This book felt more like a sermon to me, someone preaching to the congregation about how to raise and handle teenagers, rather than a sympathetic look at life lessons to your children.

Each chapter ends with a list of questions, which made it feel like a test for yourself to see if you match up to his standards (I feel I do not) and so I gave up on the book halfway through, and will not be finishing my homework!!

Having a young daughter books from parents to their children are interesting to me. But this one was not my favorite. I know the author meant well, but didn’t quite pull it off.

A Goody Goody and a Fuddy Duddy Walk into a Bar…

The ridiculous labels above are the author’s own words to describe himself and brand of life lessons and advice to his children. This is the simple premise behind I Need to Tell you Something, an overly wordy, heavily traditional, morally superior, personal ode to the author’s magnificence and self-proclaimed expertise in this area. As a parent myself, I was curious to see what a fellow parent’s take on parenting is however the preachy tone made for an unpleasant read. To be clear, I am not the target audience but still…

Franks categorizes each of his life lessons under such headings as Respect Versus Popularity, Taking Responsibility, and Keeping Your Word then gives us a “few” examples from his past where he illuminates his point by offering up his own personal stories where he undoubtedly shone in the face of adversity and temptation to go down the wrong road. For good measure, he gives us a couple of examples of times where his behavior was less than worthy in a seeming attempt to show us all that he is not perfect. It didn’t come off. Rather, I got a sense of a white, overly-privileged, successful in all the ways society deems acceptable, middle-aged male who doesn’t say a damn thing anyone with two firing brain cells doesn’t already know. He ends each chapter with a list of questions to be answered so I suppose in addition to the lessons, there is homework as well?

Franks comes off as a long suffering parent, albeit one more worthy than his childless counterparts (he has some strong opinions on this subject, see chapter 34). There are some books that should not be published. This is one of them. It’s not that I am not in agreement with many of his viewpoints, I am though I do not agree with everything he says. However, kids other than his will likely never come in contact with this book, written especially for them, savvy parents will utter the word “duh”, and the clueless ones wouldn’t get it in the first place. His judgmental tone would be abhorred by anyone. He would have been better off keeping his personal lessons strictly a family affair.

BRB Rating: Skip It

This book is well-written, and obviously heart-felt advice from father to children. There are some topics like tattoos and not having children that some readers will have the complete opposite reaction to the author's feelings on the topics. His chapter on not having children made the reader feel they are less of a person for not procreating. There wasn't enough of a balance for either stance. Don't guilt your kids into having grandkids for you. Not everyone who grows old without having children regret their decision. In fact, many are happy for making that decision. Topics like these can be influenced by our parents, but as children go out into the world, they develop their own ideas about everything. I feel like the author sways them to his preferences and judges them if they don't chose as he does. I think it's a beautiful gift for his own children, not necessarily something for the general public. My opinion.

Mr. Franks decision to share some of his thoughts on life's lessons he wishes to share with his children has certainly sparked an interest in many. With two young boys, I have wondered of what will be the best approach to share my learnings and how to equip them best with the skills to navigate through the many challenges they will face and make the right decisions. This book certainly offers some ideas.

While I agree with some of the advice given in this book in general terms, I found the exposition to be overly preachy and often patronizing. Overall, I also felt that this book took on too many topics, which dilutes some of the golden nuggets. And a few sections I found to be in direct opposition to my own values (I do not believe all boys are pigs, nor do I think that this sort of reductive thinking is helpful in the many sexual issues that teens of all genders face). Ultimately, I think we gift our own values to our children and teens everyday in our words and deeds and, perhaps, those are too personal to be captured for a wider audience.

I really enjoyed this book, and not just because the author and I share very similar values and outlooks upon life, although that helped. This is the kind of book that I'd gift to a parent with young children. Once they become teens, we can still talk to them about our morals and values, but we really need to live them everyday and let our children 'absorb' them from our lives...more than talking. This book is something that I would have read as a younger mother to remind myself of that fact, and now am using as a jumping off point for speaking with my teens.