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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Something here for EVERY Mom, April 9, 2006
This review is from: The Balanced Mom: Raising Your Kids Without Losing Your Self (Paperback)
There is not a single mom in this world who couldn't benefit from this book. Whether you're a stay-at-home mom, a working-outside-the-home mom, an older mom, a brand new mom, a mother of one or a mother of six, Bria Simpson has captured the lessons we all need to be reminded of so that we can be great people as well as great moms. Motherhood is the most important undertaking of our lives, and the author understands this. What she also understands is that great moms are also great women, and that we too often lose ourselves in the rush of carpools, soccer games, work, daycare, homework, laundry, meetings, doctor's visits, etc etc. The great thing about this book is that the tips offered can be put into practice the day you read them. In fact, the ones I found most helpful are really simple things I theoretically knew were correct, but had somehow managed to let slide as I got more and more carried away by the kid-tide! We often just need a gentle nudge to do what we already know is good for us. That's what this book gives you. It also gave me new ideas on how to better my parenting skills, as well as my relationship with my husband. Probably the most important thing this book helps you do is take stock of your day-to-day life so that you can start making some critical choices about how you spend your time. I will buy it for all the moms I care about this coming Mother's Day.
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25 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
devoid of new, practical information or advice, December 31, 2006
This review is from: The Balanced Mom: Raising Your Kids Without Losing Your Self (Paperback)
This book doesn't offer any recommendations for putting any of the advice re: better self-care in place except to suggest perhaps brewing your own coffee at home to save money to hire all the help one needs to make it all a reality. For those of us who already believe "if mama ain't happy ain't nobody happy" & set our coffee makers to brew for the morning promptly after getting our babies to sleep for the night, who would like nothing better than a regular date night with our husbands, some quality alone time, and regular refreshing breaks from our kids, this is a frustrating time-waster. Perhaps much of this book's advice is better suited to mothers of older children who have enough disposable income to hire babysitters *and* housekeepers *and* take yoga classes *and* get monthly massages *and* take mini-vacations alone, etc.. The answer, I'm sorry to say (because it is far less satisfactory than blaming mothers for suffering martyrdom complexes & suggesting yoga to help mothers feel more "balanced") is a widespread cultural change that makes affordable child care the norm, and helps men & women shoulder the burdens of raising their children more evenly. A much more worthwhile read is "Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety" by Judith Warner. I give "The Balanced Mom" two stars simply for acknowledging that motherhood is incredibly hard work and those doing that work need to be valued (and value themselves for doing it), which means taking necessary breaks for sustainable self-care.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Loved the Book, May 29, 2006
This review is from: The Balanced Mom: Raising Your Kids Without Losing Your Self (Paperback)
Being a Mom of 4 my life always feels our of balance. This book has such great tips and ideas for helping me try to put my life back in balance. I liked that it is a very easy read. I can read a few pages, put it down, and easily get back into it without having to read half the book over to figure out what I was reading last. Many of the ideas are easy to incorporate into your life. It like that the chapters are short and very well organized. If I find there's a part of my life that needs a little bit more balance I can easily just go to that chapter and find great ideas. I read the whole book through in 1 day and that was with many many interruptions from my kids and husband. Now as I work on different areas of my life I plan to focus more on the different chapters that pertain to those areas. I recommend this book to anyone who would like to try to put more balance into their lives. There are so many tips and ideas that I think everyone will find a few things in the book that will help I also like that she stresses that what works one day may not work another. I've read a lot of books about stress relief and getting organized and putting balance into your life and so many of them have such rigid routines or complicated plans that the book ends up being another source of stress. I don't find that with this book. Quick tips that help!!
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