29 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent! A Must-Read for ANY Parent!, November 30, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: Healthy Parenting: How Your Upbringing Influences the Way You Raise Your Children, and What You Can Do to Make It Better for Them (Paperback)
The thing that I loved the most about this book was the way it clearly defined the fine lines between "Healthy and Unhealthy Parenting".
I learned that many of the ways in which I had been treated as a child were unfair, although I did not know it then.
My mother had no right to throw her adult temper tantrums around me, emotionally pounding me for the choices that she made in her life. At the time, I accepted full blame for her misery, and because of her hot and cold mood swings, learned at an early age what it felt like to be confused and depressed. My sister and I tiptoed around our mother, wondering if she was in a good mood, or in a bad one. If bad, we knew to avoid her and stay out of her way.
We learned early on to live underneath a shroud of denial, about our alcholic father and our verbally abusive grandmother, who we lived with.
Our mother would badmouth them to us, revealing innappropriate secrets so she could let off steam, then expected us to supress our own feelings. We were never allowed to vent or acknowledge that we were unhappy about our invisible father and overbearing grandmother.
My mother enjoyed using subtle psychological abuse. It left no physical scars, but was just as damaging. You were more likely to blame yourself than admit your mother caused your pain. Because my mother was not a big physical abuser, only having spanked us on rare occasions, we thought we had it pretty good, and had no right to complain.
As a young adult in my early twenties I became stepmother to a daughter who was diagnosed as having Attention Deficit Disorder, a difficult behavior problem which requires much tolerance and understanding on the part of the parent.
Needless to say, I had trouble. I wasn't sure about what I had a right to expect and what I didn't have a right to expect from this child. We had endless power struggles because she had her own head problems brought on by her drug addict mother who abandoned her, and kept showing back up only to keep disappearing out of her life.
When I read this book, it made me only too aware that I was falling into the sinkholes of my past, in ways being much like my mother. I realized to my horror that I subconsciously set my daughter up at times to fail, so I could enjoy berating her. I never would have known had I not read the book. The book showed me in undeniable ways what was acceptable and what was unacceptable forms of parenting.
In every chapter I found something I could apply to my past. What a great relief it is to find out that all along, you didn't do anything wrong, after all. You can finally dump that huge weight of guilt, because it never belonged to you to begin with. And furthermore, nobody had a right to lay it all on you. How free, and light you feel after reading it.
My stepdaughter is not guilt free, it would have taken a strong individual to deal with what I coped with, but I wish I had this book from the beginning. Things would have been a lot less stressful, and much easier to understand.
I loved this book so much that it had inspired me to begin writing a book of my own, an autobiography about my life and what it was like to grow up with hostility, denial, and guilt. I am presently working on it and hope to publish it one day soon.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Informative but not quite there., August 17, 2000
This review is from: Healthy Parenting: How Your Upbringing Influences the Way You Raise Your Children, and What You Can Do to Make It Better for Them (Paperback)
Was helpful in realizng the actions of parents to their children, but I found other books more helpful overall such as, Toxic Parents overcoming their hurtful legacy and reclaiming your life, by Dr. Susan Forward. Not only helping the child, but focusing on the parent and how to correct their own lives.
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