Parents in charge: Setting healthy, loving boundaries for you and your child
✍ Scribed by Yvonne M. Caldera
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2005
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 35 KB
- Volume
- 26
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0163-9641
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The main purpose of this book is to serve as a guide to parents in their attempt to raise their young children in the modern world. The book looks at parenting from a relationship perspective and focuses on providing parents with guidelines for raising competent, healthy, and responsible children. In addition, it helps parents understand from where their parenting style comes. Each chapter contains many useful anecdotal examples to illustrate its specific content. In addition, the examples given demonstrate cultural sensitivity. The names of parents and children are taken from an array of diverse cultures, as are some of the situations used in the examples. In sum, this is a very readable and useful book that will help many parents as they embark on their journey of parenthood.
Chapter 1 mostly focuses on what parenting is, and what factors influence how people parent. Parenting is presented as being a relationship that includes the parent and the child. Parenting styles are influenced by the parents' history with his or her parents, and the parents' own personal characteristics. Among the latter are gender, birth order, temperament, age upon becoming a parent, family structure, and the struggles parents may have gone through to become a parent.
In chapter 2, Chidekel explains that the job of parenting involves being responsible for protecting our children and for guiding them so that they will be successful adults in all areas of their lives. She suggests that parents are responsible for their child's physical, emotional, social, and intellectual needs. Chidekel introduces Baumrind's (1968) parenting styles (authoritative and authoritarian). She goes on to explain that children's needs change as they develop. What a parent does in the beginning, however, will have consequences for how the child is in the future. Finally, this chapter reminds parents that as they parent, their own childhood memories will be triggered.
Chapter 3 details children's thinking. Children's worlds are different from adults' worlds; children live in the present moment, and their thinking is different from that of adults. In addition, children thrive on relationships and need ample time to explore the world. This chapter is not very cohesive. It was difficult to discern the main focus.
In chapter 4, Chidekel explains how children process language so that parents can use appropriate language. Because young children's thinking is concrete, parents have to pair words with actions, use a tone of voice that matches the meaning of what they are trying to convey, use clear directives, and must not use suggestions or questions when they expect children to obey. Parents must allow time for the child to follow directions -and above all, mean what they say and say what they mean.