How to Be a Family: The Operating Manual

By Howard B. Schiffer

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0972363912
• ISBN13: 9780972363914
• Release Date: May 2004
• Publisher: Heartful Loving Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Family Values at Their Best

Howard Schiffer's How to Be A Family: An Operating Manual is a gentle guide that every person even remotely thinking about starting a family should read. Filled with delightful, loving examples from the author's own experience, How to Be A Family reads much like an operating manual with a touch of personal journaling thrown in. He offers useful, if somewhat obvious, tips which serve as a reminder of the reason we had a family in the first place. My favorite chapter was Chapter 14 about family meetings. The way he described his occasional family meetings evoked images of the family in the TV show 7th Heaven, another great example of how a communicative family can yield a cohesive unit of loving and loved human beings. Chapter 9, which covers a broad range of issues about school, was also extremely helpful. Schiffer cautions parents to be involved without exhausting themselves. It is particularly useful to read this section if your children haven't reached school age yet. Schiffer has a way of conveying practical information without sounding judgmental or preachy. How to Be a Family has the right blend of advice and personal example without feeling as if you are an observer. Schiffer gives his readers a road map by which they can gauge their own journey. The author takes a holistic approach to family life by stressing the partnership upon which the entire family is based. If the parents don't have a strong partnership, chances are the family won't thrive either. He is not just child-centered, which many parenting books are. He also sees the parents' perspective and honors their needs as well. Schiffer's How to Be a Family is a tremendous guidebook for all families, regardless of race, creed or religion. It could act as the Constitution for All Parent-Child Relations, one based on love, understanding, compassion, and respect. Reading his book felt like a warm, and much-needed, hug. I highly recommend this book. It made a difference in how I view the relationship I have with my own children. I hope this book gets the attention and serious consideration it deserves. Christine Louise Hohlbaum, American author of the world-renowned Diary of a Mother: Parenting Stories and Other Stuff, lives near Munich with her husband and two children. http://www.diaryofamother.com