A Recommendation for My Parental Playbook
From time to time we have discussed parenting issues on Ricochet, so I wanted to recommend two books that I think sums up the philosophical stance displayed by our contributors. And I'm thinking of Ursula here.
Wendy Mogel's Blessing of a Skinned Knee was guide for the toddler to ten year old set written some dozen years ago. Many know of this book. But her newest release is focused on teens. "Blessings of a B Minus." It is terrific.
For those who don't know, Wendy was a successful child shrink on the Westside of Los Angeles when two things happened: She noticed the outrageous expectations and coddling of affluent children was making them nuts. And she developed an interest in Judiasm. She used both to create a philosophical foundation for raising kids based on the old-fashioned (from the Bible) belief in parental authority (mom and dad have assigned seats at the table, remember that one?) And not protecting our kids from bad things. (There is a blessing in a skinned knee.) You may know and already practice a lot of stuff in these books, but it's good to see it affirmed.
Her first book was the guide post in my circle. It's funny, but we resemble our parents pre-Spock child-rearing style a lot more than the parent-as-friend parenting style of the 1980's. So far our kids for the most part are kind, respectful, self-reliant and resilient as they head into their mid-teens.
Wendy's writing is brisk, funny and direct. You don't have to be Jewish to love these books.
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Aug '10
Re: A Recommendation for My Parental Playbook
I am a great believer in parental authority- pity the kids aren't
Re: A Recommendation for My Parental Playbook
I am just surfacing -- albeit briefly -- from the Halloween party/parade extravaganza (only 1/2 done) that started Thursday. I'm so pleased that you thought of me, Denise, because I love, love Skinned Knee. It was also recommended to me by my all time favorite dearest friend from college. As a Catholic, it was perhaps odd (maybe not) that my favorite parts were where she wove in Judaism with funny, basic, common-sense-y parenting. I suppose I need to pick up the new one. Thanks for the recommendation.
Re: A Recommendation for My Parental Playbook
Denise Moss:
Wendy's writing is brisk, funny and direct. You don't have to be Jewish to love these books. ·
Sorry, this is what I meant. I read too fast and missed your last line! I totally agree.
May '10
Re: A Recommendation for My Parental Playbook
My wife and I were drive-our-kids-everywhere parents, but over the past year we've eased our kids into riding their bikes whenever and wherever possible--to baseball practice, music lessons, to school, whatever, and also burdened them with keeping track of the times and locations of their activities.
It's made a very positive difference in their development. For one thing, we found out that prior to this change, our kids literally had no awareness of the basic layout of our city--no knowledge of streets beyond our own, the location of their schools, the library, and so on. How unlike our childhoods! But now there's been a stark uptick in their self-confidence, courage, and maturity, and surprisingly less stress--and even less worry--for us (though admittedly it took a while to get my wife to go "all in").
Levels of kids' independence that prior generations would have regarded as routine are shunned today, for no decent reason but to great detrimental effect.
I'll check out that book. Sounds Dennis Prager-esque, which is a very good thing.
Jul '10
Re: A Recommendation for My Parental Playbook
My parenting advice? Don't read your child any book less than 100 years old.
The important lessons of life are not a result of current thinking - no matter how reasonable. They are a distillation of generations of experience. It pains me deeply that modern parents seek new wisdom to guide them - a contradiction interms.
Re: A Recommendation for My Parental Playbook
Denise, I love Skinned Knee. It's loaded with sense.
By the way, I remember reading somewhere that kids want to hear stories as much if not more than they want to look at pictures of stories, so parents shouldn't shy away from reading them books that are either marginally illustrated or are not illustrated at all. This was brought back to me by my four-year-old daughter, who likes to pull grown-up paperbacks off the shelf and "read" them to herself on the sofa: she tells herself a story she makes up on the fly while following words on the page, turning the pages, and so on. (This is particularly charming to watch when she's holding the book upside-down.) I mention it only because there's no end to the assumptions we make about kids, and probably no end to the things we're getting wrong. Books like Mogel's help a lot.