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lexisantamaria's review against another edition
5.0
Fantastic. Perry steps back and focuses on the big picture of parenting to foster a strong relationship with your child so they can grow up emotionally and mentally healthy. This book serves as an insightful and practical guide for not only parents and caregivers, but anyone looking to gain a deeper understanding of themselves through their childhood experiences.
Some prominent takeaways:
- The way we react to any situation is directly linked to our childhood.
- What we learned as kids can have a huge impact on our reactions and parenting style as adults.
- When we make negative associations as kids, this can carry on into our adult life. So it’s incredibly important to look into our past and sort through the good and bad experiences.
- It’s important that not only do we feel validated in our feelings, even ones that may weigh on the side of irrational, but for children to also receive that same level of validation. Society often forgets that children are their own people as well.
- Validating all a child's feelings will be more productive and healthier for the child. Seek first to acknowledge and understand. When we don't allow them to feel these things, the feelings still exist, but they have to suppress them. This becomes a harmful future habit that is hard to break
- Listen with the intent to understand rather than to reply.
- When children feel neglected they start to do attention-seeking behaviors.
- Make sure that children have time for play and creative expression.
The book provides valuable insight into how childhood experiences affect a person's adult self. The writing is clear and relatable, which made it easy for me to understand and to apply certain components to my own life. Anyone who is thinking of having children should read this book before they do.
Some prominent takeaways:
- The way we react to any situation is directly linked to our childhood.
- What we learned as kids can have a huge impact on our reactions and parenting style as adults.
- When we make negative associations as kids, this can carry on into our adult life. So it’s incredibly important to look into our past and sort through the good and bad experiences.
- It’s important that not only do we feel validated in our feelings, even ones that may weigh on the side of irrational, but for children to also receive that same level of validation. Society often forgets that children are their own people as well.
- Validating all a child's feelings will be more productive and healthier for the child. Seek first to acknowledge and understand. When we don't allow them to feel these things, the feelings still exist, but they have to suppress them. This becomes a harmful future habit that is hard to break
- Listen with the intent to understand rather than to reply.
- When children feel neglected they start to do attention-seeking behaviors.
- Make sure that children have time for play and creative expression.
The book provides valuable insight into how childhood experiences affect a person's adult self. The writing is clear and relatable, which made it easy for me to understand and to apply certain components to my own life. Anyone who is thinking of having children should read this book before they do.
mpschaff's review against another edition
2.0
This book had flashes of insight, but for a book on parenting it overemphasized pregnancy (you don't have to be pregnant to be a parent) and co-sleeping. Most people reading a parenting book don't need tips for pregnancy and infants. Rather disappointed since the helpful bits were really helpful, but scarce.
jolly_28's review against another edition
5.0
Um verdadeiro hino para a parentalidade! Aconselho vivamente este livro a todos os que são pais e que planeiam vir a ser. É daqueles livros que não deve ser lido uma vez só, é para se ler e reler sempre que necessário, mantê-lo sempre por perto como um mapa/guia. Livro sem duvida indispensável.
teibrich's review against another edition
5.0
This book truely does justice to it‘s title. I do believe it‘s a book every becoming parent should read. For me the essence is: It‘s all about building a relationship and working with your child however young it might be. Parenting is not about top down managing the needs of your child like feeding, but about collaboration and shared problem solving.
cpope9's review against another edition
3.0
2.5 stars. This book really feels like a classic stereotypical “parenting book” where some wise sage of a parent has gathered all the ideas to share them with you. Except for the fact that that sage is not an expert in virtually anything and is only giving you overblown and underexplained synthesis of actual experts’ ideas and works.
As such, this serves as a nice conglomeration of lots of different parenting ideas and theories, though it is imbalanced in its focus on certain ideas over others. So if you want as many good ideas as possible without having to reach a book on each idea, this can serve you well. But you’ll miss so much substance.
The author regularly takes good ideas and doesn’t elaborate properly or elaborates by giving absolutely ridiculous examples of the idea’s application.
In all, I just didn’t like this book. I was left annoyed by some of the nonsense like “if you grew up with authoritarian parents and you continue that trend…maybe you’ll end up raising a little dictator.” Now I assume that was a joke, but even then, was it necessary to pull in an element of fear and shame to the parenting conversation? And was it necessary to do this OVER and OVER throughout the book (see the author’s opinions about attachment and sleep for an even more aggressive put down of scientifically-backed methodologies)? Not at all.
In the end, this book wreaks of an writer just choosing to write about other people’s parenting theories and how important it is rather than someone passionate about parenting who has important and meaningful ideas, tips, or wisdom to share. It’s just a collection of second hand parenting ideas.
With all that said, I’m giving this an extra .5 stars for the fact that there actually were some ideas here that I haven’t read anywhere else that I thought were truly excellent (though I’m confident they weren’t the author’s original thoughts). But they were diamonds in the rough here.
My recommendation would be to find this book in the library, open the Acknowledgments section, and write down the names of the authors and experts and books she notes as being “inspiration” for this book. Then go read those books and blogs. It’ll serve you much better.
As such, this serves as a nice conglomeration of lots of different parenting ideas and theories, though it is imbalanced in its focus on certain ideas over others. So if you want as many good ideas as possible without having to reach a book on each idea, this can serve you well. But you’ll miss so much substance.
The author regularly takes good ideas and doesn’t elaborate properly or elaborates by giving absolutely ridiculous examples of the idea’s application.
In all, I just didn’t like this book. I was left annoyed by some of the nonsense like “if you grew up with authoritarian parents and you continue that trend…maybe you’ll end up raising a little dictator.” Now I assume that was a joke, but even then, was it necessary to pull in an element of fear and shame to the parenting conversation? And was it necessary to do this OVER and OVER throughout the book (see the author’s opinions about attachment and sleep for an even more aggressive put down of scientifically-backed methodologies)? Not at all.
In the end, this book wreaks of an writer just choosing to write about other people’s parenting theories and how important it is rather than someone passionate about parenting who has important and meaningful ideas, tips, or wisdom to share. It’s just a collection of second hand parenting ideas.
With all that said, I’m giving this an extra .5 stars for the fact that there actually were some ideas here that I haven’t read anywhere else that I thought were truly excellent (though I’m confident they weren’t the author’s original thoughts). But they were diamonds in the rough here.
My recommendation would be to find this book in the library, open the Acknowledgments section, and write down the names of the authors and experts and books she notes as being “inspiration” for this book. Then go read those books and blogs. It’ll serve you much better.
inalorenzo's review against another edition
5.0
Learned a lot about parenting and children. In a way I was able to understand some things about why I am the way I am and how to improve. Definitely gave a lot of insights on how to raise children better, and I would go back to this book if I needed to. Highly recommended even if you're not a parent since it talks a lot human beings as relational beings.