The Gifts of Imperfect Parenting: Raising Children with Courage, Compassion, and Connection
Written and Narrated By: Brené Brown PhD
Length: 2 hrs and 6 mins
AWEsome book if you’re trying to raise kids but find yourself in the weeds a lot of the time!
Brené Brown! I just love her. And here? In The Gifts of Imperfect Parenting? She narrates this herself, y’all, so huzzah for that! Cuz I’m still all scarred about what narrator Karen White did to Brown’s Daring Greatly (No longer available as Brown re-recorded it).
And let me just clarify here why this is also going to be going in our Professional Development section. It’s cuz I work with kids, well, teen-aged girls, and I did this audiobook specifically so that I might help “my” girls grow into the truly amazing young women I know they can be.
That kinda sorta puts me in a parenting role, so for Mother’s Day/Father’s Day, may I just say that I hear y’all, and God bless y’all for raising the future (And might I just chuck a loving shoutout to my own dear folks: Thanks soooo much for nurturing me! I might be a middle-aged spaz right now, but I’ll always be your loving daughter, one who know how to embrace all the truly nifty things that have come along. It’s cuz of y’all that I know a great thing when I see it!).
In this audiobook, Brown goes into her specialties such as shame and whole-heartedness. And yes, I do agree with another reviewer who states that if you reeeeally want Brown’s absolute best, go to The Power of Vulnerability as that is one absoLUTEly fanTAStic work! That one also happens to shine more in the performance area as it is a set of live talks in front of an enthusiastic audience, and Brown’s down and dirty Texan comes out with her delightfully drawled storytelling.
Still, this book is no slouch, and what I enjoyed about it were her personal experiences in parenting. As I’ve continued to listen to Brown through the years, I feel like I’ve had the opportunity to watch her children Ellen and Charlie as they’ve navigated life on this planet from year to year, age to age. Here, they’re pretty young (And by the way, they had the final say as to which of their stories could/can ever be told), and I felt like I had a front row seat and a bit of an unfair insight into who I know they’ve become now that they’re older.
But the best parts of the book are about shame v. guilt, and about whole-hearted living. Yes, get the other audiobook for even more info on those things, but this book has guidelines and ideas you can implement for your own family. Nifty things like home being a safe place where you can just play and be goofy. Where you’re never called names. Where you might get some guilt-trips, but you’ll never be shamed.
And where mom and dad have boundaries for ya because they love you. Brown does an excellent job in showing how the way we as parents/caretakers set and hold boundaries teaches the child/student 100% about how they set and maintain boundaries for themselves. You want your children to cave in to peer pressure; you just cave in and model that for them, why doncha?
This is such a very short listen, but it is so very important if you want to guide young people, children, in your life.
Our parents were just doing the best they could with the tools they were given; and all we can do is our own best.
And thank GOSH for these new tools! I have hope that my charges won’t wind up as spastic as I am!
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