentingMemoir

Experiences only a mother could love

Feature by Amy Scribner

Motherhood wreaks havoc on your body, your brain cells and your wallet—and you wouldn’t have it any other way. Just in time for Mother’s Day, we’ve chosen five new releases that embrace the stickiest, messiest, sweetest, most exhausting job of all. Pick one up as a present for Mom or as a gift for yourself.

A GRAND ADVENTURE

Anyone who read Operating Instructions, Anne Lamott’s seminal book on the trials and tribulations of motherhood, will be flabbergasted to learn that her infant son, Sam, is now a 19-year-old father. Although the pregnancy was a surprise, Lamott welcomes her new grandson, Jax, with her hallmark humor and faith (and a healthy dash of neurosis) in Some Assembly Required.

She writes candidly of her mixed feelings about the baby’s mother, a lovely but headstrong young woman who keeps Lamott firmly at arm’s length when it comes to raising Jax. Still, the two women forge a deep, if sometimes fragile, bond as they set about the messy business of building an extended family. Insightful, poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, Some Assembly Required is Lamott at her very best.

THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

The subtitle of Making Babies, Anne Enright’s marvelously irreverent look at having children later in life, is “Stumbling into Motherhood,” and that is just what the Irish writer did when she and her husband had their first child after 18 years of marriage.

Is there anything better than a book that doesn’t romanticize pregnancy? When Enright recalls her pregnancy as a time in which she “sat and surfed the Net like some terrible turnip, gagging and leaning back in my chair,” I laughed in agreement. I kept laughing throughout the whole book, including the section called “How to Get Trolleyed While Breastfeeding.” (“Trolleyed” being a very Irish way of saying “drunk.”)

That’s not to say some of that laughter wasn’t through a few tears. Never has the bittersweet impact of motherhood been summed up more poignantly than by Enright. “This is what motherhood has done to me,” she writes. “I cannot watch violent films (I used to quite like violent films), I can’t even watch ones where the violence is ironical (I used to love irony). I cry at all funerals. I look with yearning at the airport road. I am complacent to the point of neglect about my body. I shop where the fat girls shop (it is a different place). For months I do not shop at all.”

Making Babies is a must-read for anyone who’s ever experienced the joys of motherhood—and ’fessed up to its agonies.

TO THE TOP

I was bracing to be slightly annoyed by the ambitious mother and her overachieving mountain-climbing daughter in Up: A Mother and Daughter’s Peakbagging Adventure. But Patricia Ellis Herr is no tiger mom, pushing her daughter Alex to the brink. She is simply a mom who recognized her daughter’s boundless energy and helped her harness it.

The duo climbs nearly 50 New England peaks during their year-and-a-half adventure, an amazing accomplishment given that Alex was only five years old when they started. The quest is not without its harrowing moments, such as when Herr forgets to put windproof gloves on Alex and they have to turn back 200 yards from summiting for fear of frostbite. Add to this the fact that Herr’s husband—Alex’s father—lost both his legs to frostbite in a mountain-climbing accident at age 17.

But Up is marked more by the sweet, small moments the mother-and-daughter team experience while climbing, as when Alex asks her mother why a boy told her she can’t be good at math because she’s a girl. Herr’s account is really half hiking reference manual and half meditation on how to instill independence and confidence at a young age—an odd and oddly compelling combination.

TREASURING THE UNEXPECTED

As soon as the doctor laid the baby in her arms, Kelle Hampton knew her daughter had Down syndrome. “I will never forget my daughter in my arms, opening her eyes over and over . . . she locked eyes with mine and stared . . . bore holes into my soul. Love me. Love me. I’m not what you expected, but oh please love me.”

Hampton is best known for her acclaimed blog, Enjoying the Small Things. In Bloom, a searing and brave portrait of her baby’s first year, Hampton opens up about her fears and jubilation, and what she calls “the throbbing pain of losing what I had expected.” She recounts the late nights doing Internet research on what to expect as Nella grew up, and the triumph of their first walk for Down syndrome awareness.

Filled with personal photos from the delivery room through Nella’s first birthday, Bloom gives a whole new meaning to the term “open book.”

SONG OF MYSELF

My Story, My Song is the slim but lyrical memoir of Lucimarian Roberts, the mother of “Good Morning America” co-anchor Robin Roberts. The elder Roberts, who has become known to GMA viewers through her daughter’s occasional references and a couple of appearances on the program, reveals a delightfully upbeat voice at the age of 87. In the book, co-written with Missy Buchanan, she recalls her racially charged childhood in 1920s Akron, Ohio, her years at historically black Howard University and her experiences as the wife of a career Air Force officer and the mother of four. Primarily, though, My Story, My Song focuses on Roberts’ Christian faith and the gospel music that has been a constant companion throughout her life.

“I sing because the music of the church speaks my soul language,” she writes. “I sing because these songs are tightly woven into the texture of who I am. Lucimarian Tolliver Roberts. Child of God.” Brief reflections from daughter Robin are sprinkled throughout, small but beautiful gems in a truly sparkling book.

Motherhood wreaks havoc on your body, your brain cells and your wallet—and you wouldn’t have it any other way. Just in time for Mother’s Day, we’ve chosen five new releases that embrace the stickiest, messiest, sweetest, most exhausting job of all. Pick one up as…

NonfictionFamily & Relationships

The secrets of successful suitors

Feature by Amy Scribner

It’s hard enough to find someone worthy of a second date, let alone worthy of your heart. This Valentine’s Day, pick up one of these books for more insight into that most intangible and mysterious thing: true love.

In his truly fascinating history of online dating, Love in the Time of Algorithms, Dan Slater traces the concept as far back as the 1960s, when a geeky Harvard undergrad gave up on mixers and devised a $3 matchmaking questionnaire that was then transferred to a punch card and fed through an IBM computer the size of a bookcase. In fact, Slater’s own parents met through one such service, which spat out a printed list of matched college students and mailing addresses—a far cry from today’s sophisticated services, like Match.com and OkCupid, which use complicated algorithms to match up potential suitors. But doesn’t some valuable information get lost when we go online to find love? What about scent, a hair toss, a flirtatious look? Turns out, that doesn’t matter as much as we once thought. “People will use whatever communication tools they have at their disposal to connect,” Slater concludes. “A mood becomes an emoticon. A fast email response communicates warmth. . . . Of course, you can’t smell the person you’re looking at—until later—but meanwhile, the computer is crunching more information than you could ever gather in a glance across the bar.”

CASANOVA’S CHARM

Betsy Prioleau may be an academic, but she writes like a dream. A study of the history and science of seducers, Swoon is sharp, sexy and completely engrossing. Prioleau examines both why some men are great seducers and how they do it. And Paul Newman-like looks don’t factor into the equation as much as one might think. Take Luke, a 31-year-old Brit living in Baltimore: “Luke is a too tall six feet seven inches, with chipmunk cheeks, a receding hairline, and rectangular geek glasses,” writes Prioleau, who heard about Luke from no fewer than four women. “Yet he’s an erotic mage with a flair for the pleasures of the flesh.” (See the book for more on that—probably not suitable for inclusion in this family publication.) Whether Prioleau is writing about Casanova, Bill Clinton or the great French actor Gérard Depardieu (“I turn around, and it’s as though I’ve touched a live socket”), she brings to life those elusive qualities of the world’s great seducers.

LIFE AFTER ‘I DO’

In these times of disposable marriages, the story of Barbara “Cutie” Cooper and husband Harry inspires: They met in 1937 and spent the next 73 years together. “He thought I was special, and I agreed with him,” Cooper writes. “So as long as he thought I was the kingpin, what was there to discuss?” Their granddaughters Kim and Chinta started a blog in 2008 called The OGs (Original Grandparents), where they shared videos chronicling their grandparents’ love story. The blog translates nicely to their book Fall in Love for Life, a delightfully sweet mix of memoir and self-help. Cutie offers smart and surprisingly modern advice on love: “Make time in your busy life for romantic getaways,” she advises. “Turn off the cell phones and leave the computer at home. You’d be amazed what just a night or two away from it all can do for your love life.” Now in her 90s, and a widow since 2010, Cutie has clearly kept her perspective and her humor. “Harry was always five years my senior, which means that he had five years to sow his wildest oats before I came along,” she writes. “Maybe this means that the next five years are all for me to enjoy, so that we come out equal in the end.”

It’s hard enough to find someone worthy of a second date, let alone worthy of your heart. This Valentine’s Day, pick up one of these books for more insight into that most intangible and mysterious thing: true love.

In his truly fascinating history of online dating,…

Parenting

Advice for getting through to your kids

Feature by Amy Scribner

As anyone who’s ever raised a child will tell you, they don’t come with instructions. Well, that may be true, but this fresh new crop of parenting guides offers stellar advice to help you raise healthy, happy, creative and productive kids.

CREATIVITY FOR LIFE

Julia Cameron has sold millions of copies of The Artist’s Way, her seminal book on how to find and embrace your creativity. In The Artist’s Way for Parents, Cameron helps parents unleash their children’s creativity and sense of wonder.

The beauty of Cameron’s advice is that she offers very specific, undaunting exercises for the, shall we say, less artistically inclined among us. For example, she suggests spending an entire evening with no screens: no iPads, no TV, no movies. That’s it. Don’t force watercolors and canvases on your child. Just spend time together and see what happens. “This may cause a great deal of resistance and anxiety, but if you can power through, the connection you will ultimately make with yourself and your family members will be deeper for it,” she says.

There is definitely a spiritual bent to Cameron’s work—readers of her memoirs know she is a Christian. But hers is a gentle, ecumenical approach, and she is never off-putting. Rather, her interest is in supporting calm, loving environments where children are free to explore and express themselves.

WHAT DO YOU SAY?

I’ve been dreading certain questions since my first child was born nine years ago, so I was happy to find some guidance for navigating those tricky conversations. Mom, I’m Not a Kid Anymore by Sue Sanders offers funny and useful advice on how to answer everything from “Do you believe in God?” to “You and Dad do that?”

Sanders has a teenage daughter, which I’d say is pretty much the only expertise required of someone writing this kind of book. She takes on bullying, materialism and slang (which she calls “the lingua franca of adolescence”) with a firm, positive and loving approach. She unflinchingly examines her own foibles in the service of making a larger point (like the time her daughter, then 4 years old, skipped down the city street shouting, “Mommy loves wine!”).

Sanders, who is based in Portland, Oregon, clearly loves parenting and has her eye on the end goal: raising a daughter who will become a productive and independent adult. But not too quickly: “She will soon be pulling away, literally, down the driveway and seeing us and her childhood in the rearview mirror. I know that one day in the not too distant future, I’ll give her the keys and let go. Or maybe not. Our city does have a fine public transportation system, after all.”

REAP THE REWARDS

It’s hard to beat advice from the director of the Yale Parenting Center.

In The Everyday Parenting Toolkit, Alan E. Kazdin starts with the premise that “you have to know what behaviors you would like, and when you want them. . . . That also gets you out of the habit of just noticing what you don’t want, and unwittingly reinforcing it with your exasperated attention.”

Kazdin’s method begins with the use of “antecedents,” a fancy word for anything that prompts a specific behavior. It could be verbal instructions, a note on the refrigerator door or the demonstration of a certain skill, such as using a fork. When the antecedent brings about the behavior you want, give your child positive reinforcement. Eventually, when the desired behavior appears regularly, you can fade out your use of the antecedent.

Lest you get the impression that Kazdin equates parenting with training a puppy, rest assured that he does not suggest using biscuits as rewards. He clearly relishes his work and is intrigued and excited by child and family dynamics, using real examples from his work with families at Yale to demonstrate his advice. This toolkit is jam-packed with solid advice any parent can use.

CULTURAL EXCHANGE

Effective parenting knows no nationality, according to Christine Gross-Loh, who, in Parenting Without Borders, shares what we can learn from families worldwide. Gross-Loh knows whereof she writes—she and her husband moved to Japan when their sons were 5 and 3, and they subsequently had two daughters while living there. They quickly found that what they had assumed were universal traits of good parents were, in fact, cultural. Japanese moms were more lax about sweets, television and behavior, and yet, Gross-Loh found, their children were just as mature and well-adjusted as hers.

Christine Gross-Loh explores what good parenting looks like in cultures all over the world.

Intrigued, Gross-Loh dove into researching parenting practices around the world, and culled the most interesting and surprising examples of how parents are succeeding. For instance, despite the stereotype of rigid and robotic Japanese schools, recess is actually as much a part of their curriculum as math and reading. Kids go outside as frequently as every hour. She visits one of some 700 “forest kindergartens” in Germany, where preschool children spend hours outdoors singing, building, playing and—horror of horrors for American parents—whittling with knives, which they have been taught to use safely.

She also examines schools in other parts of the world that promote healthy eating, in contrast to our tater tot and pizza-heavy cafeteria fare. “In Korea, a child at school would be served spicy chicken, noodles, soup, seasoned vegetables, and persimmon,” she writes. Gross-Loh finds schools in America that have begun emulating the fresher and veggie-heavy meals of foreign countries, concluding, “We can help our kids be ‘good at eating’ just as we’d teach them any other life skill, so that they can share in a world of food as love, as nurturance, and health.”

Gross-Loh offers an inspiring argument that we can all learn a lot from each other when it comes to the toughest job there is.

As anyone who’s ever raised a child will tell you, they don’t come with instructions. Well, that may be true, but this fresh new crop of parenting guides offers stellar advice to help you raise healthy, happy, creative and productive kids.

CREATIVITY FOR LIFE

Julia Cameron has…

NonfictionParenting

Finding your own parenting style

Feature by Amy Scribner

There’s no one way to successfully parent (if only there were—this whole parenting thing would be so much easier!). While the best advice is probably to follow your instincts and cut yourself a break when you make a mistake, these new books offer fresh, sometimes funny insight into the world’s hardest job.

I’m not going to lie—I fully expected to dislike The Brainy Bunch. Kip and Mona Lisa Harding have gotten a lot of media attention for homeschooling their children and getting six of their 10 kids into college by the age of 12. What’s the rush? I wondered indignantly. Why can’t you let your kids be kids?

But the Hardings’ story is very much one of putting love and family first. They are not pushing their children to overachieve—they are helping them find their own unique potential. The book is filled with useful tips, sample schedules and fun projects—and even sections written by some of the children themselves. (Chapters also start with Bible verses, so if that’s not your thing, this may not be the book for you.)

“Our children were not joining fraternities and sororities or going to the weekend parties,” they write. “Instead, they were actually spending more time with our family than if they had been attending a public high school. Our kids actually get to experience more of their childhood because they have more freedom in their education and lives.”

HILARITY ENSUES
In How Not to Calm a Child on a Plane, TV writer Johanna Stein offers a deliciously funny reminder that parenting doesn’t have to be so serious. To wit: When her child was born, Stein took the placenta home from the hospital in order to play a joke on her best friend. That story alone is worth the price of the book.

Chapter 17, written in all caps, enumerates the many ways her preschooler has insulted her. Favorites include, “Mommy, your tummy looks like a bagel” and “Clara and I were playing in your underpants. They fit both of us at the same time, ha ha!”

Stein is definitely not trying to replicate What to Expect When You’re Expecting. If anything, she is the anti-parenting guide, subtly using funny anecdotes to demonstrate that we can have fun with childrearing. She might not bestow nursing tips or ideas for planning the perfect playdate, but she will make you laugh—a lot—about the sweetness, messiness and absurdity of parenting.

SLEEP TIGHT
La Leche League International’s newest book on how to breastfeed and still get some shut-eye is chock-full of advice and information. Maybe too chock-full? At more than 500 pages, one could argue that Sweet Sleep might be a little overwhelming for a sleep-deprived new parent. But the editors smartly break the information into digestible bits organized by topics and age ranges. And for any parent desperate for an uninterrupted few hours of sleep, the advice is worth the read.

Sweet Sleep includes extensive information on creating a safe sleep space, helping children learn to sleep on their own and defusing criticism of your family’s choices. La Leche League sometimes is (undeservedly) portrayed as an extremist group, but this book is nothing but supportive of whatever your choices are about nursing and sleeping.

NURTURING YOUNG READERS
Born Reading: Bringing Up Bookworms in a Digital Age, by former Mediabistro editor Jason Boog, is a book that couldn’t have been written even five years ago. Used to be, you grabbed a copy of Pat the Bunny and maybe a Dr. Seuss, and you were good to go for several years.

But new research and technology have made the seemingly simple topic of reading with your child much more complicated. Who hasn’t watched a toddler master an iPad faster than her parents? How can a print book ever compete with the newest Disney app?

But we now know just how important reading from birth is—it can help build vocabulary and strengthen adult-child bonds. Boog offers straightforward advice—based on his research and conversations with experts, and on his own parenting experience—about how to make the most of time spent reading with your child. Sing, ask questions, use the book to springboard to conversations about bigger issues. Boog shows you how in this fascinating and user-friendly guide to helping develop a lifelong reader.

TAKING CHARGE
Keep Calm and Parent On, by child development specialist Emma Jenner, is a no-nonsense guidebook for even the most unsure parents among us. Her message, delivered in a brisk, British, stiff-upper-lip manner, is that saying no to your kids doesn’t mean you don’t love them. In fact, it might be just what they need to hear.

“You do not have to cater to your children and be an on-demand cook,” Jenner writes in a chapter called—of course—A Tale of Porridge and Pudding. “Your family kitchen is not a restaurant, so don’t let your children treat it like one!”

Jenner has appeared on TLC’s “Take Home Nanny,” and her years of experience are apparent on every page of this wonderfully practical tome. Like a British nanny, Keep Calm and Parent On is gentle but firm, a reminder to this generation of parents that we really are in charge of our children, not the other way around. With Jenner’s advice in your pocket, you will feel equipped to parent on, indeed.

 

This article was originally published in the August 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

There’s no one way to successfully parent (if only there were—this whole parenting thing would be so much easier!). While the best advice is probably to follow your instincts and cut yourself a break when you make a mistake, these new books offer fresh, sometimes funny insight into the world’s hardest job.
NonfictionParenting

Advice for parents: back off

Feature by Amy Scribner

The era of helicopter parenting is officially over, if this new crop of parenting books is any indication. Gone are the days of tracking your child’s every move and fighting her every battle.The focus now is on preparing children for the real world by letting them venture out and even—gasp!—make mistakes. 

In How to Raise an Adult, former Stanford dean Julie Lythcott-Haims argues that we are so focused on our children that “what they eat, how they dress, what activities they pursue [and] what they achieve have be- come a reflection of us. Of how we see ourselves. Like their life is our accomplishment. Like their failures are our fault.”

In her years as Dean of Fresh- men at Stanford, Lythcott-Haims watched as parents encroached on their children’s collegiate pursuits, showing up for social events and contacting professors. She once saw a woman in her mid-20s walking around campus, looking for the engineering building. How did Lythcott-Haims know? Because the mother of this Ph.D. candidate was doing all the talking. It’s a wonder parents haven’t moved into the dorms.

How to Raise an Adult is a bit of a manifesto, and I mean that in the best way. Lay off the Adderall, stop fretting that the Ivy League is the only route to success and let your children have unstructured time to dream, play and do nothing. Raising an adult, Lythcott-Haims posits, means letting go.

UN-ENTITLERS
With chapters titled “They’re Not Helpless” and “Overcontrol,” parenting expert Amy McCready makes clear starting with the table of contents that she finds overparenting to be underwhelm- ing. In The Me, Me, Me Epidemic, McCready, who founded Positive Parenting Solu- tions, dishes out advice in a crisply no-nonsense tone on everything from peer-pressure-proofing your kids to navigating social media.

“If we dish out empty praise and lavish rewards for the type of behavior that should be expected (such as not pitching a fit because we won’t buy them a new action figure or not making rude noises in a restaurant) we’re writing a recipe for an entitled child, one who thinks he takes ‘special to a whole new level,’ ” McCready writes. McCready offers tools she calls “Un-Entitlers,” which are like vitamins to instill capability in children. My favorite is Mind, Body and Soul Time, in which parents give an uninterrupted 10 or 20 minutes to their children and let the kids choose what they do together. It’s simple and surprisingly effective.

LIVE AND LEARN
I have a son entering middle school this fall, so The Gift of Failure by Jessica Lahey was a gift to me. With common-sense advice on how to stand back and let your children learn through their mistakes—including an entire chapter on navigating the hormone-drenched middle school years—this book is one of my new favorite parenting manuals.

Lahey is a warm, engaging writer who spent years in the trenches as a middle school Latin and English teacher. She advocates a lovingly hands-off approach that instills confidence from an early age.

“As adults we all have our own bullies to deal with: mean bosses, vicious enemies, and jealous peers,” she writes. “How your kid learns to deal with those people in their childhood, when failure means a day or two of hurt feelings or social exclusion, can mean the difference between a thin skin and a strong sense of self.”

TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS
Forget gimmicky baby toys—all your child really needs is you. Vanderbilt University child development researcher Stephen Camarata offers an antidote to all the products marketed to guilt-rid- den parents in The Intuitive Parent. “What does a baby really need to know?” he writes. “That his parents love him, will take care of him, and will encourage him and empower him to learn. This does not require special videos, special toys, special DVDs or computer programs.”

Camarata starts with a fascinating section on the science behind child development. (How many au- thors can make something called brain plasticity interesting? Very few.) Then it gets even better, as Camarata lays out his case for why parents need not obsess over every developmental milestone, instead focusing on what he calls intuitive parenting, simply enjoying your child and reacting to his activities. The father of seven children, Camarata blends research and experience to create a parenting book that lets parents off the hook.

SUCCESSFUL STARTERS
The co-authors of Raising Can-Do Kids are perhaps an unlikely duo—Jen Prosek is a public relations executive and Richard Rende is a developmental psychologist. But the partnership works. Raising Can-Do Kids is both interesting and actionable, written from the points of view of someone who under- stands development and someone else who understands what skills it takes to make a great entrepreneur. Together, they identify seven traits that entrepreneurs need (curiosity and risk-taking are among them) and show parents how to cultivate these qualities in their children.

Perhaps most intriguing is their exploration of snowplow parents, who are apparently helicopter parents on steroids. As they write, snowplow parents “don’t just try to control a child’s environment and experiences but overtly eliminate perceived obstacles in a child’s path. Requesting that a specific child not be in your child’s class is one thing; demanding to review the class roster is quite another.” Makes that Stanford mom seem almost reasonable, doesn’t it? 

RELATED CONTENT: Read a Q&A with Julie Lythcott-Haims, author of How To Raise an Adult.

This article was originally published in the August 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The era of helicopter parenting is officially over, if this new crop of parenting books is any indication. Gone are the days of tracking your child’s every move and fighting her every battle.The focus now is on preparing children for the real world by letting them venture out and even—gasp!—make mistakes.
FictionDebut Fiction

Two delectable debuts

Feature by Amy Scribner

“Food is our common ground, a universal experience,” said James Beard, and these two delicious new books are cases in point. 

Both feature a protagonist chasing a food dream, one in the Big Apple and the other all over Europe. And both have enough mouthwatering descriptions of meals to send you rummaging for something to munch on.

The fun, frothy Food Whore has traces of The Devil Wears Prada, except instead of a cruel magazine editor, the villain is the entire Manhattan restaurant scene. Tia Monroe dreams of writing cookbooks and enrolls in the prestigious New York University culinary masters program. But when her bid for an internship with a famous cookbook author is botched, Tia begins ghostwriting columns for weaselly New York Times restaurant critic Michael Saltz, who has lost his ability to taste food. 

It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement: Saltz gets to keep his coveted job at the Times, and Tia gets the thrill of seeing her words in print, albeit under someone else’s byline. She also gets access to Saltz’s private account at Bergdorf Goodman. In no time, down-to-earth Tia becomes a fashionista who breaks up with her steadfast boyfriend and starts dating one of New York’s hottest chefs. But Tia quickly learns how brutal it is in the culinary world, where restaurants will do anything to get a good review. 

Food Whore is the first novel from Jessica Tom, a Brooklyn writer who graduated from Yale University and, much like Tia, wrote restaurant reviews for the school paper. Tom nails the dog-eat-dog restaurant world, whipping up a remarkably entertaining debut.

In Vintage, Bruno Tannenbaum is on the other side of his career from young Tia. After years as a food columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, Bruno is sliding into obsolescence. He once wrote a little-known novel he was proud of and a gimmicky best-selling cookbook he was less proud of. But now, he’s sleeping on his mother’s couch (wife kicked him out for cheating), unemployed (newspaper let him go) and drinking too much (see previous). When a Russian restaurateur enlists Bruno’s help in solving the mystery of a lost vintage of French wine, Bruno senses a story that could revive his career and prove to his family that he still has what it takes to provide for them.

Vintage is a whirlwind of a book, with the charmingly rough Bruno spinning through France, Moldova and Russia as he chases down the wine, which he believes was stolen by the Nazis during World War II. He finds romance with a French winemaker, intrigue in a Russian prison and answers where he never expected them. 

Author David Baker is the director of the documentary American Wine Story, and he delivers a walloping good time in Vintage. While the book is clever and funny, it’s also a tender meditation on the power of food and wine to heal even the sorest of hearts. Bruno is a character for the ages, a passionate foodie who finds his own winding road to redemption.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

“Food is our common ground, a universal experience,” said James Beard, and these two delicious new books are cases in point.
Fiction

Till disaster do us part

Feature by Amy Scribner

Marriage is a challenge under the best of circumstances—devoting your life to one person for all of eternity, through better or worse, richer or poorer, driving through Midwestern storms and facing your husband’s mistress in a foreign country.

OK, those last two examples aren’t found in most wedding vows. But they are found in two new books that examine the darker corners of marriage. Call it the domestic suspense genre.

In Siracusa, the incomparable Delia Ephron introduces us to couples Michael and Lizzie and Finn and Taylor. The foursome is traveling to Italy together, along with Finn and Taylor’s precocious daughter, Snow. These people, it must be said, have absolutely no business traveling together. 

Michael, a semi-famous playwright who has struggled to recapture the magic of his early professional success, has been cheating on Lizzie with a waitress. Finn and Taylor barely speak other than to argue about Snow, an impressionable preteen who idolizes Michael. Finn and Lizzie, who used to date, still have an undeniable spark. Meanwhile, Michael tries to hide the fact that the woman he’s sleeping with has unexpectedly turned up at their hotel in the rundown Sicilian town of Siracusa.

Add a whole lot of Italian wine to the inevitable illicit sex and bitter secrets, and a recipe for the perfect vacation this is not. When Snow goes missing, the families reach their boiling point, and harsh, irreversible truths emerge. This is a thrilling, perfectly paced and deeply satisfying read by a masterful writer.

Listen to Me is a much quieter—but no less impactful—book by the acclaimed author of Reunion and The Fates Will Find Their Way, Hannah Pittard. Laced with dreadful anticipation, Listen to Me is a spot-on depiction of the creep factor of road trips, with their desolate rest stops and weird encounters with strangers. 

Mark and Maggie are driving from their Chicago home to his parents’ Virginia farm. Maggie was recently attacked on the street near their home, the butt of a gun to the back of her head leaving her unconscious and with lingering psychological trauma. She finds herself withdrawn from her life as a wife and veterinarian, reading the news online, compulsively seeking the worst in her fellow humans. Mark struggles to be patient with Maggie’s recovery, and to resist the furtive email come-ons from his lovely teaching assistant who seems so, well, normal in comparison to his damaged wife. 

The road trip is meant to help them reconnect. They don’t realize when they hit the road that they’re driving straight into a powerful storm slicing its way through the Midwest. When the couple hits a total blackout in West Virginia, they hunker down for the night in a remote hotel. Mark takes their dog out for a pre-dawn walk, and a parking lot confrontation turns ugly, forcing Maggie to reckon with her own deep-seated fears.

As Pittard writes, evil—sometimes anonymous, sometimes known—not only exists, it thrives. Both books are gorgeously written sketches of marriages gone sour, and reminders that sometimes the scariest bogeymen are the ones in our own minds.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

It’s Private Eye July at BookPage! All month long, we’re celebrating the sinister side of fiction with the year’s best mysteries and thrillers. Look for the Private Eye July magnifying glass for a daily dose of murder, espionage and all those creepy neighbors with even creepier secrets.

Marriage is a challenge under the best of circumstances—devoting your life to one person for all of eternity, through better or worse, richer or poorer, driving through Midwestern storms and facing your husband’s mistress in a foreign country.
NonfictionParenting

How to grow a happy family

Feature by Amy Scribner

Let’s be honest: Parents barely have time to think or use the restroom solo. So a parenting book needs to be pretty compelling to justify using those precious few minutes when you’re not semi-comatose on the couch. These common-sense guides to building a healthy family are worth your time.

REEL IN YOUR REACTIONS
I loved The Awakened Family by Shefali Tsabary, in large part because it made me feel better about occasionally losing my cool with my own tween son. I mean, Tsabary holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, and she sometimes yells at her daughter.

Tsabary explains that parents are reactive—whether that manifests itself in yelling, overindulging or hovering—because our parenting instincts are based on fear. “Whether you have inflated, grandiose ideas of your children and what they will accomplish in life, or whether you are frightened for them or disappointed in them, all of this ultimately is rooted in fear,” she writes.

She explains why we need to trust in our children’s potential and argues that the best parenting lies in being quiet and open.

“The reason our children turn away from us is that they sense our desire to talk is all about us—our need to manage our anxiety and exert control,” she writes. “By the age of ten, your children are very familiar with how you talk and what you say. They don’t need your words of advice or admonishment. What they need instead is for you to listen and attune yourself to them.”

PARENTING WITH YOUR EX
In Two Homes, One Childhood, Dr. Robert E. Emery provides solid, reassuring advice for families coping with divorce. Director of the Center for Children, Families, and the Law at the University of Virginia, Emery is divorced and remarried himself, and has a successfully blended family. His advice is straightforward and empathetic, and emphasizes parenting as a partnership, even if the marriage is over.

“[G]ood parenting involves at least some degree of cooperation,” he writes. “After all, your seven-year-old will suffer if her bedtime is eight p.m. in one home and eleven p.m. in another. Your teenager will suffer if you ground him for three weeks for a horrible report card, but your ex tells him, ‘No problem. Have fun with your friends. You aren’t grounded at my house!’ ”

Emery’s focus is on keeping the kids out of your emotional “stuff” with your ex—perhaps easier said than done, but this smart, achievable playbook will help.

ROOM TO GROW
Psychologist Alison Gopnik is something of a superstar in the field of child development. In The Gardener and the Carpenter, she lays out her theory that caring for children is like tending a garden, with parent as gardener, encouraging a child’s natural curiosity. As Gopnik sees it, parenting most definitely isn’t like carpentry. “It isn’t a goal-directed enterprise aimed at shaping a child into a particular kind of adult,” she writes.

Gopnik dives deep into the relationship between child and parent, and lays to rest the notion that there is only one path to good parenting. Throughout the book, she traces the child-parent relationship through human evolution to help us understand how we got to this point—for example, overlaying a scene of cavemen hunting and gathering with one of her and her young grandson at the farmer’s market. She also provides simple examples of how we can be less carpenter, more gardener: contribute to the richness of a child’s world by providing a variety of playthings, from rocks to iPads, and a safe place in which to play. Then, unless the child wants you to join in, get out of their way.

WORKING TOGETHER
In Raising Human Beings, noted psychologist Ross W. Greene describes parenting as a partnership with your child. “You may not be aware of it, but you started collaborating with your kid the instant he came into this world,” he writes. “When he cried, you tried to figure out what was the matter. Then you tried to do something about it.”

Using several families as case studies, Greene helps shift the way we think about parenting. His belief is that kids do well if they are able to, and good parenting means being responsive to the hand you’ve been dealt. 

“If your kid isn’t doing well—if he’s not meeting a given expectation—it’s your job to figure out why and to put poor motivation at the bottom of the list,” he writes. “Better yet, take poor motivation off the list completely.”

Greene lays out a practical approach to non-punitive parenting—one that seems sure to promote peace in your household.

 

This article was originally published in the August 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Let’s be honest: Parents barely have time to think or use the restroom solo. So a parenting book needs to be pretty compelling to justify using those precious few minutes when you’re not semi-comatose on the couch. These common-sense guides to building a healthy family are worth your time.
NonfictionBusiness & Finance

Make your money work for you

Feature by Amy Scribner

In the words of P.T. Barnum, “Money is a terrible master but an excellent servant.” These books are sure to help your money serve you better in 2017.

DITCH THE DEBT
Rachel Cruze hates debt. Really hates it. In Love Your Life, Not Theirs, the financial adviser and daughter of money guru Dave Ramsey advises readers to stop trying to keep up with the Joneses and—most importantly—to live debt-free. No credit cards. No car loans.

“[W]hatever you have to give up to live without debt is worth the peace of mind you’ll have and the money you get to keep instead of sending it to the bank,” she argues. 

The message is hardcore for a country in love with credit, but Cruze makes a compelling argument for using cash for most purposes, building an emergency fund, saving for the future and donating a healthy portion of your earnings. 

“People who love their money and stuff more than they love other people will live small, lonely and ultimately ineffective lives,” she writes. 

YOU & YOUR MONEY
Self-described holistic wealth expert Leanne Jacobs views money as something we earn when we open ourselves to it. In Beautiful Money, she details a path to wealth that includes changing our thought patterns about money, building multiple income streams, practicing yoga and (sorry, Rachel Cruze!) building a credit history with a credit card or car loan. 

An MBA and former executive, Jacobs clearly knows her stuff. Her unorthodox approach is not for everyone, but it’s full-hearted and sincere. She advises readers to adopt a wealth mantra, such as: Beauty, abundance and grace flow my way every day. Every cell of my body reminds me that I deserve the very best. In the end, she writes, there is one essential truth about money: “How we treat, respect, discuss, use or abuse money is a real-life measure of our own self-worth.”

SAVINGS SHORTCUTS
In Pogue’s Basics: Money former New York Times tech columnist and life hack enthusiast David Pogue shares nifty tricks for holding onto more of your hard-earned cash. By focusing on what he calls “quirks in the system,” Pogue offers some pretty ingenious ways to save, from keeping your tires inflated to reduce gasoline costs, to earning extra cash by signing up for online focus groups. The advice is packaged in a nicely designed, graphics-heavy book that highlights ballpark savings in red.

Pogue’s tips cover virtually every aspect of life, from tech and TV to food and drink. In The Last Legal Tax Dodges, he lists dozens of deductions and tax credits, downright gleeful as he explains 529 plans, charitable giving and home sales profits. “If you made a profit from selling your home after living there at least two years, the first $250,000 of profit is yours, tax free,” he writes. “If you’re married and filing jointly, make that $500,000. Ka-ching!”

 

This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In the words of P.T. Barnum, “Money is a terrible master but an excellent servant.” These books are sure to help your money serve you better in 2017.
FictionDebut Fiction

Land of lawlessness

Feature by Amy Scribner

Two historical novels offer searingly good stories set in the raw and dangerous American West.

Set in 1876 Wyoming, Dragon Teeth is a “found” manuscript from the great Michael Crichton, who died in 2008. Not a typical Crichton blockbuster, it draws from the best of Western fiction. (Think shootouts and a villain whose entrance makes the saloon music halt.)

On a foolish bet, sheltered Yale student William Johnson joins a summer expedition to Wyoming, where he assists a paleontologist digging up dinosaur bones. They hit the jackpot, unearthing a previously undiscovered skeleton. But Native Americans, water buffalo herds and a scheming, rival paleontologist send the expedition packing. Johnson is separated from the group and finds himself in a rough town with the deliciously perfect name of Deadwood. On his first morning, he steps outside the hotel to find a body in the street. “Flies buzzed around the body; three or four loungers stood over it, smoking cigars and discussing its former owner, but no one made any attempt to move the corpse, and the passing teams of horses just wheeled past it.” This is, needless to say, a long way from the rarified air of New Haven. Burdened with crates of fossils he feels compelled to protect, Johnson is challenged for the first time in his life to survive on his own wits, not his parents’ money.

Full of twists and a cool appearance by the Earp brothers, Dragon Teeth is both thrilling and thought-provoking.

Also fighting for survival is Dulcy Remfrey, the heroine of Jamie Harrison’s debut, The Widow Nash, set in turn-of-the-century Washington and Montana. Dulcy is fleeing her abusive ex-fiancé, Victor, but two factors complicate her efforts: One, Victor is her father’s business partner, and two, her dear father has just died after suffering for years from syphilis. While accompanying her father’s body on a train from Seattle to New York, Dulcy disappears—or so it seems.

Actually, Dulcy fakes her own suicide and slips off the train in windy Livingston, Montana, where she becomes Maria Nash, a recent widow. Although she tries to keep to herself in this “place where she’d stopped being herself,” Dulcy gradually becomes part of the colorful Livingston community, with its corrupt police, promiscuous innkeeper and gossipy women. After a lifetime of attending to her father while he searched the globe for a cure for his illness, this is the first time Dulcy has been truly alone. She buys a home and plants a garden, reads stacks of books and quietly starts a tentative romance with a writer.

“She had finally peeled off her old life, lost her ability to fret over secrets before this new one,” Harrison writes. But a slip-up in Dulcy’s carefully cultivated new life could lead Victor right to her door.

Richly descriptive, The Widow Nash is the luminous story of a woman suspended between two worlds, one promising, the other catastrophic.

 

This article was originally published in the June 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Two historical novels offer searingly good stories set in the raw and dangerous American West.

FictionMystery

Cases for literature lovers

Feature by Amy Scribner

A pair of hair-raising whodunits aimed at bibliophiles are worthy of a top place on your summertime reading list.

Magpie Murders by screenwriter and bestselling author Anthony Horowitz (Moriarty) is a wickedly clever Agatha Christie-style novel within a novel. As editor Susan Ryeland reads through the manuscript for the ninth novel from her publishing house’s bestselling author, Alan Conway, she finds that his Magpie Murders is a crisp murder mystery set in the bucolic English village of Saxby-on-Avon, a town filled with Georgian stone homes and terraces, where you “didn’t need to read Jane Austen. If you stepped outside, you would find yourself actually in her world.”

In Conway’s story, local cleaning lady Mary Elizabeth Blakiston and the wealthy man she works for, Sir Magnus Pye, have both been killed inside Pye Hall. There is no shortage of suspects: Could it have been Pye’s sister who was cut out of the family fortune? The vicar who stands to lose his lovely view when Pye sells off his land for the construction of a cookie-cutter housing development? The son of the cleaning lady who was heard shouting at his mother just before her death? Conway’s brilliant London detective, Atticus Pünd, comes to the secretive town of Saxby-on-Avon for what might be his last investigation.

But the final chapters of the Magpie Murders manuscript are missing, and Conway is now out of the picture in a very unexpected way. Susan comes to suspect that the fictional manuscript holds a darker, real-life story. As life imitates art, Susan becomes a detective of sorts as she begins to interview Conway’s associates in order to piece together what really happened to him and discover where those lost chapters are hidden. Magpie Murders is brilliantly constructed, a thoroughly satisfying read that left me dazzled.

In Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, first-time author Matthew Sullivan creates a vivid world inside Denver’s Bright Ideas Bookstore, where 30-year-old Lydia Smith works and nurtures the store’s “BookFrogs,” damaged men who spend their days wandering the cozy aisles.

When one of the youngest BookFrogs, Joey Molina, hangs himself inside the store, it is Lydia who finds him. Joey leaves Lydia a set of books that contain coded messages within their pages. The discovery cracks open a long-held secret from her youth—the fact that she famously survived a brutal triple-murder while at a sleepover—and Lydia begins to unravel a horrifying connection between Joey and her traumatic past.

Sullivan, a former bookseller himself, weaves an intense, unsettling story. Joey is an enigmatic character, “haunted but harmless—a dust bunny blowing through the corners of the store.” And the flashbacks to that fateful night from Lydia’s childhood, narrated by her father, literally had me reminding myself to breathe.

Twisty and dark, Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore is a remarkable debut novel that will leave readers unsettled and probably yearning to pay a visit to their local bookstore.

 

This article was originally published in the July 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

A pair of hair-raising whodunits aimed at bibliophiles are worthy of a top place on your summertime reading list.

NonfictionParenting

It’s a hard job, but someone’s gotta do it

Feature by Amy Scribner

Raising children has never been more complex, but with a mix of expertise, humor and compassion, these parenting books offer important advice for parenting in the modern age.

It’s pretty easy to focus on weaknesses—our own and our kids’. How many times do we start sentences with “don’t” or focus on the average grades on the report card instead of the excellent ones? In The Strength Switch, Lea Waters, founding director of the Centre for Positive Psychology at the University of Melbourne, urges parents to move away from the negativity bias and offers strategies for helping children build important strengths such as gratitude, self-control and mindfulness.

“Savoring and gratitude help us and our children recognize the good times, intensify the juiciness of the moment, and do the strength building that happens when life is good,” she writes.

Waters writes with typical Australian sunniness and uses stories from families (including her own) and educators to illustrate her points. The Strength Shift offers a roadmap for making small shifts that will yield big results for children.

LAUGH IT OFF
Jen Hatmaker and her husband, Brandon, are pastors in Austin, Texas. She’s the bestselling author of 11 books, including several Bible studies, but her brand of religion is so inclusive, nonjudgmental and loving that her writing feels accessible to any woman—Christian or not—seeking wisdom about how to embrace a messy, beautiful life.

Hatmaker’s latest book, Of Mess and Moxie, is not strictly about parenting. She writes passionately about many aspects of modern female life, such as resiliency, the importance of creating art and how to find time to exercise (although she admits that, for her, “The problem is, I prefer watching Netflix and eating snacks.”). But her most poignant and hilarious chapters focus on her family of five children. From having the sex talk with her kids to grocery shopping for a family of seven, she mixes her advice with a healthy dose of humor and writes in a conversational tone that makes you feel like she’s confiding in you.

TURNING POINT
Many in our society are still grasping what it means to be transgender, although the recent high-profile transition of Caitlyn Jenner has helped educate Americans on the issue. Transgender Children and Youth by Elijah C. Nealy is an invaluable resource for those supporting children who are transgender. Nealy—a professor, clergyman and transgender man—provides in-depth explanations of what it means to be transgender and to be diagnosed with gender dysphoria, and what therapy and medical transitions entail. Perhaps most importantly, Nealy details how to work with young people and their families who are dealing with issues surrounding gender dysphoria and gender diversity.

Although the book is geared toward mental health providers and educators, it is a comprehensive and compassionate narrative that will prove useful for anyone seeking to better understand and support transgender youth. Using vignettes from his years of personal experience, as well as suggested approaches for professionals to take during family conversations, Nealy focuses not only on coming out as transgender but also on building and living a life as a happy transgender individual.

NO SHAME
Sarah Ockwell-Smith, a doula and homeopath, opens Gentle Discipline with a bold statement: “Almost everything we think we know about disciplining children today is wrong.”

Can’t get your toddler to brush his teeth? Why is your son suddenly swearing like a pirate? Ockwell-Smith may be a parenting expert, but even she has experience with her own son yelling an expletive in public. The truth was, her son was tired, he was hot, and he was thirsty. “He just snapped. Just as we all do at times,” Ockwell-Smith writes.

That’s the beauty of Ockwell-Smith’s guidance: She’s low on judgment and high on helpful insights into why your kid can go from angel to monster in 10 seconds flat. She details how children’s brains develop, how they learn and some common physiological triggers for poor behavior (such as sugar, lack of sleep and plain old sensory overload), as well as psychological ones (mimicking the actions they see in others).

But what’s truly thought provoking is Ockwell-Smith’s view that most common discipline methods just don’t work. Physical punishment like spanking causes kids to be more defiant. Distraction prevents children from discovering that emotions are OK. Ockwell-Smith offers excellent “gentle discipline” strategies for addressing some of the most common issues, such as whining, sibling rivalry and lying. This is a handbook for end-of-their-rope parents looking for a fresh approach to discipline.

BOYS AT THEIR BEST
If you’re looking for help with parenting your teenage boy, turn to He’s Not Lazy by Adam Price. As the mother of a 12-year-old son, I was drawn to child psychologist Price’s empathetic views. He writes, “Not only are there the physical changes to contend with, but on a deeper level your son is grappling with profound questions . . . Who am I? What do I believe in? What should I become, and do I have what it takes to get there?”

Price focuses specifically on boys, as boys are much likelier to be diagnosed with learning disabilities, and many education specialists believe boys “are at an intrinsic disadvantage in a classroom that discourages their natural tendency to be active, and competitive.” So rather than facing failure, boys simply opt out and are thus likely to be labeled as lazy.

Parents can help combat this by being their sons’ advocates. No, this doesn’t mean hovering while your son does his homework. It means helping your son find his own motivation. As Price puts it, “The qualities you most want him to develop—self-control, self-determination, self-regulation—all begin with the same word.”

Price outlines common-sense tactics to support boys in finding those “self” words. I have a feeling I’ll be pulling this book off the shelf to consult for years to come.

 

This article was originally published in the August 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Raising children has never been more complex, but with a mix of expertise, humor and compassion, these parenting books offer important advice for parenting in the modern age.

Sign Up

Stay on top of new releases: Sign up for our newsletter to receive reading recommendations in your favorite genres.

Sign up now

Trending Features

All Features