First-Time Mom by Dr Kevin Leman Review

First-Time Mom

Dr. Kevin Leman

Tyndale Publishing

232 Pages

ISBN #: 0-8423-6039-5

Back Cover:

Wish your child came with an owner's manual?

First-Time Mom offers just that--practical guidance and insight on raising your first child--with the right touch of humor, too. Parenting expert Dr. Kevin Leman reveals how you can not only "get through" those first ten exhausting, transitional days, but also create a lifetime bond of emotional security. He explains the differences in the parenting styles of firstborns, middleborns and lastborns, helping you identify your own strengths and weaknesses. 

Whether you've received your incredible gift through birth or adoption, becoming a parent is the most significant task you'll ever undertake. So raise your firstborn right--with confidence and a positive parenting experience. Then watch your child change the world!

My Review:

Every mother expecting or who just had (or adopted) their first child should read this book. I just had my son on Sept 25^thand this book has calmed a lot of my worries. It’s not an instruction manual on how to raise perfect kids. It’s a book that will prepare/help you mentally understand and grasp how your world is going to be changed.

Dr. Kevin Leman is absolutely hysterical! One story in the novel I absolutely have to share, “One young man shared with me how his father constantly criticized him as he grew up. The dad either berated his son for being “as stubborn as a mule” or for simply being a rotten kid. The son couldn’t remember a single instance of encouragement.

Finally the boy had had enough. After once more being called a mule, he looked up the word in the dictionary.

“Dad” he asked, “Do you really think I’m a mule?”

“If you’re not a mule,” Dad answered, “then I don’t know what one is.”

“I was just wondering, because I looked up the word mule in a dictionary and it said a mule was an animal that had a horse for a mother and a jackass for a father.”

Says the son, “He never compared me to a mule again.”” 

There are little gems like that throughout the novel. Always something to make you laugh out loud!

I loved every chapter of this book, but found Chapter 5: The Top Ten Most Common First-Time Parenting Mistakes and Chapter 8: Here Comes the Firstborn: Birth Order Bang to be the most helpful. When the author talks about how birth order affects your personality, it opened my eyes to personalities in my own family. A true First born is the Firstborn of the family, but other children can carry Firstborn traits, depending on the amount of attention they receive from their parents. Dr. Kevin Leman himself says he’s raised three firstborns in his family!

My baby boy!!

Chapter 8 is about having your firstborn child and how your personality (because of your birth order) is going to clash with theirs. I’m the firstborn in my family, so my personality with my son is going to be the “Main Event” as the author calls it in the book. “The child that is of your own birth order is, in all probability, the child you’re most likely to bang heads with. And since firstborns like to be in charge—and only one person can be in charge—firstborn on firstborn tends to be the most toxic mix. ”

Now, my son is only 13 days old, so it’s a little hard to tell how we’ll react yet; but this is very obvious in my own family. My parents are both firstborns, and I constantly bumped heads with them. It wasn’t until recently that I was able to grow up, and understand things about relationships and parents that I couldn’t see before. I have become great friends with my mother, whom I clashed heads with a lot. Reading First-Time Mom helped ease my “common” parenting worries and prepared me for what’s to come!

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