For anyone who wants a good relationship with their child that can hopefully last through the teen years, or wants to learn how to communicate effectively with their child, this book is a great start. If you have experienced the frustration of trying to "reason with" your child, and don't understand why your words are not working, this book really gives helpful guidelines on how to improve your methods of communication. If you find yourself yelling at your children, and experience that it just makes things worse, this book addresses this issue as well. It also tackles the problem of trying to think for your child. As a parent of a 7-year-old and a 4-year-old, this book will really help me to communicate and deal with my children in a way that nutures their growth as individuals who can really think for themselves.

Myrna Shure tells parents and teachers (from a cognitive-behavioral point of view) how to help 8- to 12-year-olds cope with ordinary and not-so-ordinary pressures of growing up. Her method is central to establishing a positive social emotional learning climate in a classroom. She also helps parents avoid the traps that parents fall into: power struggles, "telling" (i.e., ordering), "explaining," and so forth. Her belief is that if children in this group can "think" better about emotional issues, then they will handle the pressures of adolescence much better. Therefore, while her work addresses immediate issues of growing up in 8 to 12 year-olds, she also thinks "preventatively" about the 13 to 18 year-old group.

Shure proposes teaching youngsters five fundamental skills: (1) understanding another's feelings and point of view; (2) understanding motives; (3) finding alternate solutions; (4) considering consequences; and (5) planning sequential steps to arrive at one's goals. Her emphasis is on the child's intrinsic motivation to do better and be part of a group, not on extrinsic rewards (as in "ordinary" behavior therapy).

She has great empathy and flexibility with kids. You will see in this book a perceptive, creative, and sensitive grown-up working with kids and parents. You will learn how to develop and apply these five skills with children--either in your home or in your classroom. The I Can Problem Solve (ICPS) program is worth the ticket of admission, but to get a chance to "hear" her good heart is a double bonus.

I also liked her time-frame. Children need time to grow. She is not an instant-fix-it expert. She respects kids enough to value their own pace, for themselves.

Wonderfully hands-on, this book really teaches the parent how to talk to the child in a way that is constructive, instead of so many of the destructive ways that we all, mostly unknowingly, fall into. This book and its predecessor, Raising a Thinking Child, should be used as textbooks for the parenting class everyone in America should be required to take before being allowed to have children.

I have to admit, I could have missed something. Maybe if I had kept on reading after 40 pages, I would have found something to make reading this one worthwhile. But after 40 pages, I put it on the pile of books to get rid of.

I think Israeloff meant well. She was going through something millions of woman go through. She wanted to tell her story and help someone. And maybe she has. But instead of reading through her journal entries like I thought it would, or reading about her struggle to grow up and into the woman she wanted to be, I read something which resembled a young adult novel. I read about her classes, her assignments, her teachers....and I just didn't care at all. What does an assignment in junior high have to do with anything? Maybe I'm missing something...but I doubt it.

This book does not claim to be anything more than it is: a woman's exploration and dissection of the diary she kept as an adolescent. However, it is somehow less than even that. I expected there to be passages or at least quotes from her diary, followed by present day commentary. However, there were only a few short excerpts from the diary scattered in random and non-fitting places throughout the book. This made me wonder why the author did not just call it a memoir or autobiography, instead of disguising it as journal entries. Which leads to another central problem, which is who wants to spend the time reading a whole book about someone's middle age crises, or childhood and youth for that matter, unless there is some extrodinary reason?

Lost and Found is interesting in some parts, but very pompous in others. Isrealoff rambles on about her quite ordinary life and brags about the smallest acheivements, such as receiving good grades on her report card or doing well in gym class. During the parts where she discusses her middle school crushes, the book read like a young romance novel.

I was excited when I bought this book and am disappointed in it because I think the author had a lot of potential with this project. For instance, by showing statistics about what issues a lot of adolescent girls face and then revealing passages of her old diary that directly related to these, she could have given an up-front perspective on an example of something of big importance to many young girls and their parents. Even by discussing her diary entries more instead of just writing about what she remembered from her school days, Israeloff could have given the reader an in-depth glimpse into the life of a growing girl. However, Lost and Found is only a mediocre memoir about the author's schoolgirl days, and it does not deliver what it promises to in its description, which is a commentary by a woman looking back on her pre-teen life and the issues of self-esteem she faced then, with excerpts from an old diary to back her up.

This book is easy and at some points interesting reading, but it does not do much for understanding young girls. For something better that relates to understanding and/or raising young girls, I'd recommend See Jane Win. For better first-person accounts of growing up as a girl, read Listen Up: Voices From the Next Feminist Generation. And for better memoir/autobiographical experiences, try anything by David Sedaris.

Lost and Found is a wonderful guideline for teenage girls and women alike. Israeloff captivates the reader as she opens up and shares her life in this autobiography of her eighth grade year. It is a page turner that has the reader remembering and understanding the "horrors" of eigth grade. It allows the reader to look into her own life and remember her own struggle in finding herself. After reading Lost and Found and looking into her own life, the reader will walk away from this book feeling inspired and full of hope.