Book excerpt: Parents want to be the best person they can for their children, but much of the time they may feel like giraffes on ice--clumsy, unprepared, and in imminent danger of going down. The good news is, our children don't need perfect parents. They need authentic, fully-hearted, relationally engaged parents who can mess up and move on more than parents who always get it right. In this freeing book, respected therapists and bestselling authors Stephen James and Chip Dodd invite parents to let go of perfectionism and micromanaging as they learn to parent from a place of emotional honesty and intimacy. Through their clinical experience and relatable true stories, they show parents that raising children to become capable, loving, and wise-hearted adults is far more about accepting our flaws than projecting an impossible standard to our children that we already know we can't live up to. Parents will learn how to resolve issues from their own childhoods, tune into their feelings and the emotions of their children, and be present with their families through both the best and worst of circumstances.