Books

 Untangled by Lisa Lamour, PhD was both a blessing and a curse.  I say this because it truly has some of the most helpful information you can possibly get about raising teen/tween daughters and I would recommend it to anyone.    However, with all the advice and information thrown at me about how to handle situations, I felt overwhelmed.
Why did I feel overwhelmed?  My daughter is a tween but thinks like a teen (help!!).  While reading this book, I felt like I had been screwing this up pretty bad already.  Also, once I was done with the book and all these awesome new techniques I was suppose to use – well…lets just say old habits die hard.  This is a work in progress people!
Reading this book and realizing I should have handled my girl differently, made me feel bad.  If I had never read this, I wouldn’t have known I screwed it up! Hahaha.  So, I realized slow change is how I should deal with my pretend teen (she’s a tween remember).  Now, I take all the info this book has given me and apply it if I can and don’t beat myself up if I don’t get it right.

I do want to share with you one of the many things I learned, something I did do and will continue to do.  As the author, Lisa Damour reminds us,  our kids are too connected to their phones.  Let’s face it we all are.  Anyway, she tells us to have kids put their phones away on short car rides – don’t allow them.  Its a time to talk.  So,  when it was my turn to carpool seven girls to soccer, this is what I did.  As you can imagine the girls were not too happy with me.  I had a plan though.  I had stupid Would You Rather questions to ask them.  “If you had to choose which would it be?  Snakes or spiders?  To get eaten by a shark or alligator?”  I know stupid right?  Could be anything you want.  Guess what?  The kids loved it!  They even took over the questioning – it was fabulous.
Now, I am going to ask all of you parents to try this.  Ask the kids to put the phones down on these short rides.  Find things to talk to them about.  They need to learn to communicate, person to person more and less texting.  Let us know how this goes with your kiddo’s.
One last thing I’d like to share is ask your children to actually make phone calls rather than text. Texting can get misunderstood, misread and or even missed all together.  Phone calls help us communicate better, teaches the kids to talk more to one another and to us.
So, see I am trying and for now I will just be happy with my little bitty changes.  What I do know is that I love my kids and want them to be the best versions of themselves.  So I will continue to use all the incredible information this book provides.  It’s a great read.