For ordinary, average parents, it'd be easy to look at Tom Sturges -- no, not Miley Cyrus' squeeze, but rather the executive VP at Universal Music Publishing and son of the late Hollywood screenwriter/director Preston Sturges -- and assume he's the last person from whom you'd want to take parenting advice. I mean, he was probably raised in a bubble of privilege, right? And surely his own children (two boys, ages 10 and 16) had nannies and personal assistants to hand-hold them through the formative years.
Well, guess again: In his rather excellent and practical new book, Parking Lot Rules & 75 Other Ideas for Raising Amazing Children, Sturges shares some of the insight he gained not only as an actively engaged father of two (a role that, having lost his dad at age 3, he had to carve out for himself), but also as an award-winning volunteer, mentor and coach to at-risk children in Los Angeles' public school system. In other words, where raising well-adjusted kids is concerned, our man knows whereof he speaks.
Granted, you may not be whisking your child off to Paris for a celebration of his grandfather's work, but if you're struggling to teach adventurous eating habits, you could apply the lesson Sturges taught his son during a trip to the city -- eat just the first bite of your La Coupole escargot, and you can have the last bite of my decadent dessert -- to your own dinner table. And while you may not have the lyricist to the James Bond theme songs "Goldfinger" and "You Only Live Twice" in your personal address book, you can certainly apply Leslie Bricusse's lessons on responding to those you care for (always begin with "Yes," not "What") to addressing your kids.
Outside of these rare examples and an amazingly helpful germ-fighting tip from Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora, Sturges' advice transcends status and celebrity lines -- this is, after all, a powerful and successful man who still has time to cart his kids to baseball practice. From the rule that inspired its title (no matter what, you do not leave my side in the parking lot) to the required-reading-for-harried-parents chapter "Five Very Effective Nonviolent Punishments," to the various pointers on helping kids to cope with injuries both big and small, emotional and physical, Parking Lot Rules delivers on its promise as a guide to raising amazing children. And as you start to fit the book's rules into your own family's framework, you may also find yourself feeling like a pretty amazing parent. Just leave room to forgive yourself for any prior imperfections, because as Sturges notes in his introduction, parenting is a real-time event, and what matters most is the here and now.
