Tammy Daughtry
Zondervan, 2011, 240 pp., $14.99
Tammy Daughtry has written a remarkable and detailed book for divorced parents and children, Co-Parenting Works! Helping Your Children Thrive After Divorce. While not shying away from the pain that divorce brings to parents and children, she offers sound advice and a healing spirit on which divorced parents can lean. Daughtry also takes on the toughest of issues—including questions about infidelity, abandonment, and abuse—but does so in a level-headed and precise manner.
Divorced parents will find her “Five Categories of Co-Parenting” particularly helpful. These categories appear at the mid-rift of the book, but will challenge divorced parents to consider how they can be more effective in working together as a team to help their children. As Daughtry so eloquently reminded parents throughout the book: “It’s not about you…but about the kids.”
At last, one of the most compelling aspects of this book is the many first-person accounts offered by children of divorce. These varied testimonies perhaps offer the most compelling help for co-parents who are truly asking: “How can we put aside differences and focus on our children?” There is pain and healing here, but the end reward in the lives of children is worth the effort. Youth leaders may discover this is a title they could recommend to parents who are struggling with these very issues.
