Nonfiction: Do Parents Matter? Robert and Sarah LeVine

Do Parents Matter? Why Japanese Babies Sleep Soundly, Mexican Siblings Don't Fight, and American Families Should Just Relax
Robert A. LeVine and Sarah LeVine
ISBN: 9781610397230
Read September 17, 2016

An interesting cross-cultural study of various parenting practices and the outcomes observed, but flawed and limited in a lot of ways.  Really makes one wish that there were larger groups studying this sort of thing in earnest - I think there would be a great deal of knowledge acquired that way, but it might not be particularly flattering to the current medical/psychological concepts, so there's understandably little push for it.

The authors use personal anthropological/sociological observations and those collected by other groups to make comments about various parenting tactics and supposedly basic concepts, inferring from their observations that there is very little universal about how children are nurtured and raised, and that despite that vast gulf of differences, mainly the adults end up as well-adjusted adults in their respective societies.

I would have liked more citations or deeper explanations, as a lot of things are hand-waved or offhandedly explained without backing: I want to be clear that I don't think they're faking any of their information, or purposefully being misleading, I just wanted to have a clearer understanding of what they're basing that on (which would have made this a much thicker and more scholarly book, so I can completely understand why they chose not to).

Overall interesting, but it raises a lot more questions than it answers.

2015 Review Round-Up: Juv Nonfiction: A Smart Girl's Guide - Babysitting The Care and Keeping of Kids, American Girl

American Girl's Smart Girl's Guide
Babysitting: The Care and Keeping of Kids
Harriet Brown, illustrated by Karen Wolcott
ISBN: 9781609583934
A short but information-dense and updated guide to 21st century babysitting.
Read October 2015

The over-polished illustrations aren't my style, but they are diverse, and are also generally illustrative of concepts presented in the book itself, which makes them useful as well as (presumably) attractive to the target audience of pre-tween and tween girls making their first forays into the wild world of babysitting.

The book doesn't shy away from dealing with the nitty-gritty - how to set a pay scale, how to ask for money, how to handle emergencies or kids who won't go to sleep or siblings who fight.  All of the information is presented in a "you've got this down" up-beat peppy style that is encouraging while still being helpful.

Nonfiction: How to Raise a Wild Child, by Scott D. Sampson

How to Raise a Wild Child
Scott D. Sampson
ISBN: 9780544279322
Read June, 2015
Discusses the importance of the natural world to child development and personal happiness.

I think I was expecting this to be a bit more about child development, and less of a personal journey, but I enjoyed the journey nonetheless, and Sampson's voice was clear and passionate all through the book.  The science was a bit slim, but there were copious references to other books (some of which I'd actually already read) to handle that angle.

Basically this is one guy's love letter to nature, and why he feels like it has made him a better person, and why he feels like it will help to make every person better and happier.  His enthusiasm and passion are hard to argue with, but he does make some assumptions about people being outdoors that I think are based on his own personal interests and aren't quite as universal as he would like to believe they are.

Still, the overall points are well-meant and much needed - even if you don't totally fall in love with bird-watching in your backyard, or don't end up taking camping trips to celebrate milestones with California hippies, it's important to have a deeper and more positive relationship with our world.

Nonfiction: How To Raise an Adult, Julie Lythcott-Haims

How to Raise an Adult: break free of the overparenting trap and prepare your kid for success
Julie Lythcott-Haims
ISBN: 9781627791779
In two main parts: first, an exhaustive indictment against modern helicopter parenting, second, a framework for building an authoritative parenting style that helps kids face and overcome challenges.

A little too much time spent establishing what's wrong (although I can see how she might think that she needs to convince people) but the advice is spot-on and direct, offering specific scenarios and talking points to help parents step out of the way of their kids, so the kids can develop life skills themselves, instead of just coasting along in the wake of their parents' organizational and problem-solving efforts.

Nonfiction: The Opposite of Spoiled, Ron Lieber

The Opposite of Spoiled

Ron Lieber

ISBN: 9780062247018

Read February 14, 2015

Lieber is the personal finance columnist for the New York Times, and he's fielded a lot of questions from parents worried about how to talk to their kids about money and finances.  

He does a very good job staying clear of the minefields represented by "are we poor" and "are we rich" respectively, and tackles money talks mainly from the perspective of providing moral grounding ;"here's WHY this is something we buy/don't buy" and from a financial preparedness perspective; "if you get $5 in allowance every week, and you get 25% interest if you keep the money longer than six months, how much money will you have to spend on that enormous LEGO set you want?" and he also addresses obvious charitable giving (and other acts of charity) as well as the social awareness and responsibility that comes with being part of a country where wealth is so unevenly divided.

Excellent book, and a good resource for parents or teachers who want to make sure that kids are aware of how money works, and how to make it work for you, and how to be aware of the social and moral entanglements money and spending involves.

Tuesday Storytime: Adopted Families

Another super-specific storytime theme, just because I had the books to do it with.  I've read both A Mother for Choco and Little Miss Spider before, with different storytimes.


A Mother for Choco
Keiko Kasza
ISBN: 0399218416
Adorable, soft-edged anthropomorphic animal mothers, and a cute yellow and blue bird.

Choco is an adorable motherless bird, who is searching the world for his mother.  He finds various animals that look like him in different ways: Mrs. Giraffe is yellow like he is, Mrs. Walrus (grumpy!) has puffy cheeks like his, but all of them kindly point out their differences and demur - that is, until Choco sees Mrs. Bear.  He isn't even going to ask her - even he can tell she looks nothing like him, but she comforts him and asks him how a mother would act.  After meeting her other three children (spoiler alert: a pig, a hippo, and an alligator), Choco realizes that love and kindness are more important in a mother than physical appearance.  Cute and just on the edge of moralizing - a line Kasza walks very well.


We Belong Together: A Book About Adoption and Families
Todd Parr
ISBN: 978036016681
Faux-childish stick figures in vibrant nonrealistic primary colors illustrate various families.

I have to admit that I'm slightly ashamed of myself, because part of the reason I prefer this to Parr's other "family" book is that this one has all of the non-traditional family arrangements safely in the illustrations, not in the text.  I'm a wimp, I know, but I live in South Carolina.  One must pick battles and fight the long fight.  Besides, this book is delightful even so - the text is lovely.  There are pairs of pages - a child on one "You needed x" and people on the other "We had x to give" followed by a spread that unites them as a family with a simple statement of love.  Example: A page of a purple child with glasses, imagining a dog.  "We belong together because you needed a friend."  Facing page, an orange person with wild hair standing in front of an animal shelter with a similar dog in the window.  "and I knew where to find one."  Next spread, The two people playing catch with the previously imagined dog "We all needed someone to play catch with."  Simple, powerful, and true-hearted without being sappy.


Little Miss Spider
David Kirk
ISBN: 0439083893
Miss Spider's childhood is just as interesting as her adult life!

David Kirk's Miss Spider is one of the only spider books I can actually read and enjoy without any niggling phobia-related nerves or jumpy sensations.  She's cute and small and essentially two yellow dots with anime-eyes.  Here we learn about her childhood.  Born with her zillion brothers and sisters, Little Miss Spider is the only child who is interested in finding her mother - they all scatter, and she's left alone to search, but not for long, as Betty the Beetle comes by and offers to help the sad child.  The text is printed at a HUGE size, and the rhymes are short and simple, as the duo look for a missing mother.  A betrayal by a mean fat spider (why did it have to be fat, one wonders) means peril, but Betty comes to the rescue once again, and offers to be an interim mother.  A moral epilogue at the end is addressed directly to readers, advising them to look for mothers in the "creature that loves you best."

Nonfiction: Seven Myths About Education, Daisy Christodoulou

I was referenced to this title by an earlier read: Curious, and after having read the other title that it recommended on education theory and practice (Why Don't Students Like School?) I decided I needed to follow up on the ideas presented with this one as well.

Seven Myths About Education
Daisy Christodoulou
ISBN: 9780415746823
Read September 28, 2014

I don't know why I expected this book to be longer than it was, but it's practically a pamphlet.  It's also written by a teacher in Great Britain, so the specific institutional frameworks referenced are quite different from ours (mentions of analogues to school boards and review or policy-makers, or even to the grades or ages of students in examples - all were unfamiliar) but does not in my opinion make the book difficult to understand or to follow her chains of logic.

And her chains of logic are scrupulously maintained.  For each myth, she examines in detail the theoretical underpinnings of an idea, proof that this idea is promulgated and approved by current school doctrines, then shows neurological and historical counters to this idea which establish it as a myth, and offers counterexamples and options for preferred teaching methods (although these last are a bit scarce).

I was amused to see her champion the Common Core methodology, given the political aching and moaning which is torpedoing progress in adopting a knowledge-based curriculum, but in a sort of perverse satisfaction, at least now with this book I know the British aren't head and shoulders ahead of us.  

On the down-side, I have practically given up any hope that if I do have offspring, I'm going to be able to trust their education to any school system, either public, private, or Montessori.  It's depressing to realize, but the saying seems to be true: if you want it done right, do it yourself.  Needless to say, I've purchased this book for my own parenting collection.

The Dolphin Way, Shimi K. Kang, MD

The Dolphin Way
Shimi K. Kang, MD
ISBN: 9780399166044
Nonfiction: Parenting

A backlash against "tiger" parenting, this book mainly rehashes the benefits of authoritative (not authoritarian or permissive) parenting styles by drawing on the playful and communal lives of dolphins.  However, she never seems to get far enough into dolphin biology and behavior to suit me, nor does she really add much to the authoritative viewpoint other than that particular framework.

Lots of "do" and "don't" lists, and the text in those lists is formatted in a strangely unreadable font - very compressed and smaller than the "reading" text.  I suppose it's to make them stand out, but for as long and involved as they are (bullet-points these are most assuredly not) it seems like they could have found a more inviting text to use.

Final personal preference quirk: I really love individual case stories (even when I know they're made up - scuse me, "compiled" from actual cases) and while there were a few sprinkled here and there, the ones that were there were really interesting and compelling - sadly moreso than her directives and musings on dolphins.  I would have liked to see more of the cases used as examples for both good and bad.

 

Free-Range Kids, Lenore Skenazy

Free-Range Kids
Lenore Skenazy
ISBN: 9780470471944
re-read June 11, 2014.

I've read this before, but I wanted to revisit the advice - I forgot how funny it was.  She's got that perfect exasperated voice down pat (you can tell she has kids from that tone) and she uses it to skewer our 24-hour newsmedia cycle, and businesses that sell fear, and parents trying to bubble-wrap their kids.

Sadly, 5 years after it was written, I feel like it needs a sequel "No, Seriously, Quit Sheltering Your Kids" because it doesn't seem to be getting any better.

I also forgot that there were a lot of references made to her own mental health and how she's working on being a more relaxed and self-accepting person, which was also a nice surprise to re-encounter this time around.

It's a little thin on actual suggestions, but the overall ideas are solid, and using anecdotes and personal stories provides a nice personal touch.

Montessori, A Modern Approach. Paula Polk Lillard

Montessori, A Modern Approach
Paula Polk Lillard
ISBN: 080520394X
(1971)
Read March 25, 2014

I finally actually read it!  Bought a lovely 70's style orange and yellow paperback copy from the library book sale, and read it cover to cover in an afternoon.  I'd seen it before, and have had it recommended several times, but never gotten around to it.

I have to say, despite being nearly 45 years old, it holds up pretty well.  That either says a lot for how little we've changed as a culture in 45 years, or speaks to her ability to avoid "modernisms" that become outdated quickly.

Basically this is a polemic, supporting Maria Montessori and her methods of instructing young people.  I find it interesting that in America, the "land of the individual," Montessori has had such a tough time catching on, despite being pretty much designed around respecting and supporting individual interests and development.  I think that is because while adults in America are supposed to be rugged and self-supporting and independent, kids are supposed to be passive and obedient and tractable - I'm never quite sure how or when people are supposed to mature from the one category to the other.

If you're not familiar with Montessori, you will be after reading this book.  What I find interesting personally is that a lot of Montessori's ideas have been corroborated by modern scientific testing and developmental studies of children.  We now KNOW that kids develop in certain stages, that it's good for kids to try and amster new abilities, and that it's normal for them to focus on one ability to the exclusion of others (the early walker who won't talk, or the chatterbox who is still crawling at 16 months).  In fact, other than her didactic  "Sensitive Periods" which are debunked by a better understanding that ideas and experiences are picked up and processed sequentially through infancy and childhood, most of what Montessori learned through observation more than one hundred years ago is holding up pretty darn well to modern scientific discoveries.

Now, what I'd like to see, and haven't been able to find, is an actual "modern" update to this classic, talking about developments in science that back up their ideas.  No luck so far tho.

 

How Toddlers Thrive, Tovah P. Klein, PhD

How Toddlers Thrive
Tovah P. Kein, PhD
ISBN: 9781476735139
Read March 6, 2014

Nonfiction: parenting, education.

Interesting focus here, approaching toddlerhood through the lens of understanding WHY toddlers are demanding contrary little beasts; what's actually going on mentally and emotionally that causes their behaviors.

Some really insightful bits, but overall the tone is a little too upbeat - having seen lots of toddlers myself, I think that it can never hurt to really emphasize that no matter how good your understanding, or how talented and in-touch your parenting, there are going to be battles of wills, there are going to be tantrums, and there are going to be moments when you (the parent) want to tear your hair out by the roots, and that this is all normal and ok.  I didn't feel like the book really addressed that quite seriously enough.

That said, I did like the focus on how toddlers live in the now, that they don't have an ability to understand the day in sequence or handle transitions well, and that as a parent your job isn't to make them happy, but to help them learn to navigate their big and complex and scary emotions - especially the ones that society considers "bad" - without making the kid feel bad or shamed or unworthy or unloved. Easy peasy, right?

Finally, I was interested in the approach to sharing.  She emphasized that the kid has to be both developmentally and emotionally ready to share, and that forcing the issue often backfires.  In other words, young kids are working out the concepts of "me" and "mine" and they conflate the two.  If you force a child to share what they still think of as part of themselves, that doesn't help them set up healthy emotional boundaries, and also causes them to feel that their identity is unrecognized or worse, unimportant.  After they get the idea that they are not their things, they still emotionally need to have their own things be theirs - to have the concept that their needs are important, recognized, and met.  Once they are secure in their feelings of self, and their feelings of ownership, then (at least according to the author) they should not only share, but share willingly and of their own impulse.  I'm not so sure I buy that they'll miraculously jump into sharing on their own accord, but I do understand the ideas of letting them figure out themselves and their stuff before making them share (ie - give away) what is important to them, when they don't have a mental framework to understand why it is important to share (no sense of empathy yet, or theory of mind to understand that other people even have wants/needs), or even that they will get the shared item back (no developed time-sense, living in the now).

Now, on how to balance that revelation with a society that looks on sharing as the prime directive of toddlerhood and socialization?  No advice for parents there, thanks so much, author lady!

The Read-Aloud Handbook (7th Edition), Jim Trelease

The Read-Aloud Handbook (7th Edition, publication date 2013)
Jim Trelease
ISBN: 9780143121602
Read February 4, 2014

Nonfiction; education, parenting.

Background info: This nifty volume is in two parts: the first is an educational/parenting treatise giving the then-current state of research into why reading is paramount, and especially why reading TO kids is so important.  The second half is a listing of various titles that the author believes are suitable for being read aloud to kids, divided into categories like wordless books (yeah, I know) poetry, nonfiction, and various age-groups.

Each subsequent edition has recognized that there's no reason to purchase or read a new edition if nothing much has changed, so the author and publisher have done a decent job in the first half at updating the research, changing out the vignettes, and including the current state of affairs each time around.  For the second half, the titles recommended are cycled through, with special attention paid to titles currently out of print or difficult to find (those being either removed from the listing entirely, or noted as such if they are thought too good to miss).

So, with all that in mind, let me say here that last spring I discovered this resource existed, and I went on a binge-read right before the Summer Reading Program, placing requests on each edition (yes, all 6 of them), and checking out the different recommended reads, and thoroughly enjoying the first half of each book (which were, although slightly different each round, almost literally a repeated paean to librarians and readers).  The only one I couldn't get was this last edition, which our system couldn't borrow until it was a bit older.  Well, it got a bit older, and it arrived today!  Yay!

I haven't gone through the book recs yet, but I did take a while to read through the first half (and it has grown now into almost half) of this very-well-researched presentation of the current research into reading, the sorry state of our educational system (I want to move to Finland) and how parents and educators can individually contradict these bad influences by READING MORE!!!

My kind of book!

On a slightly more serious note, if you're interested in learning about what the deal is with received language, how kids learn vocabulary, and how to put your kid on the top of the scrap heap called life, read this edition of this book.  The other editions are of course out of date, so I'd only recommend them if you are interested in seeing how the history and the research developed (which I was, and I thought was fascinating, but then I'm a nerd).

I'm sure that this record will be seeing the evidence of the other half of the book as soon as I get a chance to dig into the lists and learn of interesting titles I've missed.

The Big Disconnect, Catherine Steiner-Adair

The Big Disconnect, Catherine Steiner-Adair

ISBN: 9780062082428

Read November 7, 2013

Nonfiction: scary stories about kids of various ages misusing tech and social media.

Hoped this would be more of an advice-giver, rather than a scary-story collection, but you win some and you lose some.  The subtitle is "Protecting Childhood and Family in the Digital Age" and the takeaway seems to be that it's pretty darn hard to do unless you are a Luddite or convert to Amish until your kid is about 30.  

There are some bits of advice, but sadly, the majority of the book really does just cover horrible events where kids are kids, do something stupid, and the nature of tech and media means that now they'll never live it down.

Harsh lessons, but no real advice or steps to follow to mediate or alter the potential.  Leaves this on the "interesting but not really worthwhile" reading list.

Expecting Better, Emily Oster

Expecting Better, Emily Oster

ISBN: 9781594204753

Read November 5, 2013

Nonfiction: statistics and hard numbers about fertility, pregnancy, and childbirth. 

I'm going to keep this short, lest I gush too hard; this is an EXCELLENT resource, and I am so grateful to Dr Oster for putting it together.  She has my eternal gratitude, and this book has a prominent place on my bookshelf.

If you're satisfied that "Doctor knows best" then this won't be much use.  If, on the other hand, you're a paranoid overthinker who plans and plots and researches anything possible, this book is a wonderful assist.  

Here's hoping she does a sequel on infant care and the mommy wars.

Tell Me a Story, Elaine Reese

Tell Me a Story, Elaine Reese, ISBN: 9780199772650

Read Sept 23, 2013.

Nonfiction: interactive story-sharing.

Excellent parenting/professional guide discussing how reading and literacy and oral language skills improve children's mental stats, their ability to learn, and their emotional skills, metacognition, and theory of mind.

Not a bad slate of improvements for a fairly simple technique - involving the child in telling (or sharing) a recitation of story - either from actual books (from wordless picture-books on up through adult-level fiction and nonfiction) or from telling and re-telling stories of your own family (from the time you went to the zoo, to the time grandpa ended up in the hospital) or from allowing the child to create stories of their own (from fictional "and then I grew wings and flew to the moon" to chapters-long created adventures cribbed from Star Wars or Warhammer.  

Nice balance between scientific study and child-development milestones (listed at the end of each chapter with real-life implications and indications) and actual transcripts of kids and parents/researchers using the techniques with actual kids (some of whom we see over and over again between infancy and teenagerhood).  Very interesting resource, but not complicated enough or profound enough to feel like I need to own it.

If you're already devoted to literacy and language skills, it's pretty much a simplified and straightforward set of examples to make sure you're loading as much language into every encounter with your kids as is humanly possible.  Knowing my husband and me, I doubt that's going to be a problem.     

Essential Baby Sign Language, Teresa R. Simpson

Essential Baby Sign Language: the most important 75 signs you can teach your baby, Teresa R. Simpson.
ISBN: 9781440560842

Read Sept 23, 2013

Slim volume with a brief and encouraging intro, a glossary of ASL letters of the alphabet, and a useful "troubleshooting" section at the end, is mostly comprised of clear b&w photographs of MOST of the 75 signs which are introduced here.

The signs are obviously selected to be of interest to a baby - milk, diaper, mommy, daddy, sister, brother, cat, dog, fish, airplane... Some interesting choices are on offer: we get options for cup, drink, milk, water, and juice.  We also get "pain" and "angry" which I don't see offered much, but are important for the baby's self-expression.  I would have liked to see a few options for zoo animals, as those are often highly interesting to babies, and maybe a few specific toy/encounter choices: ball, truck, blocks, swing, but overall these are obviously useful selections.

I did NOT like that there were several signs which didn't get photographs to illustrate - the directions for them are as clear as possible, but text instructing movement always has potential to be misinterpreted.  

Baby-signing is becoming mainstream, and it's a good thing, in my opinion.  This is an overall excellent choice for someone ready to try it out.

Beyond Time-Out: From Chaos to Calm, Beth A Grosshans, PhD

Beyond Time-Out: From Chaos to Calm, Beth A Grosshans, PhD

ISBN: 9781402777646

Re-read August 20

 

Interesting to contrast this one with the two I just read - Siegel & Bryson's The Whole-Brain Child, and Susan Stiffelman's Parenting Without Power Struggles.  I like this one better than both of those because it's more realistic - there's an understanding here that your precious little power-mad tyke isn't going to be real appreciative of your attempts to make them behave (which technically Stiffleman also does), AND you get real actual advice on what to do about it (which Stiffelman doesn't). 

 

Now, I don't know that I totally agree with the advice Grosshans gives, but it seems interesting, and worth looking into.  I haven't seen anyone else suggest restraint holds with a tantrumming child (unless said child also has delays or autism or another reason for applying said restraint) so I'm really curious about that part. 

 

However, I'm hopeful that if someone starts off with this method of calm escalation of consequenses, perhaps that will minimize instances of totally out of control behavior.

 

What's really interesting here is how this book conflicts with the info in Whole-Brain Child about how kids get emotionally flooded and whether to discipline them or empathize with them.  Are we going to use this as a teachable moment to build self-control and social skills, or are we going to use this as a teachable moment to help them become more attuned to their emotions and mental state?  I hate that it seems to be an either-or approach.  I do see hints of the empathetic approach with Beyond Time-Out, but it doesn't nearly rise to the level of "the Wall of Futility" approach that those authors suggest.  Frankly, I tend to like Grosshan's ideas better, but I don't like dealing with emotional stuff and tears and negativity, and I also believe children should be well-behaved and obedient, so I'll be looking into that aspect a bit further. 

Parenting Without Power Struggles, Susan Stiffelman

Parenting Without Power Struggles, Susan Stiffelman (M.FT).  ISBN: 9781451667660

Read August 15, 2013

Nonfiction: parenting.

 

This was an excellent read.  Very clear, and very specific instructions on WHAT to do (and also what not to do, although I like that she focuses on the positive - no "don't think about pink elephants" here, which was very nice) and WHY it is that it's good to do.  She's also amazingly clear that these interactions are challenging to do, hard to keep up, and really difficult to get right in real life, with real children.  I admire that approach.  I also like that her example texts don't have children who magically become compliant and happy as soon as the magic words are used, which is a fault in a lot of the parenting technique books I've encountered. 

 

I do have some quibbles - I could have used a lot more of the information in Chapters 1-8 and 10, and a little less in the others.   I especially feel like she shortchanged the reader on the contents of Chapter 10 dealing with depression and anxiety.  If/when I have kids, I know that the best way to help them is to have my own depression and anxiety under control so I feel geninely happy around my kid.  I also know that given the way my brain works, there's no way in hell that's actually going to happen.  So a little real-life advice on how to counteract that would have been lovely.  Same with the Act 1/Act 2 advice.  That was very hastily done, and not as clear as it could perhaps have been.  I'm also not as fond of mindmaps and assigning emotions to colors and whatnot, so all of the slightly "woo" bits did ruffle my feathers a bit, but there wasn't much of it - I'm just super-sensitive to that sort of thing.

 

Overall, well-organized, well-explained, and well-done.  I'm actually going to buy a copy for myself and my husband, and I have only done that with two other parenting/child-development books so far.  Good company!  (The others are Beth Grosshan's Beyond Time Out, and Paul Tough's How Children Succeed.)