Building Better Families: A Practical Guide to Raising Amazing Children, by Matthew Kelly
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Building Better Families: A Practical Guide to Raising Amazing Children, by Matthew Kelly
Free Ebook Building Better Families: A Practical Guide to Raising Amazing Children, by Matthew Kelly
For more than a decade, Matthew Kelly has been traveling the world inspiring people to become the-best-version-of-themselves. During this time he has been amazed at how regularly he is asked: How do I encourage my children to embrace this message? How does your message apply to a family? Now, for the first time, Kelly shares with us remarkable insights and sensible everyday strategies for transforming the family into what it should be: a place where each of us can become the-best-version-of-ourselves. Beginning with an exploration of the changing face of the family in our culture, Kelly sets every reader at ease by explaining: “A family is not what we think a family should be, or what we hope to have, or should have, or what would be ideal—a family is what we actually have. A family is the one we’ve got.” Nor can a family ever be perfect, he goes on to explain. “Perfect families exist only in our minds, and it is these imaginings that are very often the enemy of our ability to enjoy the wonderful family we already have, or might have if we made it just that little bit more of a priority.” In Building Better Families, Kelly explores important issues by raising evocative questions: What makes a successful parent? Do you realize that your children are in the middle of a cultural war? What are the five things children really need? Are you asking your children the right questions? What are you teaching your children about work, money, food, exercise, body image, and sex? What are the priorities of your family culture? Every page of this book is filled with examples that can be applied to your daily experience of parenting and family, while at the same time illuminating the broader and deeper significance of family for society and the future of humanity. “The family is at once a deeply personal experience and the cornerstone of all great societies,” Mathew Kelly tells us. Allow this book of classic wisdom and practical insight to help you build a better family.
Building Better Families: A Practical Guide to Raising Amazing Children, by Matthew Kelly - Amazon Sales Rank: #654990 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-06-23
- Released on: 2015-06-23
- Format: Kindle eBook
Building Better Families: A Practical Guide to Raising Amazing Children, by Matthew Kelly Review Praise for Building Better Families “All parents share the same awesome responsibility–to bring out the best in their children. This wonderful book will help you do just that. Matthew Kelly shares his experiences from growing up in a loving family of eight children, and the insight and wisdom that resulted. He’s given us an easy-to-read, heartwarming, and practical guide to raising great kids.”–Hal Urban, author of Life’s Greatest Lessons Perfectly Yourself“Compelling . . . pragmatic . . . transcendental . . . You don’t have to leave your own backyard to find enduring happiness. . . . [Perfectly Yourself] is accessible to any belief system.”–Wichita Falls Times Record NewsThe Rhythm of Life“I loved this book! It provides significant insights into living a happier, healthier, more rewarding life.”–Dr. Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective PeopleThe Seven Levels of Intimacy“A highly readable, well-written book that contains deep wisdom and practical guidance about relationships that will be useful to everyone seeking genuine and durable intimacy, especially couples. I highly recommend it.”–Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., author of Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples
About the Author Matthew Kelly is the author of several books, including Perfectly Yourself, The Rhythm of Life, The Seven Levels of Intimacy and The Dream Manager. His books have appeared on multiple bestseller lists, including those of The New York Times, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal. For more than a decade Kelly has been traveling the globe, and more than three million people in fifty countries have attended his seminars. Kelly is the founder of The Matthew Kelly Foundation, whose major charitable work is to help young people discover their mission in life. Kelly is also the president of Floyd Consulting, a Chicago-based consulting company that helps corporations become the-best-version-of-themselves.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1The Changing Face of FamiliesIt has been only fifteen years since I graduated from high school, but the world has changed at warp speed during that time. Those changes are no more apparent than in the area of family. More than 50 percent of America’s children now live separated from their biological fathers. Like many, I think this is tragic, but I do not want to write a book about that tragedy. There has been enough written already. We can sit around cursing the darkness or we can turn on the light and find the best path forward.What Is a Family?It’s an interesting question. If you want to have some heated conversation, get a diverse group of people together for a dinner party and raise this question. This topic is nothing short of explosive at this time, both socially and politically.There are many who would say the answer is very simple. A family is a mother and a father and their children. This answer is usually announced with a tone of absolute certainty, sometimes even arrogance, as if it were as obvious as the day is long and as old as time itself. Though if we travel across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe or south of the border to Central and South America, we quickly discover that a multigenerational definition of family that includes not only parents and children but grandparents and great grandparents is very much alive and well in many cultures. These cultures are also very much in celebration of the intergenerational definition of family that includes aunts and uncles, cousins, and nieces and nephews.The same person who answered with all that certainty—“A family is a mother and a father and their children.”—would reply to these points by saying, “Well, of course we consider grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, and nephews to be part of a family in a broader sense.” You see, in America today, the question—What is a family?—has become a secret code for the political question: Who should raise children?I have had the pleasure of watching my good friend Pat Lencioni, the famed business author and consultant, work with executive teams on a couple of occasions. One of the exercises he does with these executives concerns the idea of core values. Most business leaders would now agree that a company should have a set of core values. If you were to visit the head office of most companies, you’d discover that these core values appear in various places—from annual reports to plaques in lobbies to mini-posters in hallways, cubicles, and lunchrooms. But if you ask most employees what do these core values mean, they will tell you that they mean nothing. This is because of how they were arrived at. A group of executives got together one day and decided they needed some core values for the company because they saw that some other company had them, and besides, it is now accepted wisdom that all companies should have stated core values. They pick values like integrity, compassion, and service. But the employees know from their everyday experience that these core values do not exist, and so rather than creating unity, they create disengagement and resentment.The problem is that when the executive team sits down to arrive at their core values, they don’t ask: What are our core values? Rather, they ask: What should our core values be? So, what they come up with are in fact aspirational values (what they want the values of the company to be) not actual core values (what the values of the company actually are at this very moment).Similarly, when the question is raised—What is a family?— most people reply by describing what they think the ideal family should be and not by describing their actual family, or the reality of most families.Returning then to the dinner party reply—“A family is a mother and a father and their children.”—let’s have a look at how many people this definition excludes. Certainly a gay couple raising a child is excluded, and this, of course, is exactly who this answer is designed to exclude more often than not. But if we move for a moment beyond this highly emotionally charged social and political issue, who else gets excluded by this definition of family? Single mothers and their children, couples who are unable to have children, adopted children, foster families, grandparents raising children and the children being raised by grandparents, husbands and wives in second marriages and the children they are raising from either marriage, and so on.If the question were: What is the best situation in which a child should be raised? I would tell you that in my own opinion the best scenario would be for a child to be raised by a loving biological mother and father who are deeply in love with each other, permanently committed to their own and to each other’s growth, and to supporting their child to become all he or she was created to be and achieve all he or she was created to accomplish. I would probably also add broad and deep intergenerational and multigenerational aspects to their family life along with the best education, opportunities to travel, and on and on and on.That would be perfect, but in reality the life of human beings cannot be neatly packaged. Life tends to be messy most of the time. Very few children have these circumstances in all their breadth and depth, perhaps none. Though it does help to know what perfect would look like.But the question is: What is a family? A family is not what we think a family should be, or what we hope to have, or should have, or what would be ideal—a family is what we actually have. A family is the one we’ve got. None of them perfect and all of them messy from time to time. Some of them messier than others. But there is no point telling someone that what they have is not a family.So, while it is critically important that we continue to recognize and celebrate the ideal for a family and the ideal for raising children, it is more important that we realize where we are and what we have to work with—and begin that work today. In the pages that follow, you will find tools and insights to help you in the work of building a better family. The title is not Building Perfect Families. Perfect families exist only in our minds, and it is these imaginings that are very often the enemy of our ability to enjoy the wonderful family we already have, or might have if we made it just that little bit more of a priority.Family and Today’s Culture—Opposing PurposesThe only place to begin our discussion of building better families is with an examination of purpose. What is the purpose of a family? The answer to this question can only be drawn from a vision of a human person. People do not exist for families; families exist for people. What, essentially, is a person’s purpose? If you have read any of my earlier works you know that I have repeatedly proposed that our essential purpose is to become the-best-version-of-ourselves. You are here to become all you were created to be. You are not here exclusively to do something or accomplish certain tasks, but to be and become someone. All the doing that fills our lives—relationships, school, work, politics, community involvement, recreation—is designed simply to provide opportunities for us to become the-best-version-of-ourselves. Could you have any better dream for your children, your spouse, or your parents than for them to truly become and fully celebrate the-best-version-of-themselves? It is the ultimate dream for those we love.Our vision for family springs from this vision for a person. So we ask the question again: What is the purpose of a family? The purpose of a family is to help one another become the-best-version-of-ourselves and in the process contribute to the greater good of society and humanity. The family is the building block of all great societies. Sadly, we don’t hear much about the building of great societies anymore, and that may be because we mistakenly believe we already have them. So, though it should be unnecessary to ask the question, for the sake of clarity: Why is it important to build and sustain great societies? Because great societies give rise to great men and women who celebrate their best selves and in turn raise humanity to new levels. A family (or a culture or a society, for that matter) is not an end in itself, but exists at the service of a greater purpose. Families, cultures, and societies are true to themselves when they help their members become better-versions-of-themselves.On paper this may all make sense, but you and I know how difficult it is to celebrate and defend our best self in the moments of everyday living, even before we take into account the influence of our environments.People and families live in the midst of societies and cultures. In a utopian world, everything about a culture would be aimed toward helping each member of society become the-best-version-of-himself or -herself. In our very human world, however, we know this is not so. It is therefore important to examine the motives of the culture in which we live.What is the purpose of culture? In general, the role of culture is to offer a broadening experience for the people of a society. But even this broadening should serve some greater overall purpose. Broadening simply for the sake of broadening is dangerous, irresponsible, and reckless. In its truest expression, culture would expose people to a broadening set of ideas and experiences that would be aimed at inspiring and assisting each member of that society to become a-better- version-of-themselves. Every aspect of the human experience should be seen with our essential purpose in mind. Culture is therefore only valuable to the extent that it helps the members of a society celebrate their best selves.It is needless to say, and blatantly obvious, that our modern culture fails to deliver in this regard in too many ways to list. At every turn we are assaulted by i...
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful. Have kids? You NEED this book! By Armchair Interviews Matthew Kelly has taken a complex, difficult subject and made it simple. Not easy, but simple. He engages the reader in a series of conversations that run parallel to developing as an adult-and what we want for our children (or grandchildren).Oftentimes his advice is a blinding flash of the obvious-but more often than not is something we know at some level-but are not acting on. For example he explores the four needs that every child has-and clearly differentiates between what we all can clearly recognize as a need-and something that is simply a want. I'd be more specific, but frankly, I want you to be curious and buy this book-it's that good.He also clearly spells out the four things a child really needs from a parent, and then peppers the chapter with specific how-to's. One of the most poignant stories in the book is that of a five-year-old child asking his father how much he earned. The father got upset with this line of questioning, but eventually told his son "twenty dollars." Armed with that information his son asked if he could have ten dollars. This infuriated the father who proceeded to educate (or rather berate) his son in a very loud voice. He then sent him to bed. After a bit the father realized how harsh he had been and went to the son's room, apologized and asked forgiveness. He then gave his son the ten dollars that he had requested. With that the small boy pulled some crumpled bills out from under his pillow. This immediately caused the father to be upset again-until the boy said, "I was ten dollars short, but now I have enough. Can I buy an hour of your time?"What a humbling experience. And this is the type of compelling story Kelly tells over and over again to make his key points come to life. This book is for anyone who truly wants to be a better parent or grandparent, and who is looking for answers to questions like: * When should a child really have a cell phone? * What types of video games are appropriate? * How can I help my child deal with peer pressure? * How can I have conversations that will help my child develop the values that will help them truly be their highest and best selves? * How can I become the role model that I want to be as a parent (or a grandparent)?Not only will the answers make sense. You will find practical strategies that can be readily implemented.Armchair Interviews says: Run, don't walk to your bookstore and get this book.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful. The Best Version of Myself By catholic carrie Matthew Kelly is a motivating, dynamic and incredible messenger of truth for all. I would recommend Building Better Families to all members of the human family not just to the people who are raising children at the moment. He emphasizes filtering all your choices for yourself (or for those you are entrusted with caring for) through the question of "Will this help me to become the best version of myself?" That question brings clarity and reason back to the big decisions and the smaller choices in life.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful. Excellent for anyone who wish to build a wonderful family By L. Shunxing After reading it, I started to practise & I can see positive result within my family and most important is within myself. A must read for all who wish to have a wonderful relationship & family.
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