Tuesday, March 23, 2010

About Parenting: messed-up parenting

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Can you mess up in your parenting and still have great kids?

Of course you can!

Parenting is not a science but if you know about child development and read this book - you'll realize you can do it with

less anxiety and much less guilt.

child development and parenting



99 pages packed with useful information



YOU CAN TOTALLY SCREW UP AS A MOM AND STILL RAISE GREAT KIDS

If I, a Developmental Psychologist with an expertise in early childhood, messed up – why should you expect to be perfect?

And while the title is directed at mommies; all I have to say here is meant for daddies too. In most homes still, yet, whatever; mommies are the major child caretakers.

This book was written to hopefully help alleviate the guilt that parents feel before during and after raising their child.

caveats - please be sure to read

If you are a person who thinks daddy or mommy is not to be questioned - do not buy this book - you will be offended..I also have a New York style sense of humor [sarcastic and odd] so if that offends you - please do not buy my book...you'll be unhappy.

Excerpts

From the Introduction

Another parenting book? Yup!

But this one is different – why? Because I am writing it and I have great ideas that I don’t mind sharing with anyone who asks and even with those who do not ask! And at 70 years of age I am entitled to say what I want .

I’ve long been a Dr. Seuss fan and love this:

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

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For those who don't know me, I have been in the field of Developmental Psychology since the early 60's when I entered graduate school. I was a college professor, wrote a few text books and edited a life span series. Now I want to get information out in a more readable and less paper intensive fashion so I am authoring e-books about psychological development.

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Conversation with my son

My son read the manuscript, of course, and so I asked him for comments.

First he said he did not remember all that I wrote about his early years but he was sure I was accurate about them...

What he did recall was that he felt I was unique because he had a say in decision-making and some of his friends seemed not to have that say. Not that we did as he suggested but that his voice was heard. I was not a totalitarian!

He still calls me his “parental unit” and said that while he is not all that keen on my writing about parenting him, “it’s my life and whether or not I like it, you were there too.”

Yes he has known this book was in the works and has hinted that he may comments to make if I do the parenting teen one.

[not so sure I want to hear those comments again ]

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This is an honest, thought provoking, informative, inspiring book!

The exercises are great for self-reflection/examination, and the writing is very accessible. This book will help many new and veteran parents better understand their children - even if you are not a parent this book will help you understand children and their worlds.

Well done! This is amazingly awesome :)

Rabbi Shai Specht


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from Chapter 1

Lynn’s take on family labels

I hate the term “broken” family. No family is broken. Families are all different. Broken implies a negative that may or may not be there – much as a family that stays married can be either a positive or negative environment. Marriage and divorce are not the biggest factors that define the quality of a family.

The same goes for adopted children – they dislike being asked about their “real” parents when one means the birth parents. The real parents are the ones raising them.

I felt this way before I had a child and I certainly came to dislike the labels more after his father and I divorced. We may have been dysfunctional – but we were not ‘broken.”

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It's excellent. I wish there'd been something like it when I was raising mine.

She pulls no punches. Straight to the point. Hope parents buy it.

She deserves to be heard.

Mara

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from Chapter 6 Behaving

To behavior “properly,” that is in accordance with the rules of one’s culture,
people need to know what the rules are. Then they can distinguish right
from wrong.


But, and as they say this is a big but, they also need to want to act in
the correct way and they need the ability to control themselves.


So ask – can young children even be considered as having morality or being
capable of behaving in the adult definition of these terms?

I think not.

The start of this process of moral development and behaving is the ability to
put yourself in the place of another - and that’s a high level cognitive
concept.


I’ve written before that cognitive growth is at the root, so to speak, of all
development – and here it is again. You need a certain amount of complex
cognitive ability to behave in what we call a moral fashion.


But being moral is not the same as being well behaved. In fact many of what
we call “well behaved” children are only behaving out of fear. An older study
indicated that scaring children into behaving as the adult wishes them to
behave tends to result in the behavior only happening when that adult is
around.


For example – if a parent threatens or scares a child about crossing streets –
that child is more likely to look around for the parent – and NOT look at the
traffic. The same can be true for school behaviors. “Well behaved” children
tend to be loved by teachers but it does not mean the child is sitting there
learning academic material – they may be sitting there with all their thoughts
focused on keeping still because they were scared into thinking that was
“correct.” This behavior takes up a lot of mental energy – energy that is not
going toward learning school material.

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From Hayley in Perth


You just never know where your words are going to end up!
I was on Twitter chatting with a friend and I told her about my daughter and something she had said when she was a young child. She'd drawn a picture of the family but her younger sister was missing from the picture. When asked where she was, she replied with a very serious face, "She's still in the pencil, silly." We all erupted in laughter because she was such a funny little thing.

Well, Dr Lynn Dorman Phd, an American Psychologist was in the process of writing her e-book, "You can totally screw up as a mom and still raise great kids!" She sent me a direct message asking if she could use that quote in her e-book.

Well, surprise, surprise, her e-book is finished and there is Sarah's quote on Page 84.

I love the thought that a 70 year old woman would take the time to share her wisdom with the younger generations. There is just something very special about our Elders and it touches my heart when they desire to reach out and pass on what they know.

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Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1 Before We Talk Babies And Children Let’s Talk “Uniqueness”
Chapter 2 Okay Now Let’s Talk Babies
Chapter 3 Early Infancy
Chapter 4 Infancy 1-3
Chapter 5 Those Developmental Tasks
Chapter 6 Behaving - What On Earth Does That Mean?
Chapter 7 Putting It All Together And Taking It On The Road
Chapter 8 Those “Pesky” Other “Things” That Raise Your Children
Chapter 9 Conclusion


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