Saturday, April 13, 2013

The Secrets of Happy Families: Improve Your Mornings, Rethink Family Dinner, Fight Smarter, Go Out and Play, and Much More by Bruce Feiler

The author has taken things that all families do (fight, eat, play, take care of the house, vacation, talk about difficult things - well, okay maybe most families don't talk about difficult things, but they should?) and has researched ways to improve the experience. He interviewed experts (but stayed away from marriage & family therapists) and experiments with his own family. There are a lot of specifics included like how to write a family mission statement, how to re-arrange furniture in your house, and how to determine an allowance, etc.

There's lots of good ideas in this book. At the same time, it was tiring as well. There's a lot of do this, do that, do more of this, and not a lot of resting. Families need time to re-charge and have downtime as well. Maybe that's what Sunday afternoons are good for.

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