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The 10 Habits of Happy Mothers

Reclaiming Our Passion, Purpose, and Sanity

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

This sanity-saving guide “offers practical ways to help you let go of ‘mom guilt’ in order to become a happier, healthier woman” (Parent & Child).
Now with wellness tips and exercises!
The pressure on women today has pushed many American mothers to the breaking point. It feels as if “doing your best” is never enough to please everyone, and the demands mothers place on themselves are both impossible and unrealistic. Now Meg Meeker, M.D., critically acclaimed author of Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters, puts her twenty-five years’ experience as a practicing pediatrician and counselor into a sound, sane approach to reshaping the frustrating, exhausting lives of so many moms.  
Mothers are expected to do it all: raise superstar kids, look great, make good salaries, volunteer for everything, run errands, keep a perfect house, be the perfect wife. Single mothers often have even more demands—and less support. In this rallying cry for change, Dr. Meeker incorporates clinical data and her own experience raising four children to show why mothers suffer from the rising pressure to excel and the toll it takes on their emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual health. Too many mothers are increasingly lonely, anxious, depressed, and unhappy with themselves, refusing to let themselves off the hook. Here, Dr. Meeker has identified the 10 most positive habits of mothers who are healthy, happy, and fulfilled. The key is to embrace a new perspective and create real joy and purpose by utilizing such core habits as
  
• making friends with those who know the meaning of friendship
• finding out what money can buy (and what it cannot)
• lightening the overload—and doing less more often
• discovering faith and learning how to trust it
• taking some alone time and reviving yourself
 
Mothers, it’s time to view the unconditional trust that you see in your children’s eyes when they take your hand or find your face in a crowd as a mirror of your own wonder and worth. You are the light that shines in their lives, the beacon that guides them. By implementing the key strategies in Dr. Meeker’s book, you can be happy, hopeful, and a wonderful role model. You can teach your children to be the very best they can be—and isn’t that still the most precious reward of motherhood?

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      February 21, 2011
      Arguing that many moms have gone overboard in their quest for perfection, the Michigan-based pediatrician and mother of four presents 10 "new habits" that will help moms maintain their passion, purpose, and sanity. In separate chapters, Meeker addresses understanding your value as a mother, maintaining key friendships, valuing and practicing faith, saying no to competition, creating a healthier relationship with money, making time for solitude, giving and getting love in healthy ways, finding ways to live simply, letting go of fear, and embracing hope. Meeker urges mothers to dig deep to find their life's purpose, rejecting cute but superficial one-liners such as "I'm here to drive my kids around." Though she claims to be "a scientist at heart," Meeker, a Christian, waxes philosophical on many issues, including the importance of faith and spirituality. She also urges moms to seek solitude and live more simply while rejecting such "toxic" cultural messages as being thinner, looking hot, and making more money. Readers in search of tips on how to help their kids excel won't find them here; this is a sincere and thoughtful discussion of what really matters in a mother's life.

    • Kirkus

      December 15, 2010

      Pediatrician and mother Meeker (Boys Should Be Boys: 7 Secrets to Raising Healthy Sons, 2008, etc.) addresses the stress of modern motherhood.

      Instead of recognizing that their supreme value lies in simply being good mothers and fulfilling their children's needs, women are oppressed by unreasonable social expectations that they satisfy high performance standards for their roles as caregivers, breadwinners and companions. Meeker's values are based on her Christian faith, and the book is organized around 10 habits that can help shield mothers from the stress of contemporary parenthood. These include understanding one's value as a mother, cherishing friendship, having faith, saying no to competition with other parents, not over-valuing money to the detriment of family life, practicing a simplified lifestyle, setting aside personal time, letting go of fears and making the decision to be hopeful even when we cannot control events. The author effectively uses anecdotes to illustrate and elaborate her points. Some are told humorously, such as her account of initial shock at her mother-in-law's Christmas gift of two cemetery plots next to her own. Others are painful—e.g., one mother's struggle with her daughter's life-threatening anorexia; another's need to confront her son's rebellious behavior and overcome her own fears of rejection.

      A compassionate discussion of the joys of parenthood and the "gritty" nature of love, which calls upon parents to protect and guide their children while recognizing that ultimately it is they who must chart their own paths.

      (COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

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  • English

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