This is the story of John and Sheryl Emra and their work at the Los Angeles Community Center.  They started the center with a basketball and a bag of candy in 1986.  They found themselves working in a gang infested neighborhood that society had abandoned. 

Their stories relate how John and Sheryl learned about gangs, dealt with poverty, abuse, and neglect.   They confronted a dropout rate of 50% in Junior High school and another 50% in High School.

Everyone makes choices everyday and everyone has core needs.  John Emra shows us how meeting the core needs of kids helps them build their lives upon cornerstones of empowerment, responsibility, and freedom, and how love can turn former outcasts into Honor Roll students.

John Emra takes the principles of Cornerstones and Core needs and applies them to the job of parenting.  Experiences with his kids plus real-life stories and testimonials from parents illustrate the lessons learned from working with thousands of children at the Los Angeles Community Center.  Relate to the stories and sometimes even enjoy the fact that you can see yourself as one of the main characters.

Parents can choose to rise above the emotional entanglements that disrupt their journey on the parenting path.  It is only from the proverbial mountaintop that they can see where they are going.

This book shows parents how to use emotions wisely as they interact with their kids, and illustrates how poor choices can leave families struggling in the muck and the mire of the valley.  Parents can choose to be released from the underbrush that makes life is the valley difficult and stay on the path they have chosen in order to raise great kids.

Parenting is done step by step.  This book walks the reader through seven steps that show parents where their actions are taking their children.

Each step points up a skill their child wants from them and teaches parents how to stay on the path of parenting that is best for the entire family.  Building skills to overcome daily hassles while avoiding dangerous slippery emotional confrontations can take parents and their kids to the Top of the Mountain.

This journey is not for the casual parent.   Find out how to meet the Core Needs of your kids and spend quality time doing it.  Rewards come as children begin to build solid lives upon the Three Cornerstones of Life Is Full of Choices.

The skills are easy to learn but consuming to master.  The adventure is long, the mountain is steep, and sometimes the path is rugged—but the view from the top is magnificent.  The journey is worth the effort for all who choose to complete it.