(book purchased by reviewer)

This was one of the first Pagan Parenting books I bought, and I’m still surprised it’s taken me this long to get around to reviewing it. Ashleen O’Gaea is still active online, but this book is more than 20 years old now, and her child, called “the explorer” in this book, is an adult, I believe with children of his own.

While her other book, “Raising Witches” has a lot of structure and philosophical ideas about parenting, this one is more practical. It covers rites of passage, the Wheel of the Year, full and dark moons with children, regular life between Sabbats, magic, and how to discuss “life questions” with kids/how to make decisions from a Wiccan perspective.

She includes an extensive glossary and a bibliography (though, obviously, it has some limits because of how old the book is.

Looking back, it’s a little funny how many of the things she talks about are still things parents are concerned about – video games, sexuality and human anatomy, talking to non-Pagan family members, and so on. But I also think these are the sorts of things that parents get stuck on frequently – they know how their parents handled similar situations, and they know they want to be “better” at dealing with these sorts of things…but they don’t actually know what to do instead.

All in all, still a great parenting book.