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Giveaway: Secrets To Parenting Your Adult Child Book

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While many of us are still knee-deep in diapers, or sorting through the ups and downs of the turbulent tweens, I don’t have to tell you how fast children grow. The blink of an eye, a weekend at the grandparents and it seems some mornings that you could almost swear your child looks an inch taller. From the time they are tweens, perhaps even from the time they start walking they begin the journey away from you. And while I know there are countless resources and parenting books for parents of toddlers and newborns, I’ve yet to see a tome dubbed the Teen Whisperer or the Young Adult Whisperer. In its place is this: Secrets to Parenting Your Adult Child, by Nancy Williams. Is this a book that is needed in the marketplace of parenting books? Oh yes, I would argue there is a great need and I wish frankly that it had existed a decade ago so my mother could have read it. Years ago we might have laughed at this notion: the adult child. We might have even shrugged it off as a thing that didn’t exist. But the economy took a dive and grown children began leaving home a lot later. Marriage began happening a lot later than in previous generations and married career couples began waiting often until their 40s before they had their own children. Emptynesters often waited longer to become emptynesters, parenting adult children still living at home. It was most unexpected. So what are the ground rules, or guidelines for this new phase of your relationship? How do you respectfully live under the same roof as two grownups? How do you guide this adult without overstepping your boundaries? How do you continue to nurture in a supportive way the emotional health of this person who is still struggling to become independent? Luckily Nancy Williams, a licenced counselor and life coach, has some advice. Williams, also a parent of two, offers some ideas such as: active listening means not interjecting into their conversations comments like “I know just how you feel.” In fact Williams points out, you probably don’t really know how they feel because this social phenomenon is quite new. “We must be careful to withhold comments that may appear judgemental and avoid comparisons with other children _ their siblings, their friends, our friend’s children.” This is so vital to maintaining a supportive relationship. We all know how awful it feels to be compared in a negative way to someone else’s accomplishments. It undermines our confidence and also makes us question how conditional the love of a parent is. Williams challenges parents to be listeners, to use their hearts while listening and to respect that each person is unique and know that your goal for that person, your adult child, might be entirely different than their goal. Respect their vision, she says. Good advice for any stage of parenting. Become a positive coach. Use phrases like: “Tell me more,” “How can I help you with that?” Also don’t forget simple communication tools like using I statements. Secrets To Parenting Your Adult Child is a great communication tool to have on hand in general for any person with a a child in their teens and beyond. Williams can help you get to that next level with your child. While she won’t be able to help your adult child find a job or move out on their own in an economy where jobs seem scarce, she provides some good solid practical advice.

Secrets to Parenting Your Adult Child is a $$$$ out of $$$$$. The price is right for this book which fills a niche that doesn’t really get much attention. Good communication skills are vital for all relationships and with your children you certainly want to be there throughout their lives, not just until they turn 21. It should be given to all parents when their children are 18 and up.

Secrets to Parenting Your Adult Child by Nancy Williams, Bethany House, US, $12.99 Christian Life and Parenting, 216 pages.

Giveaway: (Open to Canada and US. Ends June 15th)
Mandatory:
1.You must follow thriftymommasbrainfood on GFC (see side bar)
2. Leave me your email address so I can contact you if you win.
Extra ENTRY:
1.Tweet about the giveaway – once per day. One extra entry. The tweet can be like this: “I entered to win the Secrets to Parenting Your Adult Child on http://www.thriftymommasbrainfood.blogspot.com/”

A Promise You Will Want to Savour

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Grab your coziest sweater, your slippers and a cup of tea, then curl up for the weekend with Ann Tatlock’s Promises To Keep. This is a comfortable slightly familiar story with an extremely endearing child narrator named Roz, a plot that never quits moving and a great cast of characters. It conjures up moments of nostalgia and sad truths about adults and their weaknesses. This is my first experience with author Ann Tatlock and I was hooked almost before I even cracked the spine of the novel. Promises to Keep is the story of a mother who flees her abusive alcoholic husband, after many years of his empty promises to sober up and make it upto his family. Told from the point of view of Roz, his 11-year-old daughter, it is a story of domestic violence and love and the limits of dreams. The story begins with Roz and her family moving into a new home in a tiny city far from their old life. When an older woman named Tillie shows up on their doorstep and refuses to leave they find themselves in a bit of a strange predicament.
Tillie presents a plot complication, as the former owner of the house, which she argues is still hers. Her sons have moved her into an old age home against her wishes and every now and then she wanders back to the place that holds her heart and her memories. Roz’s older brother, Wally, a bitter young man about to turn 18 right at the time of the war in Viet Nam, is rigid in his beliefs and angry at yet another intrusion forced upon his tiny healing family. He wants Tillie gone. He was the man in his family that stood upto the father and on the occasion of one final big fight nearly ended up beaten to death for it. Wally was Janis’s first child from a different relationship and the very volatile stepfather seemed to hate Wally from the start, referring to him only as the boy and refusing to adopt him. After that initial visit in chapter one Tillie keeps returning and she makes the argument that the home will always be hers in sweat equity. It is clear that the house will not be big enough for both Tillie and Wally. One will have to go. Janis has three children and the youngest is a toddler. When Janis takes on a job in sales to support her family Tillie becomes invaluable helping out around the home and acting as grandmother to the girls Roz and Valerie. Although she is safe in this new home, Roz finds herself tortured by the vision of her father crying when they drove away and she is unable to move forward. She believes his final words that he will change and she needs to remember the good about him for fear there might not be anything good or loveable about her. Roz begins seeing her Dad everywhere and cannot tell if it is her imagination playing tricks or not. Roz, the newcomer at school, meets a lonely bright creative girl named Mara who dreams of being a writer, but whose skin colour makes her a bit of an outcast. Together they form a friendship and a bond, as they both have been harbouring secrets about their fathers. Their pact to get their fathers back leads them into dangerous territory and threatens more than one family’s fate. Slowly Roz glimpses tiny memories of the violent and sadistic moments they’ve endured at the hands of her father, but she is a guarder of secrets and refuses to share her pain or her misgivings with anyone. Her memories are revealed in an organic manner that flows and is somehow just perfectly in keeping with the timing and the characterization throughout the book. It is an amazing and artistic trick that proves the talent of the author. The reader is never jarred from the plot by a flashback. Ann Tatlock is the author of eight novels, including The Returning. She has won The Christy Award for her novel All The Way Home and the Mid-West Independent Booksellers Association Book of The Year for All The Way Home and I’ll Watch The Moon. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina with her family. In the beginning Promises to Keep is a powerful story about domestic violence and it packs an explosive punch at the end. But there is a great deal here about the nature of family and love and friendship that is every bit as uplifting as well. This is a truly beautiful story and Roz is a dynamite choice for narrator. Even the cover image is a gorgeous artistic shot of a girl’s pigtails. This is one I will keep on my bookshelf for a long time, so I can return to it and study the writer’s technique. Promises To Keep is the total package.

Promises to Keep, by Ann Tatlock, Bethany House, US $14.99, Feb. 1, 2011, 348 pages.
This one gets a 4 and a half rating out of five. It was a charming pageturner and a comfortable read with great characters.and 1/2

My only criticism is the title. There must be 90 books on Amazon.com with the same title and I think it might have been a tiny bit more original.

This book was provided for free courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications House. The opinion on this blog is all my own and is in no way impacted by this. This book is available from Bethany House, a division of Baker Publishing Group.