Learning From Molly is a different view of parenthood growing out of a young mother's challenging experiences with her precocious, strong willed, preschool daughter.

Rather than dwelling on the usual tenets of childcare and training, the book focuses on the evolving of daughter Molly's personality in terms of her emotional and social development and her relationship with her mother.

As Molly moves through various stages of learning and personality growth, the author realizes that, not only is her daughter growing, but she, the mother, is also learning and growing even as her child grows.

The child becomes the teacher and the parent the apt pupil. As the child discovers, the parent discovers. In the author's words, raising a child offers parents "opportunities for discovery and reawakening fare without limit if only we open our senses, minds, and spirits".

For Karen Zurheid the "opportunities for discovery and reawakening" range from a new appreciation of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and cotton candy to a greater understanding of such concepts as honesty, ethical behavior, materialism, personal independence and birth and death in terms of a child's development.

Beyond the social and emotional aspects of child raising, the author tells of the strengthening and reawakening of her own spiritual values as Molly's religious awareness evolves and she learns "God's lessons" in the course of her everyday experiences.

A mother undergoes dramatic self discovery along with her daughter.
-- Combines with defining of family values, the evolution of a child'spersonality, and the beginning of faith
-- Parents with find the book an illuminating consideration of the problems in coping with the development of a complex child
-- How a mother and the wife of a minister guides the spiritual development of her child