To be honest, this book began rather slowly for me. There are a large amount of anecdotes from both the author’s own life and lives of others, which is not my personal style of understanding self-help information.
About at the middle of the book, when I was close to beginning to skip over entire pages, I found some gems. During Habit 4: Think “Win-Win”, I found tips about
mitigating competition among siblings and helping curb teenage rebellious behavior. The overriding principle is to create solutions that help everyone in the family “win,” or have an outcome they enjoy. This includes things like family activities where everyone feels successful (family point totals goals, for example,) and creating agreements with teenagers where parents get behaviors/responsibilities they desire in their children, but the adolescent children get the freedom or responsibilities they crave to show their independence.
Habit 5 is, essentially, about empathy. The point was made that
families often treat strangers and guests with more empathy than their own members, because families assume that love is constant. That’s an eye-opener!
Especially for parents: the author also recommends
positive feedback first when a child (or adult) has completed a task. Even if it’s not done perfectly. Even if the child “cleaned up” by schmearing something awful into your nice towel. Because they are proud of themselves, and are looking for approval, even if later correction is needed.
Other key take-aways: How to really work together – using every family member’s strengths (viewing them as such, rather than weaknesses)
How to reach mutually agreeable decisions based on facts and principles, not emotions and
selfishness.
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Overall, I feel like this book is a great place to begin, if you come from a troubled family background or feel completely lost in nurturing your own family’s cohesiveness. If you’re finding a lot of strain in your relationships within your family, this book could be a life saver!
For my own purposes, it was more of a refresher of principles I already knew but had perhaps tucked on the back burner. My intent was to seek insight that could help our family keep structure and consistency throughout and after our foster/adopt journey (suddenly adding an older child could throw everything out of whack!) and my reading has largely just reminded me of areas to focus on.
6.5/10 Would recommend in some cases.
