If you are going to buy just one parenting book, make sure it's mine, Secrets of Safety-Net Parenting. But, if you were to buy two parenting books, make sure the second one is Duct Tape Parenting by Vicki Hoefle.

I don't usually review books on this blog, but I read Vicki's book this summer and felt compelled to share with you. 
Duct Tape Parenting is a great book for parents with kids up to age eighteen. It's different than my book, though, Secrets of Safety-Net Parenting. What I like about Vicki's book is that it compliments my book, as my book compliments hers.

Duct Tape Parenting is about raising kids to become proficient adults, and we parents only get eighteen years to do it. Secrets of Safety-Net Parenting on the other hand is about raising happy, successful children. The confidence that children gain from the strategies in Vicki's book runneth over to the successes and passions I explore in mine.

I delve into failure, passions and perseverance. Vicki talks to the reader about our roles as being maids, rather than parents. Her book offers strategies to help free parents from being those maids while liberating our children to yearn to become more independent.

I have two great kids (Perfect? Not quite, but good girls), yet I, like most parents, was able to identify with many aspects of the book. 

Here's my warning, though: the first 90 or so pages of the book established parental frustrations, and I could have done with less of this. I was afraid the book was only going to be about how frustrated we get, but not address how to get past these frustrations. 

I'm glad I didn't throw in the towel. The next two-thirds of the book got to the meat of the strategies and it was well worth wading through the beginning. I recommend this book to any parent who feels like a servant of their child, rather than a parent to them, as well as any parent who wants to feel confident sending their child off int the "real world" at age eighteen.

I absolutely can't wait for my wife to read Duct Tape Parenting. I don't feel I can move forward with the book's strategies until both my wife and I are on the same page. If you read the book (after you read mine), let me know your thoughts on it, and if you have used the strategies, tell us if they worked or not. 

I think the back-to-school shopping list is something you can get from many parents, but I think it's so crucial that I send my daughter back to school with the freedom to fail. Of course I don't want her to fail 11th grade, classes or even tests. What I am sending her back with is opportunities to implement what she has been taught. Then, if she chooses to take a short cut, she learns from natural consequences.

This summer she took a 6-week language course through the local city college online. She barely got each assignment done on time, staying up until the midnight deadline each week. She also did the bare minimum, getting assignments done, but not really attempting to "learn the language". She takes the final next week, and there's a good chance she won't be acing it! She currently has a 4.5 GPA. This grade could bring down her average, but that's okay.

I think that as parents of teens we can easily get caught up in the whole get-all-A's, do-college prep classes, apply-to-the-most-prestigious-schools mentality, as if this is what our parenting years was all leading up to. I am sending my daughter back to school with the freedom to learn from her mistakes. And, if that means she can't get into Stanford, I know she will be fine. She'll still get into a good college. And, by making and learning from her high school mistakes, she will carry that with her to her non-Stanford college and be a success there and anywhere else in life.

image courtesy of ©iStockphoto.com/chrisgramly

I do the family grocery shopping in our house every Sunday morning. The job became mine for a number of reasons: 1) I am good at shopping sales, 2) I clip and use coupons like a champ, and 3) I like choosing what will be in our fridge for the coming week.

Everyone knows the rules. When we are low on, or out of, an item it needs to be put on the grocery list. Saturday evening, I will cross-reference the list and our coupons and be ready for the next morning foray into the food aisles. 

The problem is that at times members of the family neglect to add needed items to the list. So, I'll come home only to find out a day later that we have no bread or that we're down to one roll of toilet paper. "No one wrote it on the shopping list!" I bellow.

And, it's usually our daughters who are the culprits. "Oops, sorry, Dad. I forgot." So, I saddle back up and head out for an additional trip so I can make my sandwich and use the John.

The girls are legitimately sorry and haven't purposely sabotaged my shopping excursion, but no matter the amount of lecturing and reminding my wife and I employ, they still neglect to add the items to the list.

My youngest, Grace, age eleven, has really been into making homemade lemonade this summer (and it's really good). So, she's been using the bottled lemon juice we keep in the fridge. When I went out shopping last Sunday, on my way back to the car from the store with grocery bags in tow I get a call from Grace. She asks if I can buy lemon juice. She had used the last bit and forgot to add it to the list.

I could have just turned around and grabbed another bottle, and it would have been little inconvenience, but I decided to use the opportunity to emphasize the bigger issue. I told her I was done shopping and that if she put it on the list, I'd get it the following week.

Seven days without her delicious lemonade will be hard on us all, but because she loves the process of making it, it should really affect her! I am hoping that this "natural consequence" for something that is important to her, will transfer to the entirety of shopping list rules (and not just for lemon juice). Here's to hoping toothpaste and peanut butter make the list this week.

image courtesy of ©MorgueFile.com/cohdra