Self Esteem Book Offers Few Secrets But Sound Advice
The subtitle to this book, 9 Secrets Every Parent Needs to Know, definitely caught my attention. Secrets that could help me be a better mother? Yes, please!
Reading the book I eagerly awaited these secrets of unknown truth that would revolutionize my parenting and drastically change our family, but they never came. While the book does contain good advice and practical applications, I wouldn’t say that the information contained in Building your Child’s Self Esteem is a secret, more like common knowledge that we sometimes forget with the business of life.
That said, I did enjoy reading the book. I appreciated the reminders to slow down, take a look at how I am interacting with my children, and where necessary, make changes. I found the book a fast read, partially due to the fact that I skimmed some of the application activities at the end of each chapter because they didn’t apply to my children (they aren’t school age yet).
The nine “secrets” are each described in their own chapter and are presented as nine ideas or values that will positively influence children (and parents) and their self esteem. They are:
- the power of love
- the power of joy
- the power of peace
- the power of patience
- the power of kindness
- the power of goodness
- the power of optimism
- the power of gentleness
- the power of self-control
Each chapter begins with a story, some fanciful and others more realistic, to illustrate the value presented. The author then defines the given value and describes how parents can demonstrate that value and what it looks like when parents are not demonstrating that value.
Each chapter also includes activities to help parents develop the characteristic described. Some suggest making a list and implementing a change in your life for a certain number of days. Others suggest mediation, and still others are to help the reader change their thinking and actions. Some of these ideas I found a little abstract, others were very concrete and specific, making them easier to implement.
The book also includes quotes by famous people, relevant books and videos for parents and kids, parent self esteem development exercises, and affirmation statements about developing the values. These additions made the book seem more of a workbook (there were even pages for writing your answers to self esteem development exercises).
Each chapter includes several sections and the font size changes with each section of the chapter, which could make it easy to find a section or hard to find continuity, depending on your stance. I wasn’t thrilled by the constant formatting changes.
Overall, while this was not a bad parenting book, (I believe most of the information is good advice) I feel that there are better ones more worth the time for reading.
Building your Child’s Self Esteem: 9 Secrets Every Parent Needs to Know
by Yvonne Brooks
Published by iUniverse
Price: $13.08 on amazon.com/$3.03 for Kindle edition
Also available from the author at www.brooksandbrooksfoundation.org
| Easy to Read | 3 |
| I Would Purchase This For My Family | no |
| I Would Purchase This As A Gift |
no |
| I Found This Book Helpful |
3 |
| Overall Rating |
3 |
Meet the Reviewer!
Janice Richardson is an elementary
school teacher turned stay-at-home
mom of three energetic little ones,
ages 4, 2 and 5 months. She enjoys
playing with her family, being outdoors,
and eating chocolate. Janice blogs
about some of the activities she and her
children enjoy at babybrainstorm.blogspot.com.
One of her goals is to someday visit
each of the 50 states and each continent.
