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juliana_aldous's review
2.0
This book answered a couple questions I had about my 9 y.o.'s development, but copyright is 1987 and 1990 which made much of the book seem so dated as to not apply. Looking through the bibliography of the book most of the references were from the mid eighties. I like the idea of the whole series though which has a book assigned to each year of development and wish someone would update it for today's parent.
iymain's review
2.0
Kind of like reading an astrology book. You can find as much truth in it as you like. Definitely dated. Lots of gender based assumptions. Funny to read the description of a recipe for a successful birthday party. My, how we've grown... It's like a parenting magazine on steroids.
Still, there are some parts that relate to learning that are somewhat interesting. (Larry Summers would benefit from this book's conclusions about girls and math...) The concept that children must reach a certain stage of development before disciplining with humor is effective was interesting to me. Makes a certain intuitive sense, but it was eye-opening to quantify it and put the age for this characteristic's appearance at 9.
I guess I might have gotten a little insight into my own 9-year-old, but not a whole lot. I learned far more about what it was like to be a parent (but mostly mother) in the 80's.
Still, there are some parts that relate to learning that are somewhat interesting. (Larry Summers would benefit from this book's conclusions about girls and math...) The concept that children must reach a certain stage of development before disciplining with humor is effective was interesting to me. Makes a certain intuitive sense, but it was eye-opening to quantify it and put the age for this characteristic's appearance at 9.
I guess I might have gotten a little insight into my own 9-year-old, but not a whole lot. I learned far more about what it was like to be a parent (but mostly mother) in the 80's.
kuhrin's review against another edition
I tried to get beyond how dated this book is to pull out the interesting bits that might still be relevant, but it’s really not worth it. I remember thinking earlier books were helpful, but the analysis of gender in this book—both for children and also the roles of their parents—is impossible to ignore. I found the bit about secrets to be true to my child (if 8 is all about sharing secrets, 9 is about actually keeping them, basically), but I didn’t need to read 200 pages of nonsense for that.
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