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Family First

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Overview

Do you feel that your family is not what it used to be, or what it has the potential to be Do you worry that the parenting decisions you're making today may be scarring your child for life Do you sometimes feel you are in a tug-of-war with the world over who will shape your child's values and beliefs

With Family First: Your Step-by-Step Plan for Creating a Phenomenal Family, Dr. Phil offers a new classic on family life -- and gives parents real answers and a plan for being the most positive and effective parents possible. Starting right now, you can begin to make realistic choices and take day-to-day actions that can make your family phenomenal. You must decide that you will lead your family with strength and love and that peace and joy are not just for the people next door or on TV. They're for your family.

In Family First, Dr. Phil gives it to parents straight: even in this fast-paced world your family should be the center of your life and your child's life. Parenting is the most important and noble act you will ever undertake, yet American families are threatened like never before from the inside as well as the outside -- many of us fight too much, don't get involved enough in our children's lives, or get bogged down in life's daily struggles instead of keeping our eye on the big picture of our family's well-being.

Dr. Phil has been working with families for over twenty-five years to help them repair the fissures that have fractured their home lives. In Family First, he provides a proven action plan to help parents determine the strengths and weaknesses of their parenting style. His 7 Tools for Purposeful Parenting cover the most important elements for any parent: parenting for success -- for the purpose of raising cooperative, caring, and competent children. Exercises, scripts, assessments, solutions for specific problems, and precise directions for implementing the steps you need to take are all included in this landmark work.

Dr. Phil shows parents how to make changes now -- how to put a stop to your children's tantrums; talk to them about peer pressure or self-esteem; instill values like integrity, honesty, and respect for other people; and bring order back to your house. If you want your child to have a happy, fulfilled life, you must open your eyes to the crucial role you play in his or her development.

Most important, Dr. Phil's new book offers you and your family hope -- for a phenomenal home life now, and a productive, fulfilling future for your children. As Dr. Phil says, you are not just raising children, you are also raising adults, and everything you do today impacts what kind of adult your child will become. You are building the future.

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Author Information

Bio of Phil McGraw

Dr. Phil Mcgraw is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Ultimate Weight Solution, Self Matters, Life Strategies, and Relationship Rescue. He is the host of the nationally syndicated, daily one-hour series Dr. Phil. One of the world's foremost experts in the field of human functioning, Dr. McGraw is the cofounder of Courtroom Sciences, Inc., the world's leading litigation consulting firm. Dr. McGraw currently lives in Los Angeles, California, with his wife and two sons.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Simon & Schuster

Filesize

3.41 MB

Number of Pages

304

eBook ISBN

9780743273602

Excerpt from: Family First by Phil McGraw

Chapter 1: Family Matters


What's wrong with the world...
People livin' like they ain't got no mamas.
-- THE BLACK EYED PEAS
He lives in two worlds, this twelve-year-old boy. Every day, he troops in and out of those two worlds, in and out of the tiny paint-peeled tract house he lives in with his father, mother and three sisters. To say his is a modest neighborhood is kind. To the casual observer the houses are indistinguishable. There is kind of a peace and order to the cookie-cutter sameness, everything in its place and a place for everything. At least so it appears. Like every other neighborhood in America, suburbia or the inner city, every home is a facade, an outward face that betrays little of what lies inside. Sometimes what is inside is the opposite of peaceful. Behind the social masks, all too often lie families that are chaotic and disconnected, that threaten to disintegrate with the next crisis. The boy lives in just such a house and in just such an American family.

Outside the doors of his home, the boy finds a world that seems immeasurably more validating. He has a small group of friends and acquaintances to whom he in some ways feels closer than his own family. Yet they too seem distant and different because he is different, at least in his own eyes. Among them, he, like so many others, wears a social mask of "okayness," but he doesn't know theirs is a mask as well. He seems relaxed, even confident, but secretly he's always on guard, because he knows he's not like them, not really. He knows he and his family are poor and that they live differently with different problems, problems you just don't talk about. He's making one of the first and most common mistakes children make: He's comparing his private reality, his world behind the door, to the social mask of all of his friends. He assumes that what he sees is the truth, and in comparison, his image of his own family situation suffers dismally.

In the world beyond his home, the discovery of athletics has been an absolute godsend. He and his family don't have the money, the clothes or the ability to participate in any of the extracurricular activities except for sports, which are free to all students. In fact, at his young age, the boy already works two jobs, and so he embraces sports as a leveling device. On the playing field, he doesn't have to talk or be like everybody else; he doesn't have to have money or a fancy upbringing or even a stable home. He just has to be what he is -- a strong and coordinated kid, able to excel at just about any sport. Through athletics, he has found not only his self-esteem but an acceptable outlet for a burning anger that he doesn't understand, but knows is always there. Even with sports as an outlet, violence and fights are an everyday occurrence in a rough testosterone-driven world. Backing down is not an option. Because of sports, the urge to win has been planted in his head like a fast-growing seed -- he loves being in the thick of competition and he has learned what it takes to win and others are eager to follow. The seed has sprouted; he doesn't like being second-best.

School life is less comfortable. He is smart, though not academically motivated. He reads all of his textbooks from cover to cover the first few weeks of school and masters the material, but could care less about class or grades. Homework is turned in only if it is handy to do so. Teachers find him quietly charming but reluctant to get involved. His writing is excellent when he bothers to do it. His test average is A+.