The Frazzled Factor
Relief for Working Moms
By Karol Ladd and Jane Jarrell
W Publishing Group, 2004
A Division of Thomas Nelson Publishers
ISBN: 0-8499-4535-6
Reviewed by Angela Evans
Are you a frazzled housewife? Are you pulling your hair out trying to juggle work, home, the kids, and a social life? Feel guilty about having to leave your kids with a childcare provider while you're at work? Well, stop worrying and start enjoying a guilt-free life. In The Frazzled Factor - Relief for Working Moms, Karol Ladd and Jane Jarrell have written a compelling and easy to follow guidebook that leads you through 7 Simple Steps from Guilt to Grace.
Using a Christian perspective as their base, Ladd and Jarrell offer a plethora of helpful advice, meditative readings, check lists, and fun to take quizzes that help to explain and enhance the basic text. Ladd and Jarrell's seven step approach will help you discover the true source of your guilt - and if your feelings of guilt are justified. Best of all, they offer advice on how to overcome these feeling of guilt, either by changing your attitude, or, if the guilt is justified, by changing your parenting style or procedures. Perhaps most important, these seven simple steps will help you to regain control of your life and to minimize if not actually eliminate the frazzle factor that is so much a part of most working moms lives, both at home and in the work place.
The seven steps covered in the The Frazzled Factor are:
The Guilt Factor - understanding where guilt comes from and how to deal with it.
The Parent Factor - tips on parenting and how to encourage your husband to take a more active role in caring for and raising the children, and how to incorporate devotional actives into your children's lives.
The Relationship Factor - tips on developing a closer and more meaningful relationship with your spouse and how to develop close and meaningful friendships with other women.
The Business Factor - advice on succeeding in business, and how to incorporate God into your business life.
The Fun Factor - tips on how to incorporate fun activities into your family's routine - from having a family movie night to going on a family vacation.
The Rejuvenation Factor - the importance of taking time off for yourself, and how this 'down time' can be used to rejuvenate you - physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Most important, the authors offer practical tips of how to better organize your life so that you can make time for yourself.
The Grace Factor - illustrates how to find and appreciate God's Grace in your life.
The information in The Frazzled Factor is presented in bite-sized pieces that you can gobble up a little at a time or all at once. As well, each chapter concludes with a summary of the main points found in the chapter and some short scriptural readings to meditate upon. This book provides useful information and tips that are pertinent both to working moms as well as those that stay at home - after all, anyone who doesn't consider a stay-at-home-mom a working mom, has never been around children! This is a great, life affirming book that will surely take a little of the frazzle out of anyone life.
