A valuable, devoutly Christian, and empathy-based concept of parenting in the digital era.
The founder of a Christian nonprofit offers an innovative plan for circumventing the typical problems in parent-child communication.
Fulks draws on his nearly 30 years of experience working with kids in order to deploy a new vision of parenting. His plan was originally based on a simple concept: If children find themselves in a situation that gives them some concern, they can text the single letter X to a designated family member. That relative then follows an agreed-upon script of telling the kids that they’re needed back at home immediately. The children get a no-strings-attached escape plan for any sketchy situation, with the agreement that they can say as much or as little about the incident later as they want. The author views this strategy as the basis of a parenting view that navigates between overcontrolling and undercontrolling kids. “Ultimately,” he writes, “our kids need to know we’re in this together.” Featuring a clear design and engaging prose, with plenty of rich autobiographical details, the book elaborates on this idea of parenting. Unlike the simple stratagem, the guide puts a great deal of emphasis on the author’s Christian faith. “Understanding Jesus’s perilous mission for your own heart,” he writes, “is crucial to what kind of parent you will become.” Fulks is appealing and straightforward when discussing his version of the Christian promise as opposed to mere church attendance: “Jesus heals the broken. Religious posturing just does further damage.” But much of the parenting advice in these pages will be helpful to readers of any denomination. The author stresses that parents must live their lives right alongside their children. “If you’re not living some kind of adventure and inviting your kids up into that world of play,” he writes, “they will go off seeking it in other places.”
A valuable, devoutly Christian, and empathy-based concept of parenting in the digital era.Pub Date: June 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-982112-01-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Howard Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
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