Product Description

A groundbreaking plan for creating a genuinely happy home using six simple steps.

Here is the "home improvement" book families really need. How Happy Families Happen provides simple steps for transforming the home into a place of emotional and spiritual health. Too many homes today exude unhappiness in the form of bickering, cold silences, disrespect, and separateness. Focusing on how family members set the household mood, the authors present a quick, effective, six-step plan for transforming an unhappy home into one of joy and peace. The authors identify six harmful characteristics (narcissism, neglect, playing favorites, neediness, abusiveness, and submission to abusiveness) and provide a counter plan based on more than 30 years of research. Readers will be fascinated with case histories of families as well as references to families in popular culture. A self-test for rating the happiness in one’s childhood home is also included.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #424927 in Books
• Published on: 2006-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 215 pages

About the Author
Audrey Ricker, Ph.D., has written four books for major publishers. She received her doctorate in Education from the Univ. of AZ with an emphasis in Media Literacy. She teaches teachers how to understand kids' use of mainstream media, including television, film, music, and video games.

Robert E. Calmes is a licensed psychologist and professor emeritus of education at the Univ. of AZ, where he has taught for over 30 years. He has published more than 115 articles in academic journals and has written six books. He is dean of anger management for the Adult Rehabilitation Program of the Tucson Salvation Army.

Lynn Wiese Sneyd has published two books and is director of the Author Promotions division of the Russell Public Affairs Group in Tucson.

Customer Reviews

Healing process to free children from unhealthy scripts
Reviewed by Irene Watson for Reader Views (2/06)

In the first chapter Audrey Ricker immediately starts relating to the reader by describing several typical homes, and then delving into a questionnaire. The questionnaire gives a score of whether "you really need this book" to "probably have a wonderful home." If it's the latter, Ricker suggests using the principles would help create a happier home.
"Defining Your Values" follows. To me, this is the quick step to knowing that help is essential and that "How Happy Families Happen" will lead the way.

The first of the six steps is modeling - "do-as-I-do, not-as-I-say" - where parental action is the key. Although the steps don't have to be in any specific order, the author gives them as: Consistency; Reinforcement; Showing Rational Empathy; Showing Care and Concern for Animals, Plants and Nonliving Things in the Home; and, Showing Care and Concern for all the People in the Home. Each step is fully explained, has examples, addresses the problem, and gives a solution.

Ricker has seven suggestions on how to implement the steps, some being: The Chart Method, The Discussion Method, and The Mind-Set Method. Each method has an explanation and ways to implement. For a better understanding of where the reader, who is more than likely the parent, is coming from in their own upbringing, Ricker gives a T and F quiz.

As I read this book, I couldn't help but reflect on my own upbringing in an emotionally unhealthy household, and, how my upbringing influenced the way I treated my own children. We are set up and programmed in childhood to be dishonest with ourselves and others. We could not have lived our lives any differently because there was no one to teach us to be emotionally healthy. The only way to free ourselves and our children of the past is to start seeing more clearly as healing occurs. Ricker gives a simple, step-by-step method of how to create healing and free our children from scripts that have been passed down for generations.

How Happy Families Happen by Audrey Ricker, et al, must be used in the professional communities for people with disabilities.
I am a retired public school teacher with 13 years teaching experience in middle and high schools. I also am a mental health counselor working full time in adult mentally ill residences for the past 5 years in Plymouth, MA, and on Cape Cod.
"How Happy Families Happen" by Audrey Ricker, et al, has been an invaluable instrument to help me deal with and better understand the mentally ill residents' relationships with their families.
This book needs to be used in all departments of mental health throughout the country as a clear guide to help both patients and staff connect with the families of the disabled population.
Pages 118 through 123 examines mental illness in the family. Ms. Ricker, in six brief pages, describes my personal experiences with the mentally ill and their families exactly.
In the first 12 pages my family and my wife's family were all but painfully revealed even before chapter two "The Six Step Approach Explained" on page 13 began. At that point I could not stop reading the rest of "How Happy Families Happen."
I now use Audrey Ricker's "Happy Families" book as a quick reference guide daily in my personal and professional life.

Robert B. Leech

It's for real!
I first read this book several months ago and began following it. We have a family of five and saw immediate results! Well, several months later it is still working! That is, to me, the true test. Our lives are different--our family truly is happier! Thank you to the authors! I recommend this book to everyone wanting a happier, healthier family!