Breaking the Good Mom Myth: Every Mom's Modern Guide to Getting Past Perfection, Regaining Sanity, and Raising Great Kids

As a psychotherapist, parent educator and parent coach, Alyson Schäfer has worked with a great many mothers who, in the quest to be a "good mother" have ended up on the door step of despair. Alyson is a forty-something, suburbanite, working-mother of two and can speak to these issues both personally and professionally.

This book explains the psycho-social phenomena of how each person creates their own unique "good mother myth" and then examines why these myths are not only faulty, but could in fact lead to poor parenting, marital disaster and individual crisis. Her years of educating parents around these concepts afford Alyson the skill to take complex ideas and explain them to a lay audience in a compelling and easy to understand way.

Capitalizing on the need to present parents with information in an easy to digest format, the book is presented as a series of personal stories, each highlighting a common parenting myth. This format will appeal to tired parents who have little time and energy for "academia". Instead, readers learn by taking a voyeuristic peek into the private family lives of the book's characters. Readers can identify with the fictitious parents and coaching clients in the stories and see first hand how the characters ’ life experiences shaped their unique "good mother myths" and how these myths create conflict in their lives.

The author offers up ideas for how the character can reject her current thinking and adopt a more useful outlook to improve her situation. The story arc allows readers to identify and then project how their parenting may be unknowingly going off the rails.

The goal of this book is to provide parents with some basic education and a means of self-discovery. Readers uncover their own good mother myths and are given an eye-opening glimpse into potential issues to challenge their thinking. A great sense of empowerment is restored as mothers become better able to resist the pulls of their personal and cultural myths, and instead begin parenting with greater intention and in ways that are more suitable to proper child guidance.

Alyson Schäfer, BSc, MA Counseling OACCPP AAMFT

Alyson Schafer is a psychotherapist and recognized as one of Canada's foremost parenting experts. She is the host of The Parenting Show, a call-in advice show on Roger’s Television, and the regular guest parenting expert on CBC television’s The Gill Deacon Show. Alyson is also a Chapters’ Indigo Trusted Advisor and a popular corporate speaker for Lifespeak. Alyson is the selected speaker for Rainbow Canada's 2007 speaker series. You can find Alyson's advice in articles in Today's Parent, Canadian Family, Chatelaine, Canadian Living and Readers Digest and through her website: www.alyson.ca.

Alyson brings the age-old topic of parenting to a twenty-first century audience of educated, enlightened and motivated parents. Her style is fast and witty, and her information is grounded in theory and research. Alyson educates, inspires and entertains — whether speaking to an audience of parents, presenting workshops, or one-on- one in private parent coaching sessions.

As a mother of two and a former nursery school teacher, Alyson brings real life experience and passion to her work.