Five books to support parenting
I am still reeling from the shock of the suicide of a 14-year-old a couple of days ago in the United States which she streamed live on Facebook. Before that was a 12-year-old who also hung herself and broadcast it live online also in the United States. It took two weeks for Facebook managers to remove the horrific image of the 12-year-old dying on their site. Naika Venant, 14 is one of three persons to commit suicide on Facebook live in the past month. Naika’s story is one of the saddest stories I have read in recent times. First she was a troubled child, said to have mental health problems and received corporal punishment from her mum. Then she was also shuttled among ten foster homes in the last seven years and was sexually abused by a boy in one of the homes. With this sad backdrop, I have chosen to present you with five books today in support of parenting. No one gets any parenting manual, you just learn as you go along. Sometimes, you have easy-to-manage children, other times you have difficult ones. But as a parent, managing the different children God gave you is a tough task. As we pray for the souls of the departed, understand that social media can be a menace, as can peer pressure and all the distractions young people face today.
1) I have always loved Maya Angelou author, poet Laureate, academic and essayist but I wondered why her life beyond its harshness and racism was full of drama and incredible moments until I read about her relationship with her mum and grand mum in MOM & ME & MOM written by her. This book reveals Maya Angelou’s triumphs and struggles of being the daughter of Vivian Baxter, an “indomitable spirit” whose petite size belied her largerthan-life presence-a presence absent during much of Angelou’s early life. When her marriage began to crumble, her mother sent three-year-old Maya and her elder brother away from their California home to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. The subsequent feelings of abandonment stayed with Angelou for years, but their reunion, a decade later, began a story that has never before been told. In Mom & Me & Mom, Maya dramatises her years reconciling with the mother she preferred to simply call “Lady,” revealing the profound moments that shifted the balance of love and respect between them.
The book explores the healing and love that evolved between the two women over the course of their lives, the love that fostered Maya Angelou’s rise from immeasurable depths to reach impossible heights.
2) Connection parenting: Parenting through connection instead of coercion, through love instead of fear by Pam Leo: This book is an important book for all parents. It is based on author Pam Leo’s seven week parenting series, “Meeting the Needs of Children,” that she has been teaching for over sixteen years. The premise is that a strong parent-child bond is the key to children’s optimal human development and our most effective parenting tool. Connection Parenting is a proactive approach to parenting that supports parents and caregivers in creating and maintaining the strong bonds children need to thrive. It is imperative that parents understand that all children are not the same and make time to bond with their children. In these difficult economic times, this is hard but important. Pam Leo is a parent, a grandparent, parent educator, certified childbirth educator and an independent scholar in human development. A good book to own.
3) Every child needs a listening ear and a lot of time, parents are too busy, too angry, too selfish to listen. It is important to listen to a child including what they are saying and sometimes what they are not saying. How to talk so kids will listen & Listen so kids will talk by Adele Faber, Elaine Mazlish, Kimberly Ann is, a good book to help us listen better. It is also critical how we talk to our children. Some kids are more sensitive than others and what you consider a simple scolding may be taken out of proportion by another child. Naika who committed suicide may have been a difficult child but her life was online. She needed physical validation and got only those kinds of validation online. Sexual abuse is everywhere. Open your eyes as a parent. This book will give you the know-how you need to be effective with your children. Enthusiastically praised by parents and professionals around the world, the down--to--earth, respectful approach of Faber and Mazlish makes relationships with child ren of all ages less stressful and more rewarding.
4) Teaching kids to think: Raising confident, independent and thoughtful children in an age of instant gratification by Darlene Sweetland (Goodreads Author), Ron Stolberg is just the book you need. You also need to parent by example. You can’t tell a child what to do when you don’t do it yourself. They are smarter than we are these days.
Today’s kids don’t know how to read a map. They can Google the answer to any question at lightning speed. If a teen forgets his homework, a quick call to mom or dad has it hand-delivered in minutes. Fuelled by the rapid pace of technology, the Instant Gratification Generation not only expects immediate solutions to problems-they’re more dependent than ever on adults. Today’s kids are being denied opportunities to make mistakes, and more importantly, to learn from them. They are being taught not to think.
In Teaching Kids to Think, Dr. Darlene Sweetland and Dr. Ron Stolberg offer insight into the social, emotional, and neurological challenges unique to this generation. They identify the five parent traps that cause adults to unknowingly increase their children’s need for instant gratification, and offer practical tips and easy-to-implement solutions to address topics relevant to children of all ages. Indeed in the age of instant gratification, a newer parenting style is required in a world too busy, too self centred, less communal, we all need to look again at how to raise thoughtful children.
5) Brain rules for baby by John Medina: Medina, a molecular biologist and a dad, gives advice on how to raise smart and happy children from infancy through age 5. He explains, for instance, why TV watching for kids age 2 and under is harmful. He also believes the best predictor of performance is not IQ but impulse control. This book, filled with fascinating facts and science, is addictive--be prepared to ignore the kids because it’s hard to put down.