Parenting Is a Contact Sport: 8 Ways to Stay Connected to Your Kids for Life

Like many first-time parents, I must have read 10 books on what to expect during my pregnancy, but I only realized on the drive home from the hospital that I didn't own one book on parenting. I immediately bought a few "What to Expect" monoliths, but these tend to focus mainly on what my child will experience as she develops; very little is said about how I and my husband can instill in our child a sense of security, confidence, and enjoyment of life. As I expect many parents will be, I was thrilled to come across Joanne Stern's "Parenting is a Contact Sport." "Parenting is a Contact Sport" fills a very important void in the parenting literature, as it provides the reader with a model or guiding principle for raising confident, honest, and disciplined kids. In essence, Stern's book puts forth the relatively easy-to-understand but much harder-to-implement idea that parenting is essentially an exercise in creating and maintaining open, communicative, and loving relationships with your children. Through anecdotes about raising her own daughters and experiences from her therapy practice, Dr. Stern guides the reader through some of the most difficult aspects of parenting: disciplining your child, setting boundaries, talking about sex and drugs, boosting your child's self-confidence, and letting go when it is time. Although many of the parenting "issues" the book focuses on relate to the teenage years, Stern makes an excellent case that an open and loving relationship with your child from the earliest age is the single most important input in the complicated formula that is raising a confident, honest, and disciplined child, teenager, or young adult. I got much out of reading "Parenting is a Contact Sport" now (my daughter is only 15 months old), and expect that I will consult Stern's book numerous times over the next 17+ years. "Parenting is a Contact Sport" should be required reading for all parents (and even soon-to-be parents!) interested in how they can move beyond taking care of their children and focus on raising them to be young adults we can respect and admire.

A most wonderful and personal book that takes you by the hand and guides you through all the difficult moments one might encounter while your children are growing up becoming teenagers and then young adults.

"Parenting is a Contact Sport" helped me start building a close and respectful relationship with my toddler. The personal stories brought the different parenting successes and pitfalls to life, providing a basic road-map of what is to come as my daughter grows and how to nurture the relationship along the way. I have always feared talking about the scary subjects like drugs, alcohol, and sex, but Dr. Stern's book helped show that general conversations open the door at an early age to more in depth conversations as your child ages. I look forward to having a wonderful, close relationship with my daughter after using the techniques taught in this book for building a lasting relationship.

Though I am not a parent, I read this book because my intuition told me it would help me understand my parents more. And I was right...my father is 89 and my mother is 75, and the overwhelming message I received is that it is never too late to improve a "relationship" between a parent and a child, or actually any relationship for that matter. When I finished the last chapter, I picked up the phone and called my parents to say "I love you." Dr. Stern's engaging and insightful book helped remind me that my parents were learning and growing during my childhood and adolesence, just as much as I was, something the child in all of us should always try to remember.

As the mother of a three-year-old, I'm so glad to have found this book already. This time of life has its difficulties--and the book addresses them--but the age that really makes me tremble in my boots is still to come. This book has so much useful advice and true stories that I feel as prepared as any novice mother can be to deal with what's coming in the teen years. Having read "Parenting Is a Contact Sport" is like having Dr. Stern's life experience and professional expertise within easy reach, and as a result my husband and I are constantly creating a close relationship with our son that should carry us forward in love, no matter what life presents.