DIAL UP THE DREAM

A parenting guide that aims to help mothers support their daughters.

At the start of this book, therapist and coach O’Grady, author of Dial Down the Drama (2015), advises readers to create a “Powerful Parenting Message,” offering an example: “I trust my daughter and support her in her best next step. I choose to listen to, enjoy, and stay connected with my daughter.” The support may take many forms, she points out, and the “next step” may be hard to predict, but the book emphasizes the crucial role of listening throughout. Drawing on her own experiences as a mother and nearly 30years of counseling parents as a marriage and family therapist, O’Grady presents her readers with straightforward discussions of a wide array of subjects, from learning how to let go when daughters leave home for school—including how to retire the “monitoring” part of parenting, which she notes can stick around in unhealthy forms—to setting common-sense boundaries. Each chapter ends with an exercise to help mothers act on what they’re reading, such as journaling about a daughter’s positive traits: “One thing you are grateful for in your daughter,” “One thing you delight in about your daughter,” and so on. Over the course of this parenting manual, readers will find that O’Grady’s advice is uniformly sound and empathetic; one will immediately feel as if one is in caring hands, but there’s a toughness here, as well. Her willingness to tackle darker subjects, including what to do if one’s daughter is sexually assaulted, only makes its unaffected directness more valuable. The prose is appealingly direct throughout: “Are you an adult just because you turn eighteen? Neuroscience doesn’t think so.” The book’s many anecdotes about mothering struggles are instructive, but O’Grady’s own strong, patient advice is its highlight.

A forceful and wide-ranging advice book for readers raising young women.