Helping Your Family Live with Integrity, Value Simplicity, and Care for Others (Paperback)
Raising Kids Who Will Make a Difference - Helping Your Family Live with Integrity, Value Simplicity, and Care for Others
By Susan V. Vogt
There are no guarantees in parenting. As a mother, counselor, and family-life educator, author Susan Vogt intimately knows how parents struggle to help their children develop strong values. In this unique and thoughtful guide to raising socially conscious children, Vogt sets out to inspire, equip, and comfort parents in the awesome task of raising kids who will make positive contributions to the world.
Using a delightful blend of honesty and humor, Vogt offers successful parenting strategies and straightforward discussions on important issues like sexuality, substance abuse, materialism, racism, global awareness, and death. Personal anecdotes, stories from other parents, and perspective from Vogts children enhance the practical information. Each chapter concludes with reflection activities to stimulate discussion for the whole family.
Pages: 320, Size: 7 x 9
ReviewsSusan Vogt understands and affirms that parenting offers no easy 'rules for success' and no guarantees. What she offers are sound, practical, real-world ideas for parents who want to raise caring, responsible, independent children in a society that encourages selfishness and conformity. Using her own family's experiences, and including comments- both positive and no so- from her children and other families, the author's wry humor, idealism, and down-to-earth approach offer a welcome difference from other parenting books. - 6/1/2003 By Disciples World
Get a second Opinion 'SUSAN V. VOGT IS A WOMAN WITH GUTS and integrity. She wrote a book about raising kids and she allowed her daughter to have the last word in each chapter! And she invites her other kids to put their two cents in, too. What's refreshing is how Susan Vogt and her daughter Heidi tackle a serious topic with humor an joy. This book is filled with great ideas for families to chew on together.'
- 10/1/2002 By Tom McGrath, At Home With Our Faith Newsletter
'...Vogt develops her thinking...and relates it to include enhancing its development in her children. She writes in such a comfortable manner, you get the feeling more like youre sitting on the sofa chatting, rather than reading text.'
- 8/23/2002 By Renee Colclough Hinson, Executive Director, A.C.M.E. (Association for Couples in Marriage Enrichment)
'Susan Vogt is a brave woman. She is a committed Christian who has tried to put faith into practice in every aspect of her life: work, marriage, parenting. Here she shares the results, especially in regard to parenting, and she is brave enough to have her own quite independent daughter Heidi give her side of the story. It's an honest book that shows that parents don't always succeed when they try to pass on their own faith, but affirms that the effort is worth the price.'
- 11/1/2002 By Jane Leingang, ACT Christian Family Movement
The reason, she writes, isn't that the parents are so obviously proud of darling Muffy and Buffy, but because of the value they place on what amounts to a pretty shallow list of accomplishments. Instead, she suggests, parents should think about what they really want for their children, and whether the messages they give their kids both verbally and nonverbally will help them get it. Vogt acknowledges that parents may never know whether they've done a good enough job. But sometimes knowing they cared enough to try makes all the difference.
- 12/10/2002 By The Catholic New World
“This is one of the most creative and engaging books that Ive read in a long time. The author and the entire Vogt family speak through its pages, offering us their hard-earned treasures of parenting and being parented.”
- 5/7/2002 By H. Richard McCord, executive director, Committee on Marriage and Family, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops
Vogt, director of the Family Ministry Office of the Diocese of Covington, KY, draws on her experience as a mother, counselor and family life educator to provide ideas and strategies for how parents can raise children who have compassion for others.
- 3/1/2003 By University of Dayton Quarterly
“Vogt writes with a delightful blend of wry humor, candor, and sensitive self-revelation. The section in each chapter written by Vogts children on her efforts to be a responsible parent adds to the fun and practical value of this book.”
- 5/7/2002 By Joe H. Leonard, director, family ministries and human sexuality, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.
“In a courageous move she squeezes the fruits of her labor, her kids for their reflections and opinions on her parenting from her real life perspective. Ms. Vogts genuine appreciation for diversity and truth is revealed as she also shares opinions and advice of other parents and kids from different economic, education, geographic, and religious backgrounds.…Help determine what you value most for yourself and your children.”
- 9/17/2002 By The Messenger- Diocese of Covington
If there is one clear message in Susan Vogts book Raising Kids Who Will Make a Difference (Loyola Press, 2002) it is that parenting requires a sense of balance. Vogt addresses many of the concerns that face new parents as well as parents of grade school/high school children. But in addressing issues such as integrity, spirituality, ecology, health, peace and justice, service, and caring about others, Vogt uses a triple filter on her parenting strategies. She offers her own parenting experiences, reflections by her grown children on which of those strategies worked and did not work, and related stories and reflections by other families. Here is a parenting book that has that rare and needed quality of balance and honesty.'
- 10/1/2002 By Jack Gargiulo, Faith Connection Newsletter
'With both passion and compassion, Vogt speaks honestly about the trials of raising children to be courageous moral agents, eager to improve the world they live in. She is frank about her own failures and compromises in raising her four kids and offers concrete suggestions about imparting the desire to create a just society. Although many of her ideas are familiar—unplug the television, eat dinner together, talk about injustice, reduce materialism—Vogts voice is candid and quite funny. One unusual feature is the books inclusion of the opinions of others, some of which disagree with Vogts—including healthy dissent from her own four children. Although the book is informed by Vogts Roman Catholic perspective, it has an ecumenical, open feel.'
- 6/11/2002 By Jana Riess, Religion Bookline from Publishers Weekly