Loving Kids Harder

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August 2023 View more

‘Loving Hard When They’re Hard to Love: Essays on Raising Teens in Today’s Complex, Chaotic World’ by Whitney Fleming

Raising tweens and teens is not for the faint of heart. But like most of life’s challenges, it helps knowing you’re not alone. When Wheaton mom Whitney Fleming began posting parenting stories on her Facebook page several years ago, her honesty and humor garnered a lot of attention. Friends encouraged her to start a blog, which she has since grown into the website parentingteensandtweens.com. “I’ve always been a writer and marketer, so I just combined those two skill sets and got into the online world,” she says.

Whitney Fleming

Fleming compiled 55 of her favorite pieces for Loving Hard When They’re Hard to Love: Essays on Raising Teens in Today’s Complex, Chaotic World. (It’s available on Amazon.)

“I think a mistake we make in parenting is that we want to change our kids; I’ve learned it’s really about changing myself,” she says. “That’s really what the book is about. It’s a parenting book, but it’s really about learning how to see things differently and realize that once you work on yourself and your own issues, you can really deal with the negatives of other people. Once you can control your behavior, then you can start talking to your kids about theirs.”

 

Photo: Whitney Fleming