Small Talk: Learning From My Children About What Matters Most {Review}

Small Talk: Learning From My Children About What Matters Most {Review}

 

As a parent, I am sure you have been stopped in your tracks by something that your little one has said…

Good or bad, the things our little ones say often touch something in our heart. For me, it is a clear sign that God is using my children to remind me of things. As a new parent, it can be hard to balance our thoughts on what having a child should be like compared to real life. I call that “first child syndrome” because so many things change when we have additional children added to our crew.

I enjoyed this book from the point of view of someone that is on the almost empty nester. Having five married children and two teens still at home, our conversations have come full circle. We now discuss issues facing teen girls with our babies and talk about babies with our grown children.

This book is broken up into three sections covering parenting topics of Holding On, Letting Go and Growing Up…and knowing that you are not alone..and it is ALL worth it! This would make a great gift for any mom or mom to be.

 

Book Description:

Every day, one of Amy Julie Becker’s children says something that prompts her to think about life in a new way. “Mom, does Santa love me?” William asks, after his mother explains the meaning of Christmas…In a chat with her dad about the children who died in the Sandy Hook shootings, Penny asks, “Did they go to heaven?” …”You was a jerk, Mommy?” asks Marilee one morning in the car.

These conversations deepen Amy Julia’s relationships with her children, but they also refine her understanding of what she believes and what God is doing in her own life.

In Small Talk, Amy Julia draws from the wisdom and curiosity of those young voices to reflect on beauty and kindness, tragedy and disability, prayer and miracles. As she moves through the basic questions her kids posed when they were very young to the more intellectual questions of later childhood, she invites us to learn from our own day-to-day conversations with the children in our lives.

This eloquent parenting memoir is about the big questions little hearts ask, the thoughts their words provoke, and the laughter and soul-searching their honesty brings—to adult and child alike.

 

About the Author:

Amy Julia Becker writes about faith, family, and disability for Parents.com, the New York Times Motherlode blog, TheAtlantic.com, The Huffington Post parents page, Christianity Today, The Christian century, and numerous other publications. Her first book, A Good and Perfect Gift: Faith, Expectations, and a Little Girl Named Penny, was named one of the Top Ten Religion Books of 2011 by Publishers Weekly. Amy Julia lives in western Connecticut with her husband and three children.

For more information on this book, visit their online site.

We are offering a copy of this book to one reader. If you would like to be included in the drawing for a copy of this book, please leave a comment below sharing one of your funniest memory of something your child has come up with during a talk.

Disclosure: I received one or more of the products or services mentioned in this article in exchange for my honest opinion.  Some of the links in the article may be “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive compensation. Regardless, I will only recommend products or services I use personally or believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”