Parenting Sensibly: Turning messes into successes

by Lynda Satre

Are you struggling as a parent? Do you wish your child came with a guidebook? Drawing on more than 26 years of raising 10 children and leading classes for dozens of parents, Parenting Sensibly provides an honest look at the parenting journey and lays a firm foundation to help you navigate the daily struggles of parenting. With practical steps and sage advice, Parenting Sensibly will strengthen your family relationships, reduce stress, and provide the tools you need to guide your children successfully on their journey from toddlers to adulthood.

• Foundational principles to turn daily messes into successful teaching opportunities
• Get kids to respond without yelling or getting angry
• Raise responsible and resilient kids
• Overcome daily battles so peace is restored

242 pages, Paperback

Published October 18, 2017

About the author

Lynda Satre is a former pediatric RN and mother to 10 children including 2 sets of twins. Although she grew up in Wisconsin, she has enjoyed living in Iowa, Arizona, Washington, Delaware and Maryland.

She has taught local parenting classes to hundreds of parents over the last 6 years, transforming families. She is passionate about encouraging families, sharing key nuggets that have been most helpful in strengthening family relationship and navigating this imperfect parenting journey in a non-judgmental way.

Reviews

[Anna Hirsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Parenting Sensibly by Lynda Satre
5 Stars

This is a very informative book on parenting. Whether you are new parents or have been for many years, there is something you can learn from this book. The author is a mother of ten children and speaks a lot about her own experiences. She speaks about her husband and children which makes the book more personal and not just a “how to” book. It’s as if you are sitting down and having coffee with her.

From the start she realizes and states that this book may not be for everyone and some may agree or disagree with what she says. There is a lot to learn from this book and I feel that readers are able to take what they want from it and apply it to their own situation. I loved learning about the different love languages. It made me understand myself and my family better. I highly recommend this book.

[Heather Bass · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a nonfiction self help book. I have not read a parenting book but this one caught my attention right from the beginning.I was glued to me seat on how to improve my parenting skill. This book is full with great suggestions on how to raise responsible and successful children. I loved how this author gave great stories about her and her children. My favorite part of the book is when she teaches us how to release stress in a positive way. There is no such thing as a perfect parent but this book will help you become a better parent. This is a great book to read for all parents that are raising toddlers up to teens. I will be taking some very good ideas from this book to help me raise my children.

[Crystal Davidson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Parenting Sensibly: Turning Messes into Successes by Lynda Satre, in my opinion, is a parent must have! I am giving it 5 out of 5 stars! I have read parenting self-help books offering advice and guidance on how to parent spirited and difficult children, as well as a good collection of books in regards to ADHD, learning disabilities and associated behaviors, and this book thus far has been the most helpful! Ideally, training your children to become well adjusted, respectful, successful adults begin as soon as they are born, however sometimes there are bumps, and so we seek advise when those bumps happen. This book works for the new mom wanting to get it right before the baby is halfway to grown and the stressed-out mom wondering where she went wrong! I took away more information than I know what to do with, and will be referring back to this book like it's my dictionary I'm sure for years to come! It offers a very wide range of help on so many topics, and isn't geared at just one "issue". Satre uses a large number of her personal failures and successes as a parent and teacher to help you understand that all children are different and no parent is perfect. This book will show you that by implementing a routine that includes communication, patience, and discipline you can turn your messes into successes! I highly recommend this book!

[Laura Furuta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Parenting Sensibly: Turning Messes Into Successes
By: Lynda Satre
5 out of 5 stars

Parenting Sensibly: Turning Messes Into Successes by Lynda Satre is a book that shows the importance of building relationships and communicating with your children while raising them. I found it to be very well-written with so many wonderful ideas and suggestions for child rearing. I love that the author gives so many examples on how to put her suggestions into use in day to day life. Many of them are from her own experience of raising her children and I found that they add a personal touch to the book. It is a book that applies to raising children both when young and as they grow up into young adults as well. At the end of each chapter, the author includes questions for you to answer in regards to your own family and also exercises that help put her advice into use. This is a book that helps you navigate through the ups and downs, the joy and the challenges of parenting and how to do so in a way that helps with frustrating circumstances. I found myself thinking back to the way I was raised. I enjoyed reading about the differences in parenting styles and how some work better than others. This book is a tool that you can reference back to in each stage of your child’s development.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a guide to parenting. A good guide to parenting. It doesn’t have the answer to every question, but it gives you ideas and suggestions on how to handle many situations that may arise when becoming a parent. It is broken down into sections with questions for reflection at the end of each section. The author suggests you think about how you were raised and how that will affect how you parent your child. We all have heard the saying that “every child is different”, well so is every parent.

“Parenting is hard. It takes a lot of intentional parenting to make sure each child feels loved and accepted. We need to have boundaries and make sure each child feels unconditional love.”

I liked how this book was written. It didn’t make me feel like I had failed as a parent and here is the right answer but instead I felt like here’s how to help you, as a parent, stay on the right track. But if I wanted to change how I was parenting this book gave solid ideas on how to accomplish it and expectations as well.

“This won’t be an overnight change.”

Even if you haven’t had children yet, I recommend you read this book. If you have babies or young children, you should give this book a read. If you have teenagers, this book just might help through those harder times of life.

[Kerry Baker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Parenting Sensibly: Turning Messes Into Successes by Lynda Satre is a brilliant but realistic book on guiding you through raising children.
The author herself has ten children - spread over three decades - and draws on her wealth of knowledge to provide the best advice and assistance as she can. Right from the start she is the first to hold up her hands and say that this book might not be for everyone and that only some of it might be applicable.
It is split into sections to help tailor the guidance more specifically, allowing you as the reader to pick and choose the areas you want to focus on.
As a recently new mum myself I was instantly drawn to this book. I loved the authors way of writing immediate and knew this would be a book I would get in with right from page one. I liked how honest the author was in everything she was saying. I liked how easy it was to draw parallels between her situation and mine, despite them being worlds apart. All in all this book is honest, relatable and exactly what all parenting books should be like.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Parenting Sensibly: Turning Messes Into Successes is a great parenting book by Lynda Satre. I have read a couple others through the years, and this is my favorite. I will be saving this book to come back to frequently as well as recommending it to parent friends. I love the way it is broken into sections, as well as relate able examples. The author has 10 kids of her own, so she is more than qualified to speak to each of the topics. But beyond that, she has taken parenting classes, as well as hosted in the past. I especially like that she sites her sources and gives credit to all those that she is gathering material from. This is not just her opinion and suggestions, but a compilation of parenting advice from experts in the field. It has activities and "homework" if you will, in each chapter. Things to think about, or help you in making the changes. There is a lot of great advice in this book, and I am glad to have read it.

[Kaitlynn Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parenting Sensibly: Turning Messes Into Successes-Lynda Satre

4-star review

Parenting Sensibly by Lynda Satre is a great go-to parenting guide. Lynda is a great story teller, she’s a mom of 10 so she has plenty of experience as a parent. She has some great ideas and suggestions that I had never heard of before and some that I plan on putting into practice. As a mom of a toddler I really benefited from reading this and just like the author notes I didn’t agree with absolutely everything she said but I still managed to take away lots of valuable information. I love how she was able to write about her experiences plus also provide all kinds of helpful resources.

I found myself really evaluating my parenting style and my child’s love languages while reading Lynda’s story. I would absolutely recommend this read too soon to be parents, new parents, or well-adjusted parents, there’s something for everyone in this book!

[Rhiannon Pritchard · Rating 5 out of 5]

So I'm not a parent myself but with now being in my 30’s think I should start thinking about it so thought I'd give this book a go. I am really glad I have read it, not only has it given me great ideas for if I do become a parent myself but has also helped me learn things about myself. The author is so real and matter of fact, it almost made me feel like back at home growing up in a big family, all of us at different development stages of life. The book has also given me a whole new appreciation of my mum! Wow did she have her handful managing all of our developing personalities. I have also recommend this book to friends of mine who are raising children themselves at the moment and struggling with the everyday pressures of wondering are they being a good enough parent for their children. Very interesting read from first hand experience! Thanks!

[Candida Furbush · Rating 5 out of 5]

Parenting Sensibly: Turning Messes Into Successes by Lynda Satre is a very informative great book to read. I really enjoyed the flow of the book and getting to know some of what the author went through raising her 10 children, and also her past of how she was raised. I think this book has very good advice without making you feel as though your a bad parent. I liked that a lot of what she says is from experiences she has had raising her children, but she has also done her due diligence in exploring other information on parenting than just her experience. I think any parent can benefit from her advice no matter what age their children are. Even if you choose not to implement everything in this book, I truly believe that after reading it you will be better prepared for parenting and have more knowledge and tools to pull from. I recommended this book it is a gem.

[Bobbi Wagner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parenting Sensibly: Turning Messes into Successes by Lynda Satre is a nonfiction book that will take you on a parenting journey of daily struggles. This book is full of suggestions on how to raise responsible, successful children. The author has ten children and great stories from raising them. She gives great ideas that will make you think about your own parenting skills. This is an interesting book to read which made it fast reading. Not only does she talk about her raising her children but we get to see a little bit about her as well. I enjoyed the ideas she gave to help motivate our children and teach them to be responsible. I highly recommend this book. I think that all parents raising toddlers would benefit from reading this book.

[Katie Kearney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parenting Sensibly: Turning Messes Into Successes is a book full of wisdom from a woman that has raised 10 children. While there is no universal way to raise productive, healthy children this book does give sound advice in a lot of areas. It is nice to see that while the author has obviously done her research she also has many personal tales to show us that the methods she describes in this book can work. Getting to see how she makes these ideas work can give a much needed boost in confidence to anyone raising a young child and who finds themselves overwhelmed, after all if the author can raise 10 using these techniques there must be something to them. A nice four star foundation for discovering what works for each individual child/parent.

[Dawn Daughenbaugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 Star
Parenting Sensibly Turning Messes into Success by Lynda Satre ia a well written guide to raising successful children whom are responsible to. This is my first book by this author. It was a quick read.i found to be very helpful. The author has ten children and she shares some stories with us on raising them. I just recently had a baby at age 40 so I found this information to be very helpful because its been a while my daughter will be twenty two in a couple of months.I truly enjoyed this book and all her suggestions on how to motivate our children and how to teach them to be responsible. One of my biggest things with my daughter was to teach her to be polite and manners, which I think is very important. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is or going to be parents.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parenting Sensibly: Turning Messes Into Successes, by Lynda Satre, is a nicely written resource for parents looking for techniques and guidance with parenting their children. The author took a soft approach with simple and sensible ways to help change the paths you are on in how you deal with your children. The author provided real life examples to support her opinions and suggestions, making the book worthwhile to read. Being a parent of children of varying ages and in different stages in life, I am always open to new suggestions or guides on how to deal with situations to reduce drive responsibility with both myself and my children. Lynda Satre does that.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 Stars

Parenting Sensibly: Turning Messes into Success is a practical “how to”/ self help guide full of honest, helpful, step by step tools and advice on parenting. It is incredibly interesting, but more importantly it is informative, educational and easy to understand. All my children are grown up now, but I wish this book had been available when I first became a mother, it would have made it a less stressful experience. I will definitely be recommending it to my children and friends who are starting their own families, as I think there is a lot of very helpful information here.
Thought provoking wisdom!

Thank you, Ms. Satre!

[Jenni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parenting Sensibly: Turning Messes Into Successes by Lynda Satre is a book that offers  support and guidance through those harrowing years of child raising and hoping you  come out the other side still sane and alive. Lynda has written about her experiences  and provides techniques that may or may not work for you. I think anyone who reads  this book will come away with at the very least one thing that will get you thinking.  There is a lot of helpful information in this book so give it a try but remember what  works for one may not work for all but they did help Lynda who is a mother of 10 kids.

[Sunday · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parenting Sensibly by Lynda Satre
Four Stars

Parenting Sensibly: Turning messes into success is a helpful guide to parenting by Lynda Satre. This book would be helpful to any parent with children aged toddlers to teens. This is the first book I have read by Ms. Satre, and the information she gives from her years of experience raising ten children is a great approach to raising great successful children. I like the everyday stories she tells with struggles raising her children. This book was filled with insightful information on raising children and I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a good view point and wisdom on raising children.

[Erica Fish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parenting Sensibly: Turning Messes into Successes is a guide of sorts through raising children. Lynda Satre has ten children and has wrote a book that helped her and hopefully those who read it a foundation for child raising. This story has successes as well as failures for raising children. You can read certain sections of the book as it does not need to be read in order which she wrote the book. Even though my children are adults, I can see what she was telling the readers. I will give this book to my daughters are their baby showers.

[Lyndsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Parenting Sensibly by Linda Satre
5 stars


Im not a big fan of self help books or the like but as this book mentions, most parents feel the need to be the best, be prefect etc, and that drew me is. What i didn't expect was to finish this book with a sense to actually want to apply sone things and also it helped me to learn more about myself and my kids.
There were some things that wouldn't work for our family but may work for others! This was an amazing book and will be going back to this for reference quite often. Thank you for this!

[Maura · Rating 5 out of 5]

My husband is the second youngest of eleven and some of the parenting guidance this author gives felt like it was coming straight from my late mother in law.

Parenting Sensibly is one of those no nonsense books that gives such obvious advice, but often it's advice we have forgotten. I enjoyed the stories the author shared to show her experience with the topic. It's not like she is saying "just trust me, it works".

We often say that a baby should come home from the hospital with a guide book, well this is one that I would recommend to all parents of teachable children.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parenting Sensibly by Lynda Satre is a practical guide to parenting. I am a foster parent so I have been through many classes and read a lot of books on patterning. I really enhiyed the common sense approach to parenting. This guidebook can help with parenting the terrible twos all the way through the frightening teen years. I would definitely recommend this book to any parents I know whether struggling with behaviors or just everyday parenting suggestions. I would definitely be interesting in reading other works by this author. I give this book a solid 4 stars.

[Andie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Parenting Sensibly: Turning Messes into Successes is a self help by Lynda Satre. This parenting guide is stocked full of useful information, the author is a mother and wife with a big family and applies the knowledge by incorporating personal stories. From love languages to stress relief for parents this book will help you navigate through childhood into teen years. I especially liked that this book was written in a way that feels helpful and not preachy, the stories she tells are easy to relate to your own parenting style. I highly recommend this book to any parents or parents to be!

[Heather Gerwing · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parenting Sensibly, Turning Messes Into Successes by Lynda Satre is full of parenting insight from a mother of 10! Lynda shares personal stories along with next steps you can take to help you on your parenting journey. Lynda also shares several resources that she has found helpful throughout her parenting journey. Parenting Sensibly is like ten books in one, it is filled with nuggets of truth and wisdom on every page.

[Heather Lovelace · Rating 4 out of 5]

This nonfiction book was a welcomed read as a mother of three. I found this book extremely well written, informative, and helpful. All parents should give this book a read. Just very well written.