"The Co-Dependent Parent will help you begin a most noble undertaking: the initiation of a recovery process that will eventually break your legacy of co-dependent parenting and alter your life, the lives of your children, and the lives of many generations to come.
"According to Barbara Cottman Becnel, most of us are co-dependent parents to a greater or lesser degree because of our upbringing. In the extreme, co-dependent parenting is an unhealthy pattern of behavior - a need to be needed in order to feel good about ourselves - that is passed down from one generation to the next.
"Becnel, who was raised in a co-dependent family environment and therefore became a co-dependent mother, helps us recognize the variety of co-dependent behaviors we learn from our own parents and subsequently teach to our own sons and daughters. She identifies five models of co-dependent parenting - the demanding parent, the critical parent, the over-protective parent, the disengaging parent, the ineffective parent - and illustrates each type in a chapter that includes a family profile. These interviews with family members will assist you in identifying your own co-dependent behaviors. In addition, Becnel provides helpful exercises at the conclusion of each of these chapters.
"In this compassionate and revealing book, Becnel helps you make the transition from a 'good' parent - one who requires that a child behave in highly defined ways to gain approval - to a responsible parent - one who teaches a child vital guidelines for maintaining self-respect and integrity. In essence, Becnel provides you with the tools to replace your 'inherited' parenting patterns with new and dynamic ways of relating to your children. These tools are found in the easy-to-follow recovery program designed to help you take action to break unhealthy patterns in order to make peace with your parents, make peace with yourself (and thereby accept and forgive your co-dependent history), and finally, to make peace with your child. As a parent, your freedom from co-dependency is tied to your capacity to assist your child in freeing himself or herself from similar patterns.
"Let Barbara Cottman Becnel guide you toward the goal of every parent: to become a truly validating mother or father who raises healthy, confident, responsible children."