Get A Grip: Parenting Tips I Wish I'd Known Then That You Can Know Now

Robin Banks's charming, revealing, and unceasingly funny memoir of her parenting years should be required reading for all young couples thinking of having children. It will surely help them better handle, if not avoid altogether, all the parenting pitfalls she so poignantly and humorously describes.(John Rosemond, Parenting Expert, Author, and Nationally-syndicated Newspaper Columnist) Picture Robin Banks as a movie director who displays upon the big screen in HD typical family life when her children were living at home. Through anecdotal vignettes, she peels back in plain view the mistakes and successes she and her husband experienced as they struggled through the deep waters of family demands. In Get a Grip: Parenting Tips I Wish I'd Known Then That You Can Know Now, Robin Banks strikes out to change the generational cycles that go all the way back to Eden in which preparation for parenthood was, if anything at all, an afterthought. Think of her also as the universal cheerleader who cries out "get a grip" BEFORE the sperm-egg collision, an event that, as veteran parents know, catapults unsuspecting,would-be parents into a dramatic, lifestyle change.The relative calm of a pre-baby existence vanishes like a perp at a crime scene in the whirlwind of new, family challenges. In view of that reality, ponder the following situations: if you want a good job,you seek higher education; if you aspire to be a star on Broadway, you take acting lessons; and even if you're a chocoholic who can't live without tiramisu, you find a recipe before you attempt to prepare such a complicated, sinful treat. You prepare for everything that matters to you. So if being an effective parent is your goal, shouldn't you above all prepare for the most important job on this planet? Now a baby boomer on the far side of day to day parenting, Banks has written Get a Grip in which she wins the reader's trust with a weathered wisdom gained from twenty-five years of child rearing experience and conveyed through her wry humor and friendly approach, evident not only in this book but in its future sequel as well. Get a Grip II. Though preparation before parenthood is an obvious approach, it is one that needs stronger emphasis in this twenty-first millennium. Young people thinking of having a family today will face enormous challenges: finding family time in an environment of electronic gadgetry, dealing with longer to-do lists, working insane hours just to make a living in a world of financial insecurity, and rearing children in a new world order where lives and futures have been forever changed by the repercussions of 911. These conditions demand early preparation for the most difficult job in existence. In Get a Grip, Banks shows how replacing ignorance with knowledge increases the odds of becoming a more effective parent, one who is better able to handle family demands and makes fewer mistakes. Her wish is for everyone to live an easier life, one that reduces the stress and frustration that often push parents to their knees, either in prayer or apoplexy. This is the one book that provides would-be parents a head start and new parents, who overlooked early preparation, a jump-start.

Robin Banks was born and currently resides in Gastonia, North Carolina. She has a B.A. in education and an M.A. in Spanish. She is now a retired Spanish teacher, a wife of thirty-eight years, a mother of three adult children, and a grandmother to Sophia, six years old and Lincoln, three. When she is not writing, she spends much of her time visiting her sons in Raleigh, N.C. and her daughter and son-in-law and their children in Arlington, Virginia. She also enjoys participating in Bible studies and traveling with friends. During the time her children were in school, from kindergarten through high school, she was active either in the PTA or the PTO. She participated in every job from being the president of those organizations to chairing fundraisers and heading up or serving on various school and community committees. As she likes to say, she danced every dance and enjoyed every minute. When Banks was in the throes of rearing her family of one husband, three children, two dogs, multiple stray cats, assorted tropical fish, a pink and a blue Easter chick, a token rodent, and seasonal hermit crabs she had little idea what she was doing. Because of a showdown with her then teenage sons, she became a passionate writer who today brings to the forefront of parenting the need to change the generational cycles of the past in which would-be parents did not prepare for parenthood to a new generational cycle where young people thinking of having a family prepare well before the first baby leaves the hospital, that is, before life dramatically changes forever. Ten years after her last child left home for college, she has proven to be the real deal, a neighborhood mom who writes frankly about her family when children lived at home, so the next generation can know from the outset what she did not know when she first became pregnant. Now a baby boomer on the far side of day to day parenting, she has written Get a Grip: Parenting Tips I Wish I'd Known Then That You Can Know Now in which she gains the reader's trust with a weathered wisdom conveyed through her wry humor and friendly approach, evident not only in this book but in its future sequel as well, Get a Grip II.