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When Susan Abel Lieberman became a mother-in-law, she was unprepared. Her own mother-in-law was the perfect kind who was never critical.

"If I was standing on my head in the kitchen spitting wooden nickels," said Lieberman, "she would say I was clever."

Having had really bossy relatives herself and learned the hard way; her mother-in-law would never let herself bring any conflict into her daughter-in-law's life. Lieberman's new book, "The Mother-in-Law's Manual: Proven Strategies for Creating and Maintaining Healthy Relationships with Married Children," is dedicated to her.

Lieberman decided to write a book about mother-in-laws because she was having so much trouble when she became one herself, after the first of her two sons got married.

She will speak on "Opening Doors to New Family Relationships," Sept. 22, 6:30 p.m., at a woman-to-woman dinner for the Jewish Family & Children's Service at the Hyatt Regency Princeton. For information, contact Laura Perlman at laurap@jfcsonline.org or (609) 987-8100.

Lieberman came into her new role with a big dose of naiveté.

"I have two lovely sons," she said. "I assumed that when they met the women they wanted to love, I would love them, too. I thought they would think I was a bonus, and when they didn't, I was surprised."

It didn't work out that way, and Lieberman offers a nutshell analysis of the problem: "I judged her against my standards as opposed to taking her where she was," Lieberman said.

When people enter any new relationship, they bring with them their own values and expectations. But when the relationship is with the spouse of one of your children -- children you have raised according to your values -- then you expect this person's values to be like yours. When they're not, mother-in-laws can be quick to judge.

"What I learned was that even though I didn't think I was judgmental, I was," said Lieberman. "Those judgments vibrate right out of us."

Sometimes the judgments mothers-in-law make are because they project not only their values, but their very natures onto their daughters-in-law. A whole chapter of Lieberman's new book is about the Myers-Brigg personality test. She's an extrovert, and it turns out that both of her daughters-in-law are introverts.

"I'm an extrovert," she said. "My daughter-in-laws don't call to chat, not even with their own mothers. Would I like them to call and chat? Of course, but it's not about me."

Similarly, mothers-in-law who see themselves as generous when they invite a daughter-in-law on a shopping spree may be operating on a false assumption that the daughter-in-law also likes shopping. If she hates it, she will probably feel put upon and she may perceive her mother-in-law not as being generous but as trying to buy her affection.

Sometimes a mother-in-law's expectations involve a favorite holiday.

"In my family, Thanksgiving is the big holiday," Lieberman said. "I expected that people would keep coming home for Thanksgiving."

But then her daughter-in-law's family was having a family reunion on Thanksgiving. So how did Lieberman feel?

"Rationally I understand, but emotionally I am wiped out," she said.

Another issue is that mothers expect that their children will have time for them -- forever. "We forget that our kids are moving into their most busy time of life, and we are moving into a less busy time -- so there will be a disconnect," she said. "Sometimes they forget to call, but it's not because they don't love us."

And of course, with both children and in-laws, there's the ever-present issue of giving unwanted advice.

"We expect, because we have lived four score and seven and learned a lot that they will want our advice, and they don't," Lieberman said. In the effort to keep their children from harm and hurt, mothers-in-law are likely to misperceive that something is harmful and hurtful when it is perfectly innocuous, or perhaps a challenge or an adventure, for their children.

Often daughters-in-law get the brunt of anger that should really be directed to one's biological children.

"We off-load our irritations on the other, not on the person we love," Lieberman said. Then, trying to plumb the behavior of errant sons, she said, "Why does he behave that way? He's a man and he can't stand conflict." Then she mused, "We are quick to blame the daughter-in-law or sister-in-law and give our own children a pass, or our siblings -- why is that?"

Lieberman and her husband, a research physician, grew up in Pittsburgh, but have moved seven times during their marriage. They moved to Houston, Texas, 20 years ago, and although Lieberman went kicking and screaming, because everyone she knew lived on the east or the west coast, she ended up, to her complete astonishment, loving Houston -- great restaurants, great arts, and nice people, and less expensive than the coasts.

Lieberman's first book was about family traditions. She had moved from Pittsburgh and Philadelphia to St. Louis, and when the Jewish holidays would come, she would face a challenge. "I would go into the kitchen and try to make the holiday," she said, "and my children would look at gefilte fish, and say, 'Yuck, I'm not going to eat that'."

Starting to think that everyone had it right but her, Lieberman talked to other people, and found that many were struggling. So she wrote a book to figure it out -- a recipe book about what other families have done to reinvent old traditions or create new traditions to fit their changing lifestyles. One of these might be, she suggested, that when a daughter-in-law is determined to spend treasured holidays with her own parents, the mother-in-law can designate a new day for family celebrations. She advised, "Stop asking, what do I want to happen? Instead ask, How do I want us to feel and what will get us there?"

Lieberman has also written books about how mothers and daughters talk about sex, how to get through high school, and about how the children she mentored in inner-city high schools could find out about summer experiences that might give them a leg up on the future.

Lieberman worked for eight years running a program at Leadership Rice, at Rice University, to develop the leadership capacities of undergrads and took a hiatus from writing, but when she left Rice University and started doing executive coaching, she had more time on her hands and, realizing she was struggling with her daughters-in-law, wrote a book as a way of learning to do it better.

What she has learned is that mothers-in-law need to give up their expectations.

"Get rid of them," she said, "they're your expectations." Women have a schema about what the relationship with a daughter-in-law will be like, Lieberman suggested, and when the script doesn't work out, they wonder, "What is wrong with these people?" Instead they need to throw away the script.

Having interviewed and learned from the wisdom of many, many mothers-in-law, Lieberman is doing a little better with her own daughters-in-law.

"I have a whole different understanding of that relationship than I did before," she said. "It could have helped me to love her more authentically and be less judgmental."

She is also better able to manage the relationship. "I get less defensive and angry, and I think I'm easier on her," she said.

Empathy was an important part of her transformation into a better mother-in-law.

"I had to understand that as a daughter-in-law, you might scare the hell out of her," she said. "Your life is in some ways a rebuke of her life."

Lieberman's penchant for giving advice in book after book has led her sons to refer to her books as "Jewish mother in a book." This applies all the more so to her current book.

"If I were queen of the world, every young man who is getting married will give this book to his mother," she said. "It will make his wife's life, his life, and his mother's life better."