For
Immediate Release
For an interview with the author,
or an advance copy of the book,
please contact Dottie DeHart,
Rocks DeHart Public Relations,
At (828) 459-9637 or DSDeHart@aol.com
QUICK GUIDE TO GOOD KIDS
GIVES TIPS FOR PARENTING SUCCESS
What will your child be like at 18? Do you wonder what parents can do to help their children grow into responsible young adults? How can you help promote your children’s happiness and success as you watch them grow?
Newly released through Frederick Fell Publishers, Inc, Quick Guide to Good Kids, by Virginia Bentz, Ph.D., provides details on childrearing from the one person young parents would like to hear from most: the mother of two successful, happy twenty-somethings, a girl and a boy now in college. The author has just finished what young parents are just starting.
This book packs a huge amount of insight into a small amount of pages -- a quick read for busy parents coping with growing children and wondering how things will turn out. And it’s all true, the story of one mother who looks back and examines her family life to determine the ten most important ways she helped her children to succeed. Each of the ten is one brief chapter. An eleventh chapter lists valuable community resources for families.
The author, Virginia Bentz, relies on her 26 years of experience raising two children to define the ways she as a parent helped them the most. She was faced, as are all parents today, with the pressure of pop culture encouraging premature sex, underage drinking, violence, and drug use. In addition, illness and finally divorce marred family life. As experts know, divorce alone frequently sends kids into a tailspin. Yet the children remained strong, responsible, and successful. Both earned scholarships to college.
“As I ask myself why,” writes Bentz, “I can
isolate ten things I did as a parent that I believe helped them to avoid
serious problems and to blossom from screaming helpless infants
into fine young adults of high moral standing.”
Bentz explains each principle through personal examples, warmly rendered,
full of the humor and frustration that accompanied childrearing. Between
the lines, the closeness and love that is possible in family relationships
comes through.
Quick Guide to Good Kids is the only parenting book of its kind on the
market today. Psychologists write most childcare books, drawing on clinical
experience, usually in a lengthy format. They focus on changing behaviors
that parents find unappealing, for example, how to stop your child from
wetting the bed.
Bentz offers a different perspective, looking at the way children develop
from birth through age 18, a period when they want their parents’
approval more than anything else. She considers what the parent can do
to help them succeed.
“Parents are in a unique position to watch their children, to introduce them to different activities, and to notice what they enjoy the most,” says Bentz. “You can encourage them, gently, with your approval. You can sympathize if things go wrong. You can allow them to pick alternatives if they decide they want to try different activities. There might be simple things you can buy them that suit their interests, like legos or other blocks for the child who likes to build.”
Parenting is never going to be a perfect process, and Bentz freely admits things that went wrong, and times when family life was more chaotic than peaceful. She does not claim to be a perfect mother.
“I will even admit the ways that I screwed up,” she writes, “and hopefully you can avoid them. I’ve found that it’s okay to make mistakes, as long as there is a solid basis in love and acceptance between parent and child. In general, children are much more forgiving of us than we are of them.”
And what are the ten guidelines that form the topics of each chapter?
“I will list them for you,” writes Bentz, “and in this book, I’ll explain how they worked for me as a parent. You’ll get the full benefit of 26 years in just 224 pages. (That’s the quick part.)”
- Spend huge amounts of time and attention and love on your children when they are babies and toddlers.
- Strive to be supportive and affirming; avoid making critical remarks.
- Beyond the necessities, don’t worry too much about material things.
- Inform your children that when they are in school, you expect them to do what the teacher says, and, if there is a conflict, you will back the teacher.
- Be present at occasions that are important to the child.
- Allow extended family to help parent your children.
- By example, teach duty and fulfillment of obligations – i.e., going to school every day, going to work every day, doing homework on time, completing projects on time, putting dinner on the table every day.
- Be aggressive at protecting adolescent girls from harm.
- Talk to your teenagers, know where they are, and keep phone numbers of their friends handy.
- Admit when you are wrong and your child is right. Apologize when you screw up.
Bentz is a former college and high school English teacher. Currently, she works in a bookstore, where she presents a weekly story time session for children. In her spare time, she sings with a chorale and writes free-lance articles.
“I encourage parents to be talking about the issues they’re facing, and this is the reason I developed a web site to accompany the book,” she says. Located on the Internet at QuickGuidetoGoodKids.com starting in October 2006, the website features a message board where parents can post questions and Bentz will give responses.
“Parents can be very isolated. This is a way to figure out if what your child is experiencing is just something all children go through, or if you need to take some further action, or get professional help.”
Quick Guide to Good Kids is available November 2006 at all retail and Internet locations, including Amazon.com, Borders.com, Barnes & Noble.com, and others.