Customer Reviews

Covering Home

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This excellent book is that greatest of all rarities, a book for fathers about how to parent written in language most fathers can easily understand! Wow!!

The key message: Put your children first, and be there to build a life with them and for them.

I highly recommend this book to prospective fathers who want to start getting ready, to practicing fathers who want to improve, and to fathers who know how to do better than they are performing now and want to be reinspired. Moms and wives: This is a great gift book for you to give to future and current dads.

Baseball is the metaphor used here for fathering, and it works well. The book looks at "how in fathering as in baseball you have to work on fundamentals, develop good habits, avoid errors, work on your control, and always keep in mind you can't win them all." "'Covering Home' is part spring training, part team building, and part clinic." As in baseball, for fathers "knowing when to cover home is essential."

One of the parts you will relate well to comes in the introduction when Mr. Petrash talks about remembering playing catch with his dad after work, and then doing the same with his own children (including his daughter). I could feel the hot, humid stickiness of heavy air again just before the street lights came on and the chill began, just to think about those days. Ah . . . what wonderful memories baseball brings of time with fathers and children!

Mr. Petrash knows what he is talking about, having been a single parent of 2 sons and a daughter after a divorce, combined with his day job as a teacher.

The book has nine lessons, just like the number of innings in a regulation game. He also has some extra inning advice if it goes longer.

Lesson 1: "If You Want the Season of a Lifetime, Prepare for It" You should focus on "active participation, emotional involvement and thoughtful awareness."

Lesson 2: "Understand the Pace of the Game and Manage Accordingly." To nature an "active, emotional and thoughtful child" you have to be a good example worthy of imitation, set up and be there for special events with your children, and respect your child's thinking while providing emotional support and affirmation.

Lesson 3: "To Be an All-Star, Make the Highlight Film (and Avoid the Blooper Reel)" This is as simple as working on building positive, rather than negative, memories for your child of your time together.

Lesson 4: "Good Habits Last All Season Long, So Establish Them Early and Practice Them Often" Your child will benefit from positive routines built around the evening meal, bedtime, and other low-key activities to help establish self-discipline.

Lesson 5: "Work Both Sides of the Plate" Complement, don't compete, with your wife's approach and insights.

Lesson 6: "If You Have a Shallow Bench, Keep Your Game Simple" If you are a single dad, be calm and move on.

Lesson 7: "Develop Well-Rounded Players" This is simply helping your children improve themselves in many different dimensions.

Lesson 8: "Remember, You Can't Win Them All" The author reminds us that "fathers often take the blame." We should "approach our shortcomings both as pragmatists and as idealists."

Lesson 9: "Start a League of Your Own" Mr. Petrash encourages you to start your own group of fathers to talk over your experiences, and gives you ideas for how to get started. When you are done, he says, "I hope that 'Covering Home' has enthused you about the prospects of fathering."

Extra Innings: Your children still need you after they are grown. Be there for them.

After you have finished this book, I suggest that you add your own lessons for those first nine innings. In fact, you could add innings for your own rules and ideas. If your father is still alive, discuss this book and your ideas with him. I also encourage you to have the same talk with your grandfathers if either or both are alive. Then, do the same with your mother and your grandmothers. At that point, you should be well primed to talk to your wife about how this co-managing should be shared.

Put it right over the plate where your kids can take a good swing at life!

In Covering Home: Lessons On The Art Of Fathering From The Game Of Baseball, Jack Petrash interweaves advice and insights on how to be an effective, loving father with anecdotes and allegories of baseball. Using terms and illustrations from baseball, Petrash shows that to be a good father takes similar qualities required to be a good player: be present, establish routines early in a child's life, keep bad situations from escalating out of control, and avoid dwelling on parental failures by focusing on successes. Covering Home is one of the most reader friendly, accessible, and effective "how to" books on parenting ever written specifically for Dads.

Speaking as a single baseball mom struggling to cover home, I applaud Jack Petrash's approach to parenting. His common sense but maybe a not so common approach of listening to the kids sets the tone for day-to-day encounters. "Covering Home" is refreshing in its lack of 'must buys'and 'must haves' for children and offers the clarity of a simpler time when just being there was good enough.

I really liked the lessons you can learn from this book. It gives a great overview what to expect and what to do with your children as a caring parent. Having three sons myself i often had the same experiences as described in this book. I really can recommend it, also, coming from Munich in Germany, i do not have an idea, what baseball is about. Now i know even a little of this topic.

This book helps you get your perspective right. Illustrates how to shift gears from life's distractions to focus on what your kids really need from their dad. A great gift for a new dad.

I can't emphasize how helpful this book has been to me, as well as to our family. It has helped me become a better father, husband, and person. I've recommended this book to many people. I highly recommend this book for any father who wants to take his parenting to a new level.

Jack Petrash has taken a medium that almost all American men understand and used it to illustrate good parenting skills. Using baseball and various aspects of that game, he illustrates the similarities between the various stages of the game and the various stages of child rearing, how to make the highlights reel and avoid the bloopers reel, strategies if you have a shallow bench (single parenting), and many more. "Covering Home" is an entertaining and yet practical read that clearly illustrates the key points of good parenting through the medium of baseball. It is a recommended read that is sure to delight and entertain the reader.

I bought this book for my son who is a huge baseball fan. Great gift for a dad who loves baseball. My son, who just had a son, was very pleased with the gift.

Jack Petrash hit a home run with this book. I run a national fathering nonprofit, and this is one of my 3 favorite books on fathering -- real, simple, clear, short and to the most essential of points about being a good dad. That is, be intentional. Pay attention to what you do and say, and open yourself up to the passion of the best job a man can ever have -- father.

This book is practical as well as philosophical. It offers sound advice and a wellspring of rich concepts. I am a pediatrician and father of two girls. I read Covering Home as a resource for others. Instead I find myself reflecting on a phrase or concept while with my own kids. I have been recommending this book heartily and look forward to sitting down for another read. It is filled with heart, soul, wisdom and baseball. What more could be said?