Parent & Adult Child Books

Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life

Susan Forward, Craig Buck

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Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Self-Help -> General
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Self-Help -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 122 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Good but not great 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Reading this book will confirm what you already suspect about your parent's behavior if you have toxic parents. It will also confirm that many of your emotional habits, such as letting people walk all over you, or not standing up to others because you don't want to make them angry, are because of the way you grew up. This book may help you to redefine your relationship with your toxic parent if you are in a position of still desiring a relationship with that parent. The short coming of this book is that it lumps so many kinds of abuse into one book that you don't get a good feel for how to deal with the specific type(s) of abuse that you experienced. It also doesn't really give the reader any tools to move forward in their own life. Yes, it validates that you were abused, but it doesn't talk about how to move yourself forward in any aspect other than your relationship with your toxic parent. The one thing that I took from this book, and am very greatful for, is the realization that my aging and in poor health, but still miserable, angry, mean, and toxic parent lived her life and made choices to get to where she is today, it isn't my fault she is miserable and mean (even though she would tell me otherwise). I am entitled to live my life, I don't have to feel sorry for her and try to make her feel better at my family's expense anymore. Basically, after reading this book and dealing with a nasty precipitating event, I have realized that I am not responsible for her problems, she is. So if you are in need of validation that your parent is toxic, read this book. However, if you are looking for a way to pull your life together because of childhood abuse, this isn't the book you are looking for.

Editorial Review:

All parents fall short from time to time. But Susan Forward pulls no punches when it comes to those whose deficiencies cripple their children emotionally. Her brisk, unreserved guide to overcoming the stultifying agony of parental manipulation--from power trips to guilt trips and all other killers of self worth--will help deal with the pain of childhood and move beyond the frustrating relationship patterns learned at home.

Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grown-up's Guide to Getting over Narcissistic Parents

Nina W. Brown

Amazon Price: $11.53 List Price: $16.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: New Harbinger Publications Amazon Marketplace: 41 new & used starting at $10.51

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 69 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Being a parent is usually all about giving of yourself to foster your child's growth and development. But what happens when this isn't the case? Some parents dismiss the needs of their children, asserting their own instead, demanding attention and reassurance from even very young children. This may especially be the case when a parent has narcissistic tendencies or narcissistic personality disorder. From the author of Working with the Self-Absorbed and Loving the Self-Absorbed, this major revision of a self-help classic offers a step-by-step approach to resolving conflict and building a meaningful relationship with a narcissistic parent.

Children of the Self-Absorbed offers clear definitions of narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder to help you identify the extent of your parent's problem. You'll learn the different types of destructive narcissism and how to recognize their effects on relationships. With the aid of proven techniques, you'll discover that you're not helpless against your parent's behavior and that you needn't consider giving up on the relationship. Instead, realistic strategies and steps are suggested for learning to set mutually agreed upon behaviors that can help you fulfill your needs and expectations.

The Color of Water 10th Anniversary Edition

James McBride

Amazon Price: $11.20 List Price: $14.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Riverhead Trade Amazon Marketplace: 155 new & used starting at $2.83

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 28 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Better than expected 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I think this story trancends race. It's really just a story of a mother who made choices and gave her all in an extremely trying environement. I was moved. I read this after reading Miracle at St. Anna which was great!

Double standards 1 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Lets imagine that a Jewish author writes a book that features all the well known evil racist stereotypes of Afro-Americans. Everyone would be up in arms (justifiably) and condemn the book. Here we have a book penned by an Afro-American that contains many anti-Semitic stereotypes supposedly related to the author by his mother who pathologically rejected her Jewish roots, and everyone praises the book. I am both puzzled and offended. In addition if his mother had used the same child rearing practices 20 years later her children would have been sent to foster homes.

First rate memoir 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I started to write first rate mixed-race memoir, but hell, this is just plain first rate writing no matter how you slice it. As one of 12 kids in desperately poor conditions, McBride survived and triumphed, as apparently did all 11 of his siblings. And they owe much of this to their mother, who did her best for them. This is a "double memoir," being the story of both the author and his mother, a Jewish immigrant who survived an abusive and nearly loveless childhood, but finally found love - twice - and somehow successfully raised all those kids, the products of two good matches with men who took their parenting responsibilities seriously. I wonder if Barack Obama has read this book. There are undoubtedly personal and racial identity problems here to which he could relate. If I could call him up, I'd certainly recommend it to him. I'm also recommending it to another author I know, Stella Suberman, who wrote the warm memoir of growing up Jewish in the south, THE JEW STORE. But hey, I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to know a little more about the nature of being a human being. - Tim Bazzett, author of Reed City Boy

Surviving a Borderline Parent: How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds & Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem

Kimberlee Roth, Freda B. Friedman

Amazon Price: $11.53 List Price: $16.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: New Harbinger Publications Amazon Marketplace: 50 new & used starting at $9.88

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 30 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Although relatively common, Borderline Personality Disorder, or BPD, is often overlooked or misdiagnosed by therapists and clinicians and denied by those who suffer from it.

Symptoms of this tragic problem include unpredictability, violence and uncontrollable anger, deep depression and self-abuse. Parents with BPD are often unable to provide for the basic physical and emotional needs of their children. In an ironic and painful role reversal, BPD parents can actually raise children to be their caretakers. They may burden even very young children with adult responsibilities. They tend to demand unreasonable levels of emotional and material support from those least able to provide it. Plagued by irrational fears and anxieties, BPD parents often transfer feelings of self-hatred onto their children. salting the wounds inflicted by their insatiable need with constant denigration and abuse.

If you were raised by a BPD parent, your childhood was a volatile and painful time. This book, the first written specifically for children of borderline parents, offers step-by-step guidance to understanding and overcoming the lasting effects of being raised by a person suffering from this disorder. Learn what psychological criteria are necessary for a BPD diagnosis and identify the specific characteristics your parent presents. Discover specific coping strategies for dealing with issues common to children of borderline parents: low self-esteem, lack of trust, guilt, and hypersensitivity. Make the major decision whether to confront your parent about his or her condition.

Setting Boundaries with Your Adult Children: Six Steps to Hope and Healing for Struggling Parents

Allison Bottke

Amazon Price: $9.59 List Price: $11.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harvest House Publishers Amazon Marketplace: 39 new & used starting at $6.65

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Subjects -> Religion & Spirituality -> Christianity -> Christian Living -> General
Subjects -> Religion & Spirituality -> Christianity -> Christian Living -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

This important and compassionate new book from the creator of the successful God Allows U-Turns series will help parents and grandparents of the many adult children who continue to make life painful for their loved ones.

Writing from firsthand experience, Allison identifies the lies that kept her, and ultimately her son in bondage—and how she overcame them. Additional real life stories from other parents are woven through the text.

A tough–love book to help readers cope with dysfunctional adult children, Setting Boundaries with Your Adult Children will empower families by offering hope and healing through S.A.N.I.T.Y.—a six–step program to help parents regain control in their homes and in their lives.

• S = STOP Enabling, STOP Blaming Yourself, and STOP the Flow of Money
• A = Assemble a Support Group
• N = Nip Excuses in the Bud
• I = Implement Rules/Boundaries
• T = Trust Your Instincts
• Y = Yield Everything to God

Foreword by Carol Kent (When I Lay My Isaac Down)

The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order

Joan Wickersham

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A powerful and original memoir. 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

All memoirs are about memory; but suicide poses a special challenge. As Joan Wickersham writes: "When you kill yourself, you kill every memory anyone has of you." And later: "If you shoot yourself, you are labeled as a suicide. Your death becomes your definition." The Suicide Index starts when Wickersham's father kills himself; it goes backward in time, exploring his past like a detective; and then it carries us forward to show what this mysterious and destructive act did to her family. The writing is spare, but vivid - every word counts, every scene comes alive. The chapters are arranged alphabetically, in index format. It's a device that gains power as the book proceeds; it gives a shape to all the different stories that Wickersham tells us, and all the different ways she has of telling them. In her book Wickersham has met the challenge of suicide: she has restored her memory of her father, and in some sense restored his life. The Suicide Index is, quite simply, the most powerful and original memoir I've ever read.

Editorial Review:

When you kill yourself, you kill every memory everyone has of you. You’re saying “I’m gone and you can’t even be sure who it is that’s gone, because you never knew me.”

Sixteen years ago, Joan Wickersham’s father shot himself in the head. The father she loved would never have killed himself, and yet he had. His death made a mystery of his entire life. Using an index—that most formal and orderly of structures—Wickersham explores this chaotic and incomprehensible reality. Every bit of family history—marriage, parents, business failures—and every encounter with friends, doctors, and other survivors exposes another facet of elusive truth. Dark, funny, sad, and gripping, at once a philosophical and deeply personal exploration, The Suicide Index is, finally, a daughter’s anguished, loving elegy to her father.

(20080624)

Preparing for Life: The Complete Guide for Transitioning to Adulthood for Those with Autism and Asperger's Syndrome

Jed Baker

Amazon Price: $23.07 List Price: $34.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Future Horizons Amazon Marketplace: 23 new & used starting at $21.71

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Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Self-Help -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Great Life Skills Training 5 out of 5 stars.
17 of 17 people found this review helpful.

This is a great motivational book for someone on the verge of entering into adulthood. Dr. Baker pinpoints specific skills needed for a variety of "life situations" by catagorizing them and dealing with them individually. It starts out with mapping out assets and challenges. There are activity pages to use when anger is an issue and suggestions on calming ones self. The book includes a 16 page section on dating. It offers great advice for job seekers, from writing resumes to handling rejection. These are only a few of the sections found in this book. It truly is indispensable for anyone with Autism or Asperger's Syndrome. I definitely recommend this one.

Editorial Review:

A comprehensive resource for students on the autism spectrum preparing for life after high school, best-selling author/counselor Dr. Jed Baker offers "life skills training" on subjects such as non-verbal cues, body language, dealing with anger, frustration and anxiety, as well as building and maintaining friendships, roommates, and intimate relationships. He focuses on conversational and employment skills, ways to balance work/school with family demands, and problematic areas such as finances, emergencies and transportation matters. The assessment tools he provides for parents and the analysis of the laws that provide accommodations to adults with disabilities are critical for success in life after high school.

Trapped in the Mirror

Elan Golomb

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 100 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In this compelling book, Elan Golomb identifies the crux of the emotional and psychological problems of millions of adults. Simply put, the children of narcissist -- offspring of parents whose interest always towered above the most basic needs of their sons and daughters -- share a common belief: They believe they do not have the right to exist.

The difficulties experienced by adult children of narcissists can manifest themselves in many ways: for examples, physical self-loathing that takes form of overeating, anorexia, or bulimia; a self-destructive streak that causes poor job performance and rocky personal relationships; or a struggle with the self that is perpetuated in the adult's interaction with his or her own children. These dilemmas are both common and correctable, Dr. Golomb tells us.

With an empathic blend of scholarship and case studies, along with her own personal narrative of her fight for self, Dr. Golomb plumbs the depths of this problem, revealing its mysterious hold on the affairs of otherwise bright, aware, motivated, and worthy people. Trapped in the Mirror explores.

• the nature of the paralysis and lack of motivation so many adults feel
• stress and its role in exacerbating childhood wrongs
• why do many of our relationships seem to be "reruns" of the past
• how one's body image can be formed by faulty parenting
• how anger must be acknowledge to be overcome
• and, most important, how even the most traumatized self can be healed.

Rooted in a profoundly humanist traditional approach, and suffused with the benefit of the latest knowledge about intrafamily relationships, Trapped in the Mirror offers more than the average self-help book; it is truly the first self-heal book for millions.

365 Manners Kids Should Know: Games, Activities, and Other Fun Ways to Help Children Learn Etiquette

Sheryl Eberly

Amazon Price: $10.17 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Three Rivers Press Amazon Marketplace: 53 new & used starting at $4.99

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Have you ever cringed at the sight of your four-year-old waltzing through the neighbor’s front door without an invitation? Have you ever had to call to apologize when your six-year-old forgot to thank his grandmother for the birthday gift she so lovingly sent? How about the formal dinner for Dad’s promotion when your ten-year-old decided that she didn’t like the meal she’d ordered, and then refused to eat a thing—making for an uncomfortable evening for you, the other guests, and the waiter? As a parent, you’ve probably experienced these and many more instances when it seemed that your children had forgotten their manners completely, leaving you frazzled and embarrassed.

Sheryl Eberly’s 365 Manners Kids Should Know gives clever and insightful advice for the myriad of situations where consideration counts, but is sometimes forgotten. Using her smart one-manner-a-day format, parents, grandparents, and even aunts and uncles can find practical ways to teach basic manners, such as:

* How to address elders when being introduced
* How to write a thank-you note
* The polite way to answer the telephone
* How to accept and decline an invitation
* What is expected at formal occasions such as weddings, funerals, and religious services

Full of role-playing exercises, games, and other activities that parents can do with their children, 365 Manners Kids Should Know helps parents and other caregivers understand not only what manners to teach, but also how—and at what ages—to present them. Most important, 365 Manners Kids Should Know makes learning manners fun.

The Boomer Burden: Dealing with Your Parents' Lifetime Accumulation of Stuff

Julie Hall

Amazon Price: $10.19 List Price: $14.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Thomas Nelson Amazon Marketplace: 37 new & used starting at $8.57

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 33 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Should be required reading for anyone over 35... 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I'm at that age where sometime in the foreseeable future, I'm going to have to deal with the passing of one or more parents in our family. In addition to the grieving process, there's something that often doesn't get discussed until it's too late... what do you do with all the "stuff" your parents have accumulated over their lifetime? Julie Hall has made a career of working through that process with people, and she's written a book called The Boomer Burden: Dealing with Your Parents' Lifetime Accumulation of Stuff. Even though it may not be a subject you want to think about, time spent reading The Boomer Burden now can lead to infinitely fewer headaches and fractured relationships when that time comes. And if you're the parent, reading and acting on the information here is one of the best gifts you can give to your children.

Contents:
Introduction: Leaving Behind More Than Memories
First Signs
Planning for the Inevitable
Where's the Will?
When Reality Sinks In
The Hearse Doesn't Have a Trailer Hitch
Relatively Speaking
Scammers, Schemers, and Other Scoundrels
The Nitty-Gritty of Dividing Your Parents' Estate
But What Is It Really Worth?
Where Do I Begin?
How to Clean Out Your Parents' Estate
Right, Wrong, and In Between
I Will Never Do This to My Kids!
Be Good to Yourself
Mission Accomplished!
Appendix A: Your Complete Parent Care Checklist
Appendix B: Helpful Resources
Appendix C: Documents and Information to Locate
Appendix D: Sample Wish List Spreadsheet
Notes
About the Author

Hall has a business called The Estate Lady, and she brings 17 years of experience to this often ignored (but inevitable) part of life. She documents in painful detail how normal families can turn into dishonest, contentious enemies over the process of clearing out and dividing up the contents of the parents' estate. It's also quite normal for "friends" to want to help out with the process, but those friends often help themselves to items when no one is looking. Add antique dealers and consignment agents on top of that, and valuable keepsakes can wander out the door for pennies on the dollar, often before you even know what happened. Hall has a process which helps you make difficult decisions beforehand (when emotions aren't running high), as well as steps to follow which makes the process of emptying the house something which doesn't have to be completely overwhelming. She also counsels parents to take the time beforehand to make a will, record where all the important papers are, and to list out any items of value and who they would want them to go to when they die. These simple acts can make all the difference in the world to the survivors who have to sort it all out.

It's tempting to think that your family will be one of the 20% (yes, it's that low) that smoothly handles this unfortunate event. Odds are, you won't be. While I'm not in the position of having Depression-era parents who saved EVERYTHING, there's still "stuff" that will have to be handled when that time comes for me. Based on the information in this book, I know I'll be in a much better position to do the right things than I would have been without it. I would recommend this book be standard reading material for anyone over the age of 35. Trust me, you'll need it at some point...

Editorial Review:

A practical guide to advise Baby Boomers how to deal with the daunting task of facing a parents' eventual passing as it relates to residential contents, heirlooms, and the often difficult family interactions and feuds that accompany them.

With fascinating stories and comprehensive checklists, professional estate liquidator Julie Hall walks Baby Boomers through the often painful challenge of dividing the wealth and property of their parents' lifetime accumulation of stuff. From preparation while the parent is still living through compassionately helping them empty the family home, The Estate Lady® gives invaluable tips on negotiating the inevitable disputes, avoiding exploitation from scam artists, and eventually closing the chapter of their lives in a way that preserves relationships and maximizes value of assets.