My daughter has many wonderful qualities - she’s intelligent, funny, affectionate and creative - but she can be difficult to be around at times. She’s a teenager, so it’s not surprising.

I’ve always thought of myself as pretty affirming, but an honest appraisal suggests that perhaps I don’t do it as much as I could. And making more effort to seek out positives and specifically appreciate and praise them definitely has a positive impact on our relationship.

This book does what the title says - suggest ways to verbally positively affirm daughters of any age. This book has a strong Christian message - whereas I’m still making up my mind about my beliefs - and I suspect I would strongly disagree with the authors on various social issues, but I can’t argue with the basic theme that we all need to hear words of validation, never more so than when we are growing and developing.

A quote that particularly resonates is this: “If you turn parenthood into a war and determine to die on every hill, the carnage will be spread over the years.”

And this: “If there ever was a repeat message that your daughter needs to hear, it’s that you believe in her.”

Can’t argue with that.