Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Good books?

Hannah asked for recommendations for books to help prepare for the entry of a 16 year old boy in her family. I've been pondering it and I realize I don't really have good books that focus on teens...or at least not many.

I really like Faber and Mazlish. I prefer the more theoretical book: Liberated Parents, Liberated Children although I know there How to Talk book is generally more popular. They have a newer one with examples for teens. These are just good parenting books, nothing in there is intended for kids from foster care.

I think the memoir Three Little Words does an excellent job of giving insight into perspectives of kids who have spent a good deal of time in foster care. There's a Kindle edition of it!

I still think that the best foster care training I have ever got was from Alanon. The reason that it has been so helpful is that it is all about (or largely about) learning to let other people take the journeys they need to take. I got better there at two things: 1. stepping back and letting them do what they needed to do; and 2. doing what I needed to do while letting go of the consequences. Both of those things together mean that I don't judge my choices based upon the results. Well, I remind myself not to, but it isn't easy. I will look around and see if there is a good book that deals with that.

Does anyone have any book recommendations? Please add them in the comments.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous7:06 AM

    Thanks, Yondalla. I will probably be picking your brain a lot. This is going to be a big change, and I can already tell that I am going to have a harder time imposing limits on Gabe because he is older than I would a 9 year old.

    What do you do for chores? Allowances? Homework time? :)

    ReplyDelete

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