Customer Reviews

"Mom, I Hate My Life!": Becoming Your Daughter's Ally Through the Emotional Ups and Downs of Adolescence (A Hand-in-Hand Book)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

We're all guilty of failing our daughters at points - what I loved about Sharon Hersh's book, is that she encourages us not to sit in self-condemnation or to jump to condemning our daughters, but to mother from a better place. Hersh's book acts as a guide, walking before us, as we seek to walk alongside our daughters. Instead of fearing, we can look forward to what we both can attain together. It is a gracious approach to parenting that left me with the desire to love my girls with a hopeful heart. And her practical suggestions for thought and discussion are most welcome. We even took the book on a mother-daughter road trip, and had dear talks that I believe will be rattling around in their brains for awhile. Thank you Ms. Hersh for giving your heart to the mother-daughter relationship.

As a registered dietitian, I loved and continue to promote author, Sharon Hersh's book, "Mom, I Feel Fat" to mother's of teen girls who I work with. I could not put her new book down and reflected on the Moms I knew who needed to get a copy of this book. It is written in "real" language and Sharon bravely shares her stories between her and her own daughter, showing the reader a Mom who is real and has walked the talk. I especially liked Sharon's introduction in which she said that problems that may be faced with your daughter are not the end of the story but the beginning of a great adventure. Moms are encouraged throughout the book to believe in their daughter's "becoming" and are given workable ways to model positive behavior to their daughter and ultimately connect with their daughter no matter what the situation. Each chapter has a section for the reader to reflect and journal called 'Just for You' and another area for both mom and daughter to begin a conversation with 'Just for the two of you'. Sharon is not afraid to tackle the tough topics of eating disorders, cutting and self-injury, and depression, all issues that every Mom could face and may be living as she reads this book. For anyone working with adolescent girls or for the Mom who needs inspiration and tools to survive adolescence with her teen daughter, MOM, I HATE MY LIFE! will help prevent the " the loss of the daughter to the mother, the mother to the daughter, (which) is the essential female tragedy" as quoted by Adrienne Rich in Chapter 4.

Author Sharon Hersh speaks to a mother's heart, from a mother's heart, and offers the wisdom we long for in a culture of so many unanswered questions about how to best love our daughters. The years of raising adolescents seem to so often trigger our own unresolved issues that it feels like the blind leading the blind. Hersh offers us the foresight, clarity and sensitivity to connect richly with our teen girls. Relevant and yet timeless, this book needs to get into the hands of every mother and mother-to-be of adolescent daughters!

Full disclosure: this book has come along at exactly the time I needed it (I have two daughters, and the older one is on the cusp of adolescence), and I can't help being grateful. If this clouds my objectivity as a reviewer, I'll admit it; I'd rather be a bad book review writer than a bad parent.

MOM, I HATE MY LIFE! by Sharon Hersh gives mothers of adolescent daughters the tools with which to shape their own particular parent-child relationship. While Hersh does not stray from the spiritual path, neither does she hammer it home to her readers. She realizes that most will already be Christians who recognize that we must render unto our children their worldly due and that sometimes that worldliness will conflict with our own deeply held convictions.

Never you mind, says Hersh, because first of all, God is in control whether we remember to acknowledge that or not. Second, a mother's heart is strong enough to contain mistakes and heartaches along with triumphs and progress, even if we never saw those coming: "Of course, we couldn't imagine when our daughters were cute baby girls that one day they would stonily stare us in the face and announce, 'I hate my life,'" Hersh writes in her introduction, titled "A Haven in the Storm."

She continues, "As mothers, we can become our daughters' greatest allies in the midst of the inevitable and sometimes scary emotional turmoil of growing up female. What I call hand-in-hand mothering begins with the conviction that as we stretch to meet our daughters' needs --- learning in the midst of not knowing, and giving even when we don't feel like we have anything to give --- we can experience personal transformation and guide our daughters toward emotional maturity." To that end, Hersh has divided her book into three sections: Understanding Your Worlds, Building a Bridge Between Your Worlds, and Conquering Roadblocks to Relationships. Each section has four chapters, and each chapter has several "Just For You" boxes that contain relationship strengthening exercises, suggestions for activities/reflections, and checklists.

Hersh doesn't simply tell, tell, tell --- she provides anecdotes from both her professional practice and her personal parenting so that readers can see real life and how her advice works in it. Her practical advice is highly valuable, too. For example, she counsels helping your daughter to make a "sacred space" in her room that she's really comfortable in. She recommends not prying, but if you do need to do a search of a girls' room for illegal substances, have her watch you as you do it rather than doing it on the sly.

Hersh and her daughter Kristin collaborated on a beautiful 1 Corinthians 13 For Mothers of Teenage Girls that closes her book, and she also provides an excellent list of resources for each area she discusses in the book. Whether your daughter is 10 or 20, I recommend buying MOM, I HATE MY LIFE! and keeping it close at hand as you take her hand and continue your journey, together.

--- Reviewed by Bethanne Kelly Patrick

I loved this book. I have read practically every book that has been written on parenting teenaged daughters and this one is far and away the best. It is hopeful, helpful and realistic. I buy it for all of my friends with teenaged daughters.

My girls are now in thier 30's and I wish that I had had Sharon Hersh's insights at the time my 3 girls were adolescents. They were difficult years with a lots of misunderstanding and emotional ups and downs for all of us. I now have 5 granddaughters and I will definetly recomend this book to thier mothers.

This book is a must for all moms with teenage daughters. In this book the author demonstrates how to be accepting of yourself, as a mother, and be accepting of your daughter. This book helps bring the mother and daughter relationship to a new level, it teaches how to be allies with your daughter in very easy and attainable steps.

This is a marvelous parenting book - for moms and dads.
And as a father of sons I want to also understand the psyche of young women that ultimately will enter my world through my boys. Thank you Sharon for an insightful, encouraging book!

I'm a clinical mental health therapist who works with teens, and I have bought many copies of this book on Amazon to loan and give away to patients' families. This is easily one of my all-time favorite books for parents of teen girls, right up there with the works of Mary Piper. I've found that this is one of the more sensible and helpful books I've used with families, and some of my teen patients ask to read it (so they can keep tabs on what I'm asking their moms to read, maybe?). Anyway, my teen patients agree that this book is dead-on in its descriptions of depression, body image feelings, and conflicted mother-daughter relationships. The chapter on cutting and self-injury is particularly well-done.

I deducted one star because of the book's title: "MOM, I hate my life." Dads are barely mentioned, and this book presents this material as if it is ONLY relevant to a mother's understanding of a daughter. Ever notice how often books, articles, TV commercials, etc. simply assume that only MOTHERS are connected to their kids? As a male therapist and father of two, there is not one thing in this book that isn't equally applicable to an involved and struggling father. But a lot of great information is politely declined by the fathers I work with, simply because of the off-putting title. Unfortunately, Sharon Hersh's entire "line" of books use the "Mom..." titling gimmick, and the only prominent book for Dads and daughters (literally, "Dads and Daughters") is geared toward fathers of pre-teen girls.

Consider this a plea for better publications that offer clinically-valid tips for fathers AND mothers of teen girls.

I found this book to be less "preachy" (in a religious sense) than some of the author's other books; while a spiritual foundation is apparent, it doesn't feel like a "Dr. Dobson" evangelical appeal to regressive traditions. On the contrary, Sharon Hersh has some very progressive and well-informed ideas, soundly based in clinical research and her own experience as a psychotherapist.

Of all the books I loan to parents, this is the single one which is least often returned (because they like it), or the book that parents most frequently track down and buy for themselves.

Great book, much better than I imagined it would be. Insightful, gives hope to those of us who feel helpless in dealing with our teenage daughters.