Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I am a writer, parenting coach, and counsellor. ‘Crash Test Mummy’ is the first book I have written.
I initially trained to be a primary school teacher in South Africa before completing my postgraduate diploma in dyslexia and literacy in the UK. Soon after marrying, I moved with my husband to the United Arab Emirates, where we still live today with our two sons.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
‘Crash Test Mummy’ is all about how I went out of my comfort zone and realised that we don’t have to be so extreme in our parenting views or follow any one way to raise our children confidently. I sat in the centre of all the different parenting styles, tested their validity, and listened to my gut to determine that what worked was a balanced, communication-based approach to raising my children.
Following my successful twenty-year career in special needs teaching, working with vulnerable children and adults, including working with my challenging children and being one myself; in late 2019 I felt as if something was amiss.
My older son’s behaviour has always been challenging but, I believed, that by strictly enforcing behaviour modification techniques to control his conduct, he would find his teenage years easier. As the opposite began to quickly unfold, I was inspired by my son, who struggles with Oppositional Defiance Disorder (ODD), to question my traditional parenting style and make significant and positive changes.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I am blessed to write each day while my children are at school. Understandably, lockdown and online schooling were detrimental to my writing process and mental health in general, but the stress and pressure of those months challenged my positive parenting to the extreme. Through that process, I am now parenting my challenging children with confidence!
After a conflict with my kids, I open the note application on my phone and jot down my thinking, feelings, and especially what I have learned. These experiences inspire my daily social media posts. Often, by questioning my traditional thinking, I research a new topic for a blog post and increase my understanding of how to better parent my kids.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
A book that stands out is, ‘Things Fall Apart’ by Chinua Achebe, which I read in secondary school. The book made a lasting impression on me as a young, white girl growing up in apartheid South Africa. The book was the beginning of my questioning the patriarchal and racist institution that I was born into and brainwashed by. Literature has the amazing capacity to challenge our traditional mindset while developing our empathy and our character.
What are you working on now?
I have just released ‘Crash Test Mummy’ as an audiobook. Being dyslexic and narrating the book was extremely challenging for me. It was excruciatingly hard but interesting to listen back to myself reading the text for editing purposes and identify that my fluency and errors were greatly influenced by how personal challenging the material was for me.
I am now shifting my focus to marketing the book and blogging.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Writing ‘Crash Test Mummy’ has inspired me to develop in so many unexpected ways. I have learned so much through editing, narrating, formatting, and now marketing my book!
Self-promotion does not come easily to me and makes me feel uncomfortable but through websites, such as awesomegang.com, I have found so much support in the publishing and promoting community. I am extremely grateful.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
I wish that I had started with the title! However, I only came to the title through the process of writing and editing the book. I have such high expectations of perfection for myself and becoming a confident parent means working daily on being more kind, caring, and compassionate with myself. I delusionally believed that I should have sat down and written ‘Crash Test Mummy’ from start to finish in a perfectly edited format.
My advice to new authors is to be realistic about how difficult the writing process is and perhaps lower your expectations. We are humans, not robots.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
In a world where you can be anything, be kind.
We can choose to be anything in this world. The advice is not referring to one’s occupation but more to the state of being. We can choose to live in a negative state or a positive state, so let’s choose to be positive.
All hardship, and happiness for that matter, is temporary. Life is hard for all humans and the next challenge is guaranteed to be on the way. I’m not sure why we are so surprised when it happens. Our suffering is what connects us. When we have this choice, we must choose to engage our empathy, kindness, and compassion.
What are you reading now?
Living with a challenging teenager who is rarely happy, I am currently researching topics on happiness. It is so difficult to live with an individual who is prone to being oppositional, defiant, and negative, so my reading material is usually based on how to support him to rewire his thinking to be open, warm, vulnerable, appreciative, understanding, and empathic.
This, of course, begins with me being the guinea pig. Once I have internalised and demonstrated living in the teachings of happiness, I can inspire and role model the thinking, feelings, and behaviour to aid in his increased happiness. This process is as difficult as it sounds!
What’s next for you as a writer?
My ambition is to reach millions of parents and positively influence them to be confident parents. On a daily basis, I work with clients to increase their communication and proactive strategies to cope better. Whether that means encouraging cooperation with their kids or helping them as they’re struggling with anxiety, bereavement, and other mental health challenges.
The work I do informs my writing and I hope to consolidate my blog posts into my second book on surviving and thriving as a parent through the teen years.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
The Untethered Soul by Michael A Singer
The Road Less Travelled by Scott Peck
Keep Calm and Carry On by Everlyn Beilenson
Author Websites and Profiles
Sharon Eshmade Website
Sharon Eshmade Amazon Profile
Sharon Eshmade Author Profile on Smashwords
Sharon Eshmade’s Social Media Links
Goodreads Profile
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