I think Bad Childhood--Good Life: How to Blossom and Thrive in Spite of an Unhappy Childhood is just a book that makes you realize you are not the only person out their whose parents should not have been so cruel as to have you at that point in their life, if at all. This book does not have many of the answers I was hoping to get, but I did find that reading the stories of some of her patients helped me to take my mind off myself to hear others problems and how they were trying to deal with them. However, Bad Childhood--Good Life: How to Blossom and Thrive in Spite of an Unhappy Childhood is not really helpful in putting scabs on the open wounds left from childhood and it misses many key issues that parents throw onto their kids when they behave irresponsibly and neglect them emotionally and physically.

Dr. Schlessinger's book is dotted with transcribed sessions with former patients. Personally, listening or reading about someone elses therapy doesn't do me any good.

I think she misses the main issue that causes people to be bad parents- and that issue is that some people just aren't cut out for the job. It's a sad but true fact, and one that is just glossed over in this book.

While she does provide some good ideas for coping with some of these cases, I think a lot of victims of other types of parental abuse are left out. What about dealing with schizophrenia? What about borderline personality disorder? What about manic depression/bi-polar disorder?

For that matter, what is a child to do when they are being parented by someone who simply doesn't like them, and they have no idea why?

While no book can completely cover deeper issues such as the ones above, I think she could have focused more on unloading some of the baggage from an unhappy childhood, for the purpose of leading a happier life.