Dr Christian's Guide to Dealing With the Tricky Stuff product reviews

I quite like watching Embarrassing Bodies and Dr Christian is great on it. He always manages to put each person at ease as they deal with things that they'd rather not have going on for them. Given his respectful approach I thought this book could be quite good to share with my almost 8 year old. She has just stepped out of the junior part of primary and with that, comes tougher social stuff.

This book deals with all sorts of situations and things that might be difficult to talk to your parents about if you are a pre-teen or even a teen. Sharing the book with her, I was able to start some really important conversations. I could also continue other conversations that we have started thanks to the police and school programme "Keeping Ourselves Safe". There is lots about cyber bullying and being safe online.

The first part of the book covers all sorts of health topics, and things that my daughter does worry about. She is quite germ-phobic so she was happy to get some no-nonsense information about keeping healthy. I liked that although he talks about a healthy diet and exercise, he isn't pushing kids to actually diet. In fact he states that they shouldn't and to be careful to get enough carbs. This is great as positive body image and not "fad dieting" is what I need my girls to embrace.

I also did have a bit of a laugh at the eye health where he says that the geeky looking is on-trend when it comes to having to get glasses. It sure is. I wish this book had been around when I needed to get my glasses at first. The layout of the book is really good and easily breaks the text blocks up for ease of reading. The patterns in the background are nice without being too distracting. The cartoon characters reminded me of some of the shows my daughter watches on Nickelodeon, which suited the age group of readers too.

For 18 dollars, you get a lot in this book. It's a great reference book for kids about to embark on the more grown up parts of growing up. It's a great starter for those conversations you need to have with them about bullying and the real world. I can see us flipping through this for years to come.