There seem to be as many philo\u00adsophies about how to bring up chil\u00addren suc\u00adcess\u00adfully as there are par\u00adents, which fact you tend not to dis\u00adcov\u00ader until you are a par\u00adent your\u00adself. And then you have to hope that your philo\u00adsophy is reas\u00adon\u00adably con\u00adgru\u00adent with that of the oth\u00ader par\u00adent and\/or care\u00adgivers in your child\u2019s life. We\u2019ve been lucky in this regard; there are always issues that need to be dis\u00adcussed but Tim and I gen\u00ader\u00adally have sim\u00adil\u00adar views on child-rear\u00ading issues. Most of this we had to fig\u00adure out as we went along (for\u00adtu\u00adnately there are few things you do that are really crit\u00adic\u00adal and can\u00ad\u2019t be fixed later). I found a couple of books to be really use\u00adful in fig\u00adur\u00ading things out, so here\u2019s a quick run-down on which and why.<\/p>\n
There are a large num\u00adber of books on the sub\u00adject of rais\u00ading chil\u00addren, each with their own philo\u00adsophy and assump\u00adtions, so it\u2019s inter\u00adest\u00ading try\u00ading to fig\u00adure out the dif\u00adfer\u00adent per\u00adspect\u00adives they were writ\u00adten from. And the books all have to be writ\u00adten to allow for the old adage of \u201cthey\u2019re all dif\u00adfer\u00adent\u201d (when you have two, you find out just how true that is). I\u2019ve found with this second baby I\u2019ve ten\u00added not to read the books as avidly as I did with the first, prov\u00ading I guess the oth\u00ader adage about first-time par\u00adents being tense and want\u00ading to do everything per\u00adfectly, while more exper\u00adi\u00adenced par\u00adents relax more and settle for hav\u00ading things be done well enough. When you have two chil\u00addren, well enough really is good enough and that leaves you a little time to try to keep your own san\u00adity as well.<\/p>\n
I found three books worth read\u00ading and hav\u00ading. First, Penelope Leach\u2019s Your Baby and Child<\/a><\/cite>, which is divided into sec\u00adtions accord\u00ading to the age of the child up until the age of five. The book\u2019s philo\u00adsophy is to be \u201cbe kind to and gentle with your baby\u201d; there is lots of mater\u00adi\u00adal on the child\u2019s point of view and how to inter\u00adpret reac\u00adtions and actions. As an added bonus, the pho\u00adtos are great and our son loved look\u00ading at them when he was a toddler. <\/p>\n Dr. Spock\u00ad\u2019s Baby and Child Care<\/a><\/cite> is the clas\u00adsic I turn to when I\u2019m not sure about wheth\u00ader the baby needs to go to the doc\u00adtor for some\u00adthing that looks minor but might not be, or for an issue affect\u00ading our sev\u00aden-year-old who\u2019s \u201cout\u00adgrown\u201d the oth\u00ader book. The tone seems to me to be more mat\u00adter-of-fact although there\u2019s also a lot of psy\u00adcho\u00adlogy in the book; the dif\u00adfer\u00adence is tone is prob\u00adably because of the issues deal\u00ading with older chil\u00addren and the emphas\u00adis on bal\u00adance with\u00adin the family.<\/p>\n And for boys from tod\u00addler age up, I recom\u00admend Steve Bid\u00addulph\u2019s Rais\u00ading Boys<\/a><\/cite>. This is a quick read that has ideas on how to cope with the bio\u00adlo\u00adgic\u00adal dif\u00adfer\u00adences between boys and girls that affect how many boys behave once they\u2019re past the tod\u00addler stage. I\u2019ve recom\u00admen\u00added this to sev\u00ader\u00adal people and lots have told me they\u2019ve found it use\u00adful with their sons. I\u2019m going to get anoth\u00ader one of his books out of the lib\u00adrary to read to see wheth\u00ader it has use\u00adful stuff to say about rais\u00ading a daughter.<\/p>\n There are lots of oth\u00ader books I\u2019ve read but would\u00adn\u2019t neces\u00adsar\u00adily recom\u00admend for any\u00adthing oth\u00ader than get\u00adting out of the lib\u00adrary, since I read them once and not again. Libby Purves\u2019 How Not to Be a Per\u00adfect Moth\u00ader<\/a><\/cite> fits into this cat\u00adegory; fun to read once but not a must-have for the par\u00adent\u00ading lib\u00adrary. Edward Chris\u00adtoph\u00adersen\u2019s Little People: Guidelines for Com\u00admon Sense Child Rear\u00ading<\/a><\/cite> was mostly good, though I dis\u00adagreed with some parts of the book. I read it once, figured out the import\u00adant bits of the \u201ccatch them being good\u201d mes\u00adsage (which is use\u00adful) and haven\u2019t read it again since. YMMV<\/span><\/acronym> on any or all of these books of course (what was that about they\u2019re all dif\u00adfer\u00adent? So are the parents\u2026)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There seem to be as many philo\u00adsophies about how to bring up chil\u00addren suc\u00adcess\u00adfully as there are par\u00adents, which fact you tend not to dis\u00adcov\u00ader until you are a par\u00adent your\u00adself. And then you have to hope that your philo\u00adsophy is reas\u00adon\u00adably con\u00adgru\u00adent with that of the oth\u00ader par\u00adent and\/or care\u00adgivers in your child\u2019s life. \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cBooks on Rais\u00ading Children\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-family"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}