The Book Corner
A Review of Setting Boundaries with Your Adult Children: Six Steps to Hope and Healing
With guest reviewer Kathi Macias
Setting Boundaries with Your Adult Children: Six Steps to Hope and Healing for Struggling Parents by Allison Bottke has set a new standard for excellence. Not only does this book deliver what it promises—six practical steps to help struggling parents recover and reclaim their lives and their sanity—but it does so in a remarkable manner. Bottke is no flash-in-the-pan author or an expert on a particular topic who has managed to write an acceptable manuscript; she is an extraordinary writer with exceptional talent who is willing to bare her heart to her readers. This is a rare gift and one she freely gives throughout this gripping book, which at times reads like one of the best how-to manuals on the market and at other times like an edge-of-your-seat novel. From Bottke’s soul-rending opening account of her New Year’s Day post-SWAT team encounter to her final words of encouragement to parents in like situations, Setting Boundaries with Your Adult Children keeps readers hungrily devouring its contents, even as hope builds in their hearts.
Bottke has done her homework. She has interviewed and surveyed parents and experts at every level, and she has included quotes from many of them throughout her book. And yet, even with the validity these quotes add to this must-have parental resource, the depth and honesty of Bottke’s own story is enough to make this a classic in its own right.
If you (or someone you know) are a parent struggling with the ongoing issues of an adult child in continual crisis, stop whatever you’re doing and go buy this book. Then read it and put it into practice! Setting Boundaries with Your Adult Children has the potential to set you free, restore your joy, and maybe even save your life—or that of your adult child.
Kathi Macias, www.kathimacias.com, is author of BEYOND ME: Living a You-First Life in a Me-First World (New Hope Publishers, Spring 2008).
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