How Happy Families Happen: Six Steps to Bringing Emotional and Spiritual Health Into Your Home

I first read this book several months ago and began following it. We have a family of five and saw immediate results! Well, several months later it is still working! That is, to me, the true test. Our lives are different--our family truly is happier! Thank you to the authors! I recommend this book to everyone wanting a happier, healthier family!

I am a retired public school teacher with 13 years teaching experience in middle and high schools. I also am a mental health counselor working full time in adult mentally ill residences for the past 5 years in Plymouth, MA, and on Cape Cod. "How Happy Families Happen" by Audrey Ricker, et al, has been an invaluable instrument to help me deal with and better understand the mentally ill residents' relationships with their families. This book needs to be used in all departments of mental health throughout the country as a clear guide to help both patients and staff connect with the families of the disabled population. Pages 118 through 123 examines mental illness in the family. Ms. Ricker, in six brief pages, describes my personal experiences with the mentally ill and their families exactly. In the first 12 pages my family and my wife's family were all but painfully revealed even before chapter two "The Six Step Approach Explained" on page 13 began. At that point I could not stop reading the rest of "How Happy Families Happen." I now use Audrey Ricker's "Happy Families" book as a quick reference guide daily in my personal and professional life. Robert B. Leech

Hello, I have read this book and as a single father of two wonderful teenage daughters I was struggling to find sanity as I raise my girls. But, this book, How happy families happen, has been very very helpful. My girls are the world to me and I try to make them happy, but in doing so I was trying too hard and what I learned from the book helped me RELAX and not try to be superdad, but to be consistant, caring, and to model good behavior. Often, it is hard to find good advice. But in this book Audrey takes the 6 steps and makes them seem tangable and realistic. Our little family is not rich, we are not perfect and this book showed me the way to use what we did have, honesty, caring and openiness (sp?) to make a happy home. My kids as they are getting older were wanting to spend sooo much time with their friends and I was not ready to let them go. What I learned from this book has had fairly quick results as my daughters are now spending more time at home. For instance, in showing care to thier pets, the house itself by cleaning up more, they are making the house presentable for others to come over and thus they spend more time at home. I have learned to ask and listen to their feelings on issues which has made our conversations more meaningful. They will sometime soon move on but with the groundwork I have learned from this book, they will always appreciate and feel welcome in my home. As you can tell from the number of times I have said "I have learned from this book" it has a very real impact on my family and I think that anyone that is looking at a simple, yet impactable way to make that "happy family" should buy and read this book. I recommend it to all my fellow Dads, single or otherwise as a resource for the "what do I do now" and "I can't be doing anything wrong", but why are my kids not appreciating me or ignoring me. The book deals in the environment of the household and gives specific simple steps to making happy families happen. It is a must read! John Davis

Audrey Ricker's got some great workable ideas for helping families find the best in each other by helping them understand what caring is all about. Her six-step plan works for building and repairing relationships so you can finally end repeated arguments, constant bickering and that awful sense of not being loved and accepted. It's the right book to help you figure out how to make the changes you need in your family.

Reviewed by Irene Watson for Reader Views (2/06) In the first chapter Audrey Ricker immediately starts relating to the reader by describing several typical homes, and then delving into a questionnaire. The questionnaire gives a score of whether "you really need this book" to "probably have a wonderful home." If it's the latter, Ricker suggests using the principles would help create a happier home. "Defining Your Values" follows. To me, this is the quick step to knowing that help is essential and that "How Happy Families Happen" will lead the way. The first of the six steps is modeling - "do-as-I-do, not-as-I-say" - where parental action is the key. Although the steps don't have to be in any specific order, the author gives them as: Consistency; Reinforcement; Showing Rational Empathy; Showing Care and Concern for Animals, Plants and Nonliving Things in the Home; and, Showing Care and Concern for all the People in the Home. Each step is fully explained, has examples, addresses the problem, and gives a solution. Ricker has seven suggestions on how to implement the steps, some being: The Chart Method, The Discussion Method, and The Mind-Set Method. Each method has an explanation and ways to implement. For a better understanding of where the reader, who is more than likely the parent, is coming from in their own upbringing, Ricker gives a T and F quiz. As I read this book, I couldn't help but reflect on my own upbringing in an emotionally unhealthy household, and, how my upbringing influenced the way I treated my own children. We are set up and programmed in childhood to be dishonest with ourselves and others. We could not have lived our lives any differently because there was no one to teach us to be emotionally healthy. The only way to free ourselves and our children of the past is to start seeing more clearly as healing occurs. Ricker gives a simple, step-by-step method of how to create healing and free our children from scripts that have been passed down for generations.