Building Better Families: A Practical Guide to Raising Amazing Children »

Matthew Kelly is the author of several books, including Perfectly Yourself, The Rhythm of Life, The Seven Levels of Intimacy and The Dream Manager. His books have appeared on multiple bestseller lists, including those of The New York Times, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal. For more than a decade Kelly has been traveling the globe, and more than three million people in fifty countries have attended his seminars. Kelly is the founder of The Matthew Kelly Foundation, whose major charitable work is to help young people discover their mission in life. Kelly is also the president of Floyd Consulting, a Chicago-based consulting company that helps corporations become the-best-version-of-themselves.

For more than a decade, Matthew Kelly has been traveling the world inspiring people to become the-best-version-of-themselves. During this time he has been amazed at how regularly he is asked: How do I encourage my children to embrace this message? How does your message apply to a family? Now, for the first time, Kelly shares with us remarkable insights and sensible everyday strategies for transforming the family into what it should be: a place where each of us can become the-best-version-of-ourselves.

Beginning with an exploration of the changing face of the family in our culture, Kelly sets every reader at ease by explaining: “A family is not what we think a family should be, or what we hope to have, or should have, or what would be ideal–a family is what we actually have. A family is the one we’ve got.” Nor can a family ever be perfect, he goes on to explain. “Perfect families exist only in our minds, and it is these imaginings that are very often the enemy of our ability to enjoy the wonderful family we already have, or might have if we made it just that little bit more of a priority.”

In Building Better Families, Kelly explores important issues by raising evocative questions: What makes a successful parent? Do you realize that your children are in the middle of a cultural war? What are the five things children really need? Are you asking your children the right questions? What are you teaching your children about work, money, food, exercise, body image, and sex? What are the priorities of your family culture?

Every page of this book is filled with examples that can be applied to your daily experience ofparenting and family, while at the same time illuminating the broader and deeper significance of family for society and the future of humanity. “The family is at once a deeply personal experience and the cornerstone of all great societies,” Matthew Kelly tells us. Allow this book of classic wisdom and practical insight to help you build a better family.

Introduction     ix
The Changing Face of Families     3
My Family     27
Parenting in the Twenty-first Century     43
Raising Amazing Children     103
The Future of the World Passes by Way of the Family     171
Epilogue     181