#BlogTour-‘Confessions Of A Bad Mother-The Teenage Years’ by @StephanieCalman

About the book…

When you’re pregnant you think: `I’m having a baby’, not a person who will eventually catch trains by themselves, share a fridge with ten strangers, go to a festival in Croatia without succumbing to a drug overdose, and one day, bring you a gin and tonic when your mother is dying.

We imagine the teenage years as a sort of domestic meteor strike, when our dear, sweet child, hitherto so trusting and mild, is suddenly replaced by a sarcastic know-all who isn’t interested in the wisdom we have to pass on. But with great honesty and refreshingly bracing wit, Stephanie Calman shows that adolescence in fact begins much earlier, around the age of seven.

And having nurtured them through every stage of development, from walking to school by themselves to their first all-night party, you find yourself alone – bereaved even – as they skip off to university without a second glance.

Candid, touching and very, very funny, ‘Confessions Of A Bad Mother-The Teenage Years’ offers hope to despairing and exhausted parents everywhere. Read it and discover that your teenager is not the enemy after all.

This is the book that all parents of teenagers, or coming up to teenagers, need to read.

Frank, disarmingly honest and uproariously funny, it will have you punching the air and yelling ‘ME TOO!’ which is quite alarming on public transport -or so I have been told, ahem.

I am the mother of 5 girls, we have managed to navigate the waters of adulthood for the eldest 2, the younger 3 , meanwhile, are tipping into puberty and we are tipping ourselves into our grownup pants, and ordering in the medicinal red wine.

We look at the eldest, still marvelling how she is old enough to have children when she , at one point, couldn’t point out countries on a globe. The second eldest should really not be going to Glastonbury on her own, yet she is about to graduate with a first class honours degree in MENTAL HEALTH NURSING! How did that even happen?!

This is where, unlike a lot of other mum-manuals, this book pitches itself at all types of parents by openly sharing anecdotes which have a communality to all readers who have teens. The relationship changes and as much as you do not want to let go, these amazing young people are only able to step out into the world and be their own selves because you gave them the coping strategies to do this.

They are suddenly these fully formed people with opinions, ideas and aspirations and seeing them become themselves is a beautiful thing. Teenager-dom is fraught with worries and concerns, this does not propose to be a manual on how to survive the teenage years so much as a reminder that you got this. You can cope. And on the other side is a beautiful place to be. Instead of bracing yourself for the full on teen onslaught, you find that by working with that teen, the transition is better for both parties.

I absolutely enjoyed it, and would thoroughly recommend this book.

Huge thanks to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers for the blogtour invite, as well as Picador for my copy of the book, and Stephanie Calman, for writing such a beautiful, compassionate and well thought out book(that also makes you laugh more than is safe for someone who has given birth 4 times!)

About the author…

Stephanie Calman is the founder of the ground breaking Bad Mothers Club website and the author of six previous books including the bestselling ‘Confessions Of A Bad Mother’. She created the hit Channel 4 sitcom Dressing For Breakfast and has appeared on many TV shows including Have I Got News For You and The Wright Stuff. She has also written for most British newspapers and magazines including the Daily Telegraph, Observer, Guardian, Cosmopolitan, GQ and Harpers & Queen, and has contributed to a wide variety of radio programmes, including Woman’s Hour and The Today Programme. She is married to the author Peter Grimsdale.

Links-http://www.badmothersclub.co.uk/

          https://www.compulsivereaders.com/

Twitter @Calperson

             @Tr4cyF3nt0n

             @panmacmillan