Book Review - Happily Married With Kids

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AppId is over the quota

With 25 years of experience in marriage counseling, a husband and two children of her own under her belt, Dr. Carol Ummel Lindquist is an expert when it comes to making a marriage work-with or without kids. Her recent book, Happily Married with Kids is a step-by-step guide to transforming the fantasy of a perfect marriage into a reality.

"The current high standards for parenting lead to low standards for marriage," says Lindquist. "The irony of these contrasting standards is that having a healthy marriage is a great gift for your children and yourself." Her goal is to educate parents, happily married or otherwise, on how to develop and maintain relationships that will benefit their entire family.

In Happily Married with Kids, Lindquist teaches moms and dads to avoid "the real parent trap" of exhaustion and disruption, manage conflicts and improve communication with spouse and children, stay best friends with their spouses, balance work and family, enjoy their kids-and each other-at any age, revive their sex life, find humor in everyday difficulties and make time for themselves and their marriages.

Each of the book's four sections sections is divided into chapters that deal honestly and warmly with different aspects of marriage and parenting, such as developing a marriage support system in "Support Networks: It Takes a Village to Shelter Your Marriage," getting to know your spouse again after the birth of your children in "Who Is This Person I Married?" handling separation due to work or other stressors in "When One Parent Travels" and disagreeing without hurting each other in "Fight Like the Windows Are Open."

Summaries and bulleted lists in every section and boldface subject headings in each chapter break up the text into digestible chunks. A sprinkling of comic strips and personal stories from Lindquist's family and her counseling experiences make the book conversational and add some humor to a subject that makes many couples tense; you'll want to keep it on the bedside table or enjoy it in the morning over coffee-and engaging enough that it will draw in even the most reluctant reader.

Where most self-help books suggest major behavioral overhauls, Lindquist recommends small changes and goal-setting with your partner to reduce tension and increase communication over time. In the first chapters Lindquist says that one of the most important things you can do for your marriage is to make sure you and your spouse have 20 minutes of uninterrupted talk time or cuddling every day as well as some "date time" every week.

She also suggests that couples set aside separate "staff time" to work on family issues weekly, monthly and quarterly without cutting into your special time together. Lindquist even includes worksheets to help you and your spouse get started on confronting conflict and making family decisions.

In addition to sharing her own wisdom and experiences in every chapter, Lindquist refers to books she has read on marriage and parenting. After the last chapter, she includes a comprehensive list of books, articles, videos and websites she recommends, including the ones she mentioned in the text.

Lindquist's tone is light and entertaining which gives it a down-to-earth approach to marriage; Happily Married with Kids is a book that's never preachy and consistently encourages couples to try new things and seek other resources. A happy marriage doesn't have to be just a fairy tale anymore. Lindquist proves it's possible to make the transition from partnership to parenthood without losing the intimacy you and your spouse share-and shows couples how to regain closeness and repair relationship damage at any level.

Sidebar

In Happily Married with Kids, Dr. Carol Ummel Lindquist highly recommends these books:

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families: Building a Beautiful Family Culture in a Turbulent World by Stephen Covey and Sandra Merrill Covey

Seven Principles to Make Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert by John Mordechai Gottman and Nan Silver

The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate by Gary Chapman

Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples by Harville Hendrix

The Divorce Remedy: The Proven 7-Step Program for Saving Your Marriage by Michele Weiner Davis

Happily Married with Kids
By Carol Ummel Lindquist, Ph.D.
$14.00/trade paperback
Berkley Publishing Group

20something copywriter and consultant Kristen King blogs at the award-winning Inkthinker blog and KristenKing.com, among other sites. Visit Inkthinker and KristenKing.com for more lifestyle articles and blog posts about married life in rural Virginia.

Sixty Things to Do When You Turn Sixty - Book Review

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AppId is over the quota

Inside this book, sixty writers who have turned sixty offer sixty recommendations for living an exciting, enthusiastic life after the age of sixty. Plenty of important people from M.D's to writers and money managers offer advice in many areas of life, while the sixty plus folks gear up to rediscover themselves. Moreover, the royalties from the sale of the book is donated to various nonprofit organizations; just the thing for the baby boomers to do.

In the introduction, president and publisher Ronnie Sellers writes, " There was no way that anyone over sixty could ever understand anything about our generation because there had never been a generation as special as ours. And we're still special. And that's why we're younger at sixty than anyone has ever been before...and better looking, too.

The book is divided into nine sections. Section one takes the boomers to their roots of recreating involvement in collective concepts. In this section, while a novelist advises people to take off their clothes, another writer talks against a positive outlook, saying righteous anger and stubbornness will give the people the power to carry on. An artist, too, is for a rebellious nature and revival of the 60's activism. Then, a printer company owner asks people to follow their passions, while a copywriter is after making a difference. An interesting advice of humility comes from a psychologist, and a holistic health M.D. invites people to let go of unpleasant memories.

Section two is about beliefs, beliefs from ghosts to being a saint, to prayer, to finding one's own island, to reflecting on things, and to experiencing life. Section three is good vibrations involving art, humor, yoga, affirmations, meditation, being inspired with passion for life, and falling in love again.

Section four is about learning, re-learning, exercising, encouraging one's curiosity, starting new things, making commitments, volunteerism, and discovering what really matters. Section five is all about money: making it, using it wisely, handling insurances, and strategizing one's finances.

Section six addresses the physical and mental health, from skin rejuvenations to handling diseases and stress. Section seven concerns the rediscovery of self from running a marathon to learning kaizen. Section eight is on sex and love after sixty, while section nine is about enjoying grandchildren, taking an interest in other people and the world, and traveling.

With sixty writers in one book, the editors deserve immense praise. Andrea Feld is the general editor with many editing successes to her name from editing books to contributing essays to important publications. Of the three commissioning editors, Sheri Bell-Rehwoldt is freelance writer with many journalistic achievements. Joy Darlington is a journalist, novelist, and editor, and Bruce Fraser is a financial writer and editor.

Sixty Things to Do When You Turn Sixty from Sellers Publishing, Inc. is 360 pages in paperback with ISBN-10: 1569069670 and ISBN-13: 978-1569069677.

I recommend this book to anyone who expects to turn sixty sooner or later, because not only the pieces in it are informative and thought-provoking, but also they encourage, inspire, and entertain with a sense of humor.

Joy Cagil is an author on http://www.writing.com/, which is a site for Writers

Her portfolio can be found at http://www.Writing.Com/authors/joycag

Don't Tell Nobody! A Forbidden Desire Not Forever Vulnerable, Written By Darryl Wayne

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AppId is over the quota

For a person such as me, the reading and reviewing of this book was extremely difficult. I respect those that are gays or lesbians to live that type of life but to write a respectable review I must change gears in my thinking and write through the eyes of them. The language is very explicit and is meant for adults only.

Young girls and boys that were born and raised in a very poor and run down section of Philadelphia started life with, in their eyes, a world against them. They grew up with much abuse, sexual and physical, homes with little or no morals or normal family closeness, and little personal space of their own in area and in privacy. They got used from day one of their memory to being abused by those in their own homes as well as many in the neighborhood. They learned at a very young age that giving and taking sex and abuse was a part of their life, want it or not. They existed with drugs, sex, rape, beatings, and mental anguish every day of their life as long as they could remember. They carved out a life of their own on the streets, alleys, condemned houses, and rarely lived in the same place more than several nights in a row unless they had met someone that would take them in feeling sorry for them but expecting something such as sex in return.

The young man in this story went from a short term sex partners to long term ones, never knowing how long any would last. That partnership would break up and restart several times until the abuse or the taking advantage of got too severe. He describes his sex partners almost all of who were males, giving blow-by-blow descriptions of their sexual acts and the pleasure derived from them or the abusive torture once in a while.

A few times he gave deep thought to believing in and loving God and Jesus. He expressed this in several parts of the story. Whether he ever did so completely the reader can't really tell, only the direction he thought he desired to go. I really don't know if this story is the way some gays and lesbians live or just a sample of some and how hard it can be.

Reader review by Cy Hilterman of a book supplied by the author.