George S. Everly, Jr.

While children in America are drowning in well-meaning but totally inadequate educational and support systems, Dr. George Everly is throwing their parents a life-line. Resiliency is a key to developing successful relationships, decision making skills, physiologic health, moral integrity, and life satisfaction, and Dr. Everly has written a brief, easy to understand volume showing parents how they can foster this trait within their children's developing characters.
The book is divided into show more three sections: one on actions, one on beliefs, and one on integrity. These make up Dr. Everly's "A-B-Cs" of resiliency. The lessons covered include interpersonal support systems; decision making; responsibility; physical health; optimism in the face of adversity; faith; and morailty and integrity. Each lesson is fairly intensively considered for such a slim volume. None of the writings on faith or morality assume any particular religious or other belief system, but rather stand on the ground of assuming the reader parent has some personal set of beliefs which include standards of ethics and morals.
I believe that this book is much needed in the parenting and educational world of today's America, and I'm grateful to have found it so well-written and comprehensive. Put aside the old ideas of instilling self-absorption and self-value which have left our children searching for a work- and achievement ethic, and instead consider instilling in them a sense of personal value based on responsibility and integrity. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a way to enhance their parenting or teaching to help our children grow to become tomorrow's hardworking, confident leaders, more concerned with responsibility and rights than with entitlements. show less

Now HERE is a book of substance. Every parent (EVERY parent) should have a copy in their home. I have had this book exactly 2 days. I have read, re-read, dissected and contemplated this book in an almost fevered frenzy. George Everly has hit it right on the nose. Brilliant ideas and logic. So simple, it's embarrassing that parents (myself included) could not figure this out for themselves. Everly gives seven detailed "lessons" on how parents can guide their children to learn to be more show more resilient...to be able to cope with stress big and small. To develop strong, positive relationships; to be accountable for their own actions; to be able to make difficult decisions; to develop a more optimistic outlook; to follow a moral compass of integrity. The end result is a resiliency that will help children throughout their lives. I found myself thinking "I totally agree with you" over and over again. It has been exactly 24 hours since my Husband and I have begun to institute some of these simple lessons into our children's every day lives. The reaction was almost immediate. Parents who truly want to help their children will have to make the effort every day. My Husband and I are 100% committed to these seven detailed, essential lessons. We are very excited about this book! Kudos to George Everly!! Outstanding insight! show less

The book seems like a good overview of the subject. The author goes through his principals of minimizing stress in life, pointing out how we can teach children to be more resilient & thus have less stressful lives. The way the various stress-causers are described is almost uniformly with adult-life examples, which works well to explain what he's trying to say, but isn't as good for how to relate it to my child's life. For example, telling me to discuss staying away from toxic people with my show more child is a bit difficult as at least with younger children, they change fast enough that the "toxic" child today may not be in a year, and vice versa. The book is a fairly easy read, and doesn't fall into the usual parenting-book trap of repeating the same information over and over 10 different ways. However, I was disappointed that there isn't more there about actually teaching the children--most of the child-specific parts are in the "Homework" section, and many of those are have a discussion or make a list type things. I'd like to see more information about teaching these things that don't simply involve talking with your child--or at least, more examples that are child-based instead of adult-based. The "Faith" chapter was interesting--I appreciate that the author realizes that faith isn't necessarily religious faith. The phrase in the introduction "The collective wisdom in this simple book should be essential reading for all parents and teachers of children and young adults" may be true--but when written in the intro where the intro is written by the author, it comes off as pompous. Fortunately, the rest of the book was better expressed! The book as a whole made me think about things that I agree need to be taught to my children--and other people's--and gave me a few new ways to think about the problems. show less

I loved the stories describing how George Washington rallied his captains with charisma and honor, or how Abraham Lincoln wowed the crowds with his silver tongue. I wasn't keen on several excerpts from Obama's speeches as it's premature to assess the resiliency of his leadership.

The book is filled with inspiring quotes and is enjoyable to read, but their small sample size of leaders doesn't provide enough information into what makes leaders resilient. They make conclusions that sound good, show more but they're based on a handful of examples instead of a statistical analysis of leaders and their success. It's a tough thing to measure objectively and instead of tackling the hard problem, they chose to pick some of their favorite leaders and talk about how their honor and integrity was all that it took.

Not all resilient leaders share the attributes they espouse, but by not discussing those leaders one is led to believe all must espouse the same principles.

In short, it's a fun read, but it needs more research to back up the premises if it wants to stand on its own.

Note: I assume typos and grammar issues will be resolved in the final version. I received a pre-release copy and ignored them for the purposes of this review. show less