The Boys and Girls Book About Divorce, With an Introduction for Parents

Rating:
Summary: Find something else
Review: Don't buy this book. It was written in - when? It reads like it was written in the 50's although I think it was in the 70's. It's really a terrible book, wasn't helpful at all even though a counselor recommended it. What a total waste of money it was for me.

Rating:
Summary: Honesty is the best policy
Review: I noticed this book because of my own miserable childhood.
No adult would like to tell me the truth about my parient's divorce even themselves.There were so many questions in my mind.I have wasted so many time to adjust it. The teachers never taught you how to deal with a divorced family and a sad father. There was no book about it. So, we are helpless.
When I saw this book,I felt so amazingly. This was a book written for us and truely helped us.

Rating:
Summary: Tells it like it is
Review: This book is fantastically un-PC; so much that it verges on shocking. Those who want some bland and reassuring pap for their nearest/dearest child of divorce should look elsewhere.

I know nothing of the author biographically, but I can tell he's seen a lot of unhappy children. He's seen them lied to by adults whose intentions spanned the gamut of good and bad, and seen that misdirection and ephemism hurt children more than directness ever could. In other words, Gardner respects children and understands their need for plain talk. This book advocates for them.

Parents may be offended. But divorces occur more often where fundamental tenets of healthy relationships aren't respected, and things we rarely talk about are done to kids as a matter of course. Kids get used as adult-companionship substitutes. Kids get used as weapons against the Ex, or meal tickets. Parents drift off after the divorce and never drift back again. Parents fawn and drool on birthdays or Christmas and fail to call the rest of the year. To Gardner, this suggests a parent who does not love their child. What does it suggest to you?

The current vogue is pad all this over and "be reassuring," but Gardner prefers to let them in on the truth -- believing truth is something even children can eventually come to terms with.