Good advice backed by research coupled with personal reflections by a father on how to let children grow up to be...
A man opens up about his shortcomings as a father.
Before his son was born, National Journal senior political columnist Fournier (co-author: Applebee's America: How Successful Political, Business, & Religious Leaders Connect with the New American Community, 2006, etc.) had a variety of expectations about what life would be like with him. They would certainly bond over sports, as the author had done with his father, and his son would be intelligent and socially well-adapted. Fournier’s hopes were no different than those of millions of other parents who want their children to achieve great things, but his son, Tyler, wasn’t interested in sports, he talked too loudly, and he had no sense of when he had stepped outside the boundaries of normal social conventions. It took more than a decade of this behavior before Fournier and his wife realized Tyler had Asperger’s. The author began to rethink everything he knew about being a father and tried to figure out new ways to bond with Tyler. Instead of forcing more sports on his son, Fournier opted to go on road trips to visit the homes of several former presidents, men he knew Tyler admired. This is the personal story of Fournier’s transformation into a new father figure. It is also filled with research and interviews with parents and children on the expectations, hopes, and dreams they have for their children and the potential damage those pressures can cause. The desire to please the parent is so heavy that many children are “experiencing depression, anxiety, psychosomatic disorders and substance abuse…privileged kids also are more likely to develop stress, exhaustion…an unhealthy reliance on others for support, and a poor sense of self.” In a straightforward manner, Fournier outlines each of these issues and provides clues on how parents can tone down their hopes so their children can have happier childhoods and more fulfilling adulthoods.
Good advice backed by research coupled with personal reflections by a father on how to let children grow up to be individuals rather than miniature versions of their parents.Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8041-4048-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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