“The world does not need another parenting book,” writes Grimm in her own parenting book, where she likewise notes that parenting can be so exhausting and baffling that it can use all the advice manuals it can get. “Every day of parenting is Saigon in 1975,” she writes. “It is often defeating, sometimes humiliating, and you are left to ponder at the end of the night whether you made the right decisions.” In these pages, she relates some of the lessons she’s learned in her years of raising her three children—Hugo, André, and “explosive” Lulu (“a Mussolini in a tow-headed body”)—comically stressing the severity of the struggle by invoking military manuals like The Art of War. “As a parent,” she writes, “you already know what it feels like to negotiate with terrorists.” Here, she lays out some advice for other parents who may be feeling overwhelmed, giving them tips on how to get back their power by reestablishing authority, setting consistent boundaries, creating clear lines of communication, and building a proper balance between parental militarization and the wilder tendencies of children. She even proposes the SAFE model for hostile negotiations: Substantive Demands, Attunement (“building trust between the subject and the negotiator”), Face (“the projected self-image of the subject”), and Emotional Distress. Grimm uses this juxtaposition—between the warm family emotions of most child-rearing guides and the tough language of military manuals—to excellent comic effect, mentioning at one point that “no class pets need to get hurt in the process” while dispensing genuine advice on serious subjects. Her willingness to be frank about the defeats she’s suffered at the hands of her little terrorists is bracing. Parents who are perhaps ashamed of feeling as if they’re trapped in a war of nerves with enemy forces will likely appreciate hearing from a fellow combatant, particularly one with a smile on her face.