Blog Tour - Confessions of a Bad Mother: The Teenage Years by Stephanie Calman

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.

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.

When my husband and I found out we were expecting our first child we bought a book 'What to expect when you are expecting', when our daughter was born we bought 'What to expect during the first year' and as our daughter grew so did our bookshelf of 'self-help' books about our developing child and they helped us through a number of stages in our daughter's (and subsequent son's) early years. They were informative but very regimented and politically correct solutions to things like potty training and sleeping through the night.

However as our children grew, the number of new additions to the bookshelf decreased as we learnt that every child is unique and will do things how and when they like and not as is written down in a book. Advice was less from the 'expert books' and more from our peers or from internet chat groups but again this advice dried up as the children grew older- welcome to 'Confessions of a Bad Mother: The Teenage Years!'

'Confessions of a Bad Mother: The Teenage Years' is a laugh out loud book that had me, as a reader and parent of two teenagers, realise that my children are normal, that we haave done an okay job of bringing them up and they have turned out okay! 

It is a book that I will be recommending to all my friends and to anyone who has a child beginning their teenage years or to those who are in the midst of their teenage years to remind them that the end is in sight and there is a life after those turmustolous years. Everyone should read this - it is a real hoot!

Thank you to Picador Books for inviting me to take part in the blog tour and for a copy of the book in return for an honest review.