Entertaining common-sense advice for parents to ensure that their children don't run amok.
Sensible suggestions on how to raise your children so they don't become screaming brats who offend everyone around them.
Former teacher and parenting advice columnist Glickman (Sacred Parenting: Jewish Wisdom for Your Family’s First Years, 2009, etc.) writes that even though a toddler may appear to want that sugary treat at the checkout line or a tween really wants to wear a skimpy skirt to school, "what they really want are limits and boundaries and consistent expectations. What they want are opportunities to learn discipline, to demonstrate responsibility, to develop self-esteem, to earn self-respect and the respect of those around them." Beginning with toddlers and advancing through the tween years, Glickman gives levelheaded advice mixed with a healthy dose of humor to any parent who has cringed at their child's behavior: screaming in a store, running wildly through a restaurant, or throwing a temper tantrum at being denied anything. The author covers children interacting with pets, children who bite, picky eaters, clinging behavior, rudeness, and a host of other topics common to toddlers and preschoolers. By stopping bratty behavior at the earliest ages, parents are less likely to have issues later, but if spoiled and demanding performances are already part of the daily norm, Glickman reassures parents that there is still time to correct these matters. As children grow, the concerns shift; your tween may claim he or she is bored, won't turn off any number of electronic devices, or have begun to use inappropriate language. Glickman offers advice for these topics and numerous others. She also provides some handy checklists—e.g., “Helpful Phrases to Use with Your Kid” and “Jobs for Toddlers”—for easy access to quick information that should help parents get through almost any situation.
Entertaining common-sense advice for parents to ensure that their children don't run amok.Pub Date: June 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-17312-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: TarcherPerigee
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2016
A vivid sequel that strains credulity.
Fremont (After Long Silence, 1999) continues—and alters—her story of how memories of the Holocaust affected her family.
At the age of 44, the author learned that her father had disowned her, declaring her “predeceased”—or dead in his eyes—in his will. It was his final insult: Her parents had stopped speaking to her after she’d published After Long Silence, which exposed them as Jewish Holocaust survivors who had posed as Catholics in Europe and America in order to hide multilayered secrets. Here, Fremont delves further into her tortured family dynamics and shows how the rift developed. One thread centers on her life after her harrowing childhood: her education at Wellesley and Boston University, the loss of her virginity to a college boyfriend before accepting her lesbianism, her stint with the Peace Corps in Lesotho, and her decades of work as a lawyer in Boston. Another strand involves her fraught relationship with her sister, Lara, and how their difficulties relate to their father, a doctor embittered after years in the Siberian gulag; and their mother, deeply enmeshed with her own sister, Zosia, who had married an Italian count and stayed in Rome to raise a child. Fremont tells these stories with novelistic flair, ending with a surprising theory about why her parents hid their Judaism. Yet she often appears insensitive to the serious problems she says Lara once faced, including suicidal depression. “The whole point of suicide, I thought, was to succeed at it,” she writes. “My sister’s completion rate was pathetic.” Key facts also differ from those in her earlier work. After Long Silence says, for example, that the author grew up “in a small city in the Midwest” while she writes here that she grew up in “upstate New York,” changes Fremont says she made for “consistency” in the new book but that muddy its narrative waters. The discrepancies may not bother readers seeking psychological insights rather than factual accuracy, but others will wonder if this book should have been labeled a fictionalized autobiography rather than a memoir.
A vivid sequel that strains credulity.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982113-60-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A straightforward tale of kindness and paying it forward in 1980s New York.
When advertising executive Schroff answered a child’s request for spare change by inviting him for lunch, she did not expect the encounter to grow into a friendship that would endure into his adulthood. The author recounts how she and Maurice, a promising boy from a drug-addicted family, learned to trust each other. Schroff acknowledges risks—including the possibility of her actions being misconstrued and the tension of crossing socio-economic divides—but does not dwell on the complexities of homelessness or the philosophical problems of altruism. She does not question whether public recognition is beneficial, or whether it is sufficient for the recipient to realize the extent of what has been done. With the assistance of People human-interest writer Tresniowski (Tiger Virtues, 2005, etc.), Schroff adheres to a personal narrative that traces her troubled relationship with her father, her meetings with Maurice and his background, all while avoiding direct parallels, noting that their childhoods differed in severity even if they shared similar emotional voids. With feel-good dramatizations, the story seldom transcends the message that reaching out makes a difference. It is framed in simple terms, from attributing the first meeting to “two people with complicated pasts and fragile dreams” that were “somehow meant to be friends” to the conclusion that love is a driving force. Admirably, Schroff notes that she did not seek a role as a “substitute parent,” and she does not judge Maurice’s mother for her lifestyle. That both main figures experience a few setbacks yet eventually survive is never in question; the story fittingly concludes with an epilogue by Maurice. For readers seeking an uplifting reminder that small gestures matter.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-4251-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Howard Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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