A wise and realistic program for instilling genuine self-esteem in children.
A guide to increasing children’s confidence and helping them realize their full potential.
In this book, clinical psychologist Kennedy-Moore (What’s My Child Thinking?, 2019, etc.) promises readers a wide range of practical and effective parenting strategies. But first, the author takes pains to debunk some key concepts of contemporary child-rearing philosophy—the worst of which, she says, is the idea that one must compulsively and universally offer kids uninterrupted affirmation in order to build up their self-esteem. Kennedy-Moore cites recent studies that hint at the problems of such an approach, and her tone is refreshingly blunt as she does so: “self-help gurus and inspirational articles often promote the idea that we have to love ourselves to have a happy, fulfilling life,” she writes. “This is nonsense.” In the place of this concept, she lays out a comprehensive set of guidance tips, designed to help parents to understand their kids’ needs and encourage them with direct communication and honest assessment—not blanket assurances that everything that they do is perfect in every way. Each of the book’s sections offers helpful subheadings, and a separate “Take-Home Points” graphic is designed to summarize key items from the text as a whole. Kennedy-Moore addresses the topics of making parental connections, assessing and building children’s competencies, and helping kids to become more decisive and deal with bullying. Throughout, she employs a clear, concise prose style and an unfailing directness, typified in lines such as “As parents, we can’t protect our children from having bad things happen to them.” Kennedy-Moore has written many books on the subject of parenting and is on the advisory board of Parents magazine, and her expertise is obvious on every highly detailed page of this smart and assured manual. She buttresses each of the book’s subsections, and all of its points of contention, with ready citations as well as a comprehensive 19-page bibliography. On every topic, from sibling rivalry to cyberbullying to proper hygiene, the author’s tone is always staunchly realist (“Winning feels good, but it’s unrealistic for any of us to believe that we will win every contest”) and specifically practical (“To avoid [a] no-win battle, reach for the feelings behind the complaints, and try to tie them to a particular situation or a specific time”). Along the way, she always maintains the tone of quiet compassion that animates the book throughout. The author’s focus returns again and again to her conception of children’s self-esteem, which aims to anchor their sense of self-worth more solidly that other parenting guides tend to do. As a result, crucial insights abound in these pages. For instance, Kennedy-Moore acknowledges the extensive research into what many parents already know—that children have the potential to be incredibly mean—and she offers several helpful tips on countering bullying. At the same time, however, she stresses that children can also bully themselves with a pattern of self-criticism and that parents can help them to counter this tendency.
A wise and realistic program for instilling genuine self-esteem in children.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68403-049-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: New Harbinger
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dreary self-serving portraits of failed marriages and their messy ends. Feifer, whose last book was on the battle for Okinawa (Tennozan, 1992), sees parallels between military combat and divorce. Twice a survivor of divorcehis own and his parents'Feifer found dozens of fellow survivors willing, in fact eager, to share their memories of the experience. Twelve divorced women and twelve divorced men, plus one man currently going through a divorce, give their versions of what happened, and two children of divorced parents tell how they felt about it. Speakers range from the freshly divorced to those for whom it is ancient history, the working poor to the affluent, those whose marriages lasted only a few years to those married for decades, but all share a common theme of pain, grief, and anger. Mixed in with these unhappy stories are the points of view of various professionals: two marriage counselors, a social worker, a social demographer, two divorce lawyers, a law professor, two judges, and a divorce mediator. The lawyers seem mostly concerned with defending their profession, but the others take a broader view of divorce as a social problem. One judge recommends that the courts be turned to only after reconciliation, therapy, and mediation have been tried. Another cautions people to look for a family lawyer with the skills of a negotiator and mediator, one who ``makes peace instead of war.'' Feifer, who makes no claims to inclusiveness or authority, does not insert himself in these conversations except for an occasional question, but his introduction and his choice of voices makes it clear that he sees divorce as a destructive, adversarial process for which alternatives are available. Slow, tedious, and devoid of fresh insights.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995
ISBN: 1-56584-272-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
An evolutionary biologist’s view of family life serves as a cautionary demonstration of the limitations inherent in rigidly interpreting evidence according to a single scientific viewpoint. Biologist Baker (Sperm Wars, 1996) and freelance journalist Oram want to shed new light on couples’ disagreements regarding parenthood and on family conflict once children arrive. Instead, they inadvertently provide an excellent lesson on the intellectual danger of single-minded devotion to a solitary principle, in this case, the idea that all human behavior is the result of genes that are solely devoted to perpetuating the human race. For each of their topics, from pregnancy and labor through infant care and on to later family life, Baker and Oram begin with a fictional scenario. The florid prose is off-putting (“The man, still half-naked, his legs shrouded in mist, was running round and round . . . his shirt flattened over his shrunken penis and flapping against his bottom”), and in some cases (incest and abuse) the scenarios themselves are offensive. The authors look at how these fictional couples/families fit their thesis of striving for reproductive success, finding that sources of conflict abound. From men wanting to impregnate as many women as possible vs. women looking for a single strong protector/provider, to the —war— between the parents’ genes when the baby is in utero, the authors fit their cases too neatly to their thesis, describing those who fail to accept their evidence as emotionally unable to accept the fact that behavior has firm biological roots. Few readers will buy Baker and Oram’s analysis of the other end of life: a grandmother forced by tragic circumstances to raise her grandchildren will not only be fulfilling the biological task of helping her genes survive, they argue, but “will probably find her post-menopausal life more rewarding than that of the majority of her contemporaries.” For an unbiased, vastly better supported discussion of similar ground, see instead Bruce Bagemihl’s Biological Exuberance (1999). A narrow-minded argument, poorly presented.
Pub Date: April 22, 1999
ISBN: 0-88001-658-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
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