(no subject)
Dec. 31st, 2012 10:57 pm
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book was recommended to me by the fine folks at UW-CHDD, as a result of some discussion I had with them about my son (who they felt might be 'spirited'). It is one of the most helpful parenting books I've read, period, and certainly the best one lately.
Interestingly, by the books definition, I'm not sure I would call my son 'spirited'. This personality is defined as having strong expression of a number of different traits. From my perspective, my son only has a couple of those traits (but has those in spades), and has fairly mild expression for many of the other traits. Still, I found this book to contain useful ideas and perspectives that were applicable to him, and perhaps to all children.
The book starts out talking about rhetoric - why one should call these kids 'spirited', not 'difficult', why my son is 'persistent', not 'stubborn'. I tend to feel that all this stuff is a bit bogus; I buy the arguments to some extent, but don't believe there is anything magical in a change of vocabulary. It is also the case that much of the advise is stuff that I know or read before - prevent trouble instead of reacting to it, your kids aren't to get you, emotion coaching is useful, etc. etc. As a result, I have a hard time putting my finger on why I walked away feeling so glad that I read this book.
But I have a few ideas:
1. The stories are from real people, who admit to yelling, or losing it, or taking a while to catch on to their kids. It is a book that admits to aspiration - to do better as a parent, not be perfect. There is a reality here that i have had difficulty finding in other books.
2. The book analyzes personality traits (both in the child and the parent) and how those traits might lead to problems. (In my case, i realized that my child was persistent, but didn't recognize until i read about it that he also responds to each new thing with a 'no'. Giving him time to process and change his mind was a hint worth the price of the book in itself.) It addresses each trait with ways to use it to the child and parent's advantage, not disadvantage.
3. There are a fair number of very concrete suggestions for modifying behavior to improve things.
4. In the end, I find myself hugging and appreciating my kid more, and getting frustrated with him less. And that's awesome.
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As an aside, i'm currently reading http://www.amazon.com/Raising-Emotionally-Intelligent-Child-Parenting/dp/0684838656 which is a book that i am not enjoying nearly as much, but one which has advise that i believe dovetails into the previous book's advice fairly well.
I also read this blog sometimes:
http://www.ahaparenting.com/_blog/Parenting_Blog/post/Preventive_Maintenance_to_Keep_Your_Child_Out_of_the_Breakdown_Lane/
and while it seems to have the same advice in some ways, i usually leave reading one of those posts thinking 'have these people ever actually met a child?!'.