Rick Johnson - Overcoming Toxic Parenting: How to Be a Good Parent When Yours Wasnt

An unpredictable parent is a fearsome god in the eyes of a child.

Susan Forward, Toxic Parenting

The things they do to you... change you. Twist you.... We dont become the people were supposed to be. We become... something else.... I wanted so much to be that girl. I was supposed to be, you know. They ruined me. They had no right, Danny. They had no right.

Andrew Klavan, A Killer in the Wind

A Bad Childhood is easy to come by, and you dont have any control over that. A Good Life after a Bad Childhood is not easy to create, but you do have control over that. In a Bad Childhood you struggle against forces external to yourself. To come to a Good Life, the struggle is against forces internalthey are yourself.

Dr. Laura Schlessinger, Bad ChildhoodGood Life

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

Edmund Burke

W e were all raised in dysfunctional families. Some were more healthy than others, and some were more destructive than others, but because we are all sinners, all were dysfunctional. The more unhealthy a family, the more damage done to the children. And that damage affects our adulthood.

But like most kids, we assume that how we were raised is similar to what others were raised withit was our normal. It may have included verbal abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and/or isolation and neglectful abuse. But it was abuse in spite of how we may rationalize it. If what we had experienced were happening in a family next door to us, we wouldnt hesitate to call it abuse.

As a psychologist, counselor, and radio host, I talk often to deeply wounded people every day. Their lives have been devastated by the abuse they endured while growing up. Sometimes as we listen, its so clear to us that the problem is a direct result of their childhood experiences. One question is all it takes to make the connection for them. So often it is like they had never before made the connection between what they struggle with today and their childhood experiences of yesterday. Instead of only operating in the past, those sins done to them are still in operation in their lives today.

In Overcoming Toxic Parenting: How to Be a Good Parent When Yours Wasnt , Rick Johnson has written an extremely important book designed to help the average person recognize, understand, and then take steps to heal from their childhood wounds. He then takes the reader from an understanding of the importance of education, professional counseling, mentoring, and forgiveness to a strategic process that leads to healing and a newfound strength and empowerment.

I met Rick last year when we were on the same program at a large marriage conference. After listening to him, and seeing the response of the audience, I can tell you he speaks from experience. And what he says makes practical sense.

You are holding this book because you know its time you put your past into the past so you can start living a life of joy, calm contentment, and eager optimism. And most of all, so that you can break the generational patterns that could so easily lead to a repetition of your childhood experiences with your own children. My prayer is that the accounts of other families and the principles in this book will begin the healing process for you and your family so you can be the transformation person in your generational patterns. Your kids are depending on you!

David Stoop, PhD
author of Forgiving the Unforgivable