This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel

That's what parenting is, is figuring out that balance between letting your kids be who they are and protecting them from the world they have to live in. And if it works that's wonderful and if it doesn't then you modify. You make a judgement call and you take your best guess and you take a shot and you hope for the best.

In the book what happens is that they feel their way through, and I think that that's what all of us do in parenting in general. I think that putting all of your faith in the decision-making powers of your small children is probably not the best way forward for anyone. On striking a balance between letting kids express themselves and protecting them And she was just playing and having fun and trying things on. She was 6, she had just turned 6, and it seemed like she was just playing and having fun. It didn't seem to be anything to be worried about or alarmed about. She wanted to wear a dress - and she was a he at the time - and we said OK. But these failures of location are more than matched, and surpassed, by Frankel’s gift for building characters.On how she reacted when her child first expressed an interest in being a girl Frankel lives in Seattle with her husband, daughter, and border collie. Laurie Frankels This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. Ifyou make the wrong call, well, nothing less than your child’s entire future and happiness is at stake. And though the book is in large part set in Seattle, Frankel doesn’t really sketch out the locations with any vividness or veracity. Laurie Frankel is the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of novels such as The Atlas of Love, Goodbye for Now, and the Reese’s Book Club x Hello Sunshine Book Pick This Is How It Always Is. You have to make these huge decisions on behalf of your kid, this tiny human whose fate and future is entirely in your hands, who trusts you to know what’s good and right and then to be able to make it happen.

The last third of the book loses its forward momentum a bit, with a long trip to a distant land that feels forced for purposes of plot. Always does have a few unfortunate failings. This is a book you could easily give as a gift to someone further toward the right of the political spectrum of you it’s a novel of great empathy and compassion that transcends politics.

That gives the book a charm that makes it very hard to put down. But Frankel clearly loves her characters, and is rooting for them to succeed. Kids are cruel, and one scene beautifully delivers the menace of violence without crossing over into something too scary or melodramatic. In an age where trans bathroom panic leads some Republican men to 'patrol' their local Targets with guns in order to allegedly keep their daughters safe from nonexistent sexual predators, Frankel patiently and calmly tells a story about a very specific experience. Frankel portrays a family with a trans daughter with dignity and warmth and generosity.

This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel