Raising Kids To Thrive {New Parenting Book}

This review is sponsored but thoughts are my own.

There is a saying that children don’t come with manuals. That is so true! Have you ever come across a parenting challenge and struggled to solve it yourself? I have had a few of those instances and am only six years in to my parenting journey with many more years (including those teen years!) to come.

While no parenting manual has been written, I turn to a variety of books to give me tips on how to be a successful parent. One new book I discovered gives lots of great tips for raising children and teens. It is called Raising Kids to Thrive by Kenneth R. Ginsburg, MD, and is all about a new method of parenting called the “lighthouse” parenting strategy. It focuses on balancing love with expectations and protection with trust.

Some of the things the book will help you do are:

-Raise kids who will succeed now and far into the future

-Understand why helicopter parenting undermines successful development

-Be a stable beacon your children will turn to for guidance and self-measurement

-Build the kind of relationship you hope to have with your child

-Reduce your children’s anxiety as they venture out on their own

While I think the book was written for those with children in their teens, I found that I could use a lot of what I learned with my younger children. It’s great to be able to work on my parenting skills now before my children hit the teenage years.

Some of the things I learned include:

-The importance of praising effort, not results (and being specific in that praise)

-My job as a parent is to set clear boundaries and then (mostly) get out of the way

-Teaching kids how to handle pressure from peers and the importance of “code words” that they can use when they are with their peers and they find themselves in an uncomfortable position

-How important it is to let my kids know that I have high expectations but that I also know they are human and will make mistakes

I highly recommend this book for all parents. You can find it on Amazon here.