PositiveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksThompson reluctantly calls it a \'skate dad\' memoir ... But it’s more than that, too—it’s an exploration of parenting and guilt and of how much responsibility a father and mother share in the paths their children ultimately take in life ... he writes: \'Parenting became a series of questions about breaking their spirit, about rigidity versus hands off. The near-daily parental dilemma was: Do we lecture, punish, and pummel them for being who they are, or do we keep them raw and a little wild, and accept the consequences?\' What’s interesting about Thompson’s question is his assumption that the rawness and wildness of his boys is within his control. But for boys like Leo and Sean...that rawness, that wildness, that pull toward the fringe, is either there or it’s not. If it is, there’s no controlling it; there’s no governing it—there’s only giving in to it, and seeing where it takes you.
