Rock-solid advice for harried parents in a world that shows no signs of slowing down.
Why young adults are not ready for adulthood and what parents can do to help prepare them.
Political unrest, rapid technological advances, massive shifts in demographics, and climate change: These and many other factors mean that we live in remarkably unpredictable times, which has caused significant spikes in anxiety for both parents and teens. In her latest book, clinician and consultant Levine (Teach Your Children Well: Parenting for Authentic Success, 2012, etc.) shows parents how to address these concerns so that their children can have a “hopeful future they will both inherit and invent.” Because parents feel immense pressure to ensure a stable future for their child—good education, reliable employment, etc.—they often do too much, micromanaging every moment of their child’s life, which usually hinders the child’s ability to learn, experiment, and function on their own. “If our children are to thrive in a world that is rapidly evolving and full of uncertainty, they need less structure and more play,” writes the author. “They need to become comfortable with experimentation, risk-taking, and trial-and-error learning. Shielding them from failure is counterproductive. Our kids need to spend less time burnishing their resumes and more time exploring and reflecting.” Bolstering her arguments with research statistics and case studies, Levine offers readers a concrete review of what is working and, more importantly, what is not working for parents and young adults. She analyzes the paralyzing effects of excessive stress and depression, suggests age-appropriate responsibilities for children as young as toddlers (put toys away, for example), and encourages parents to step back and try to refrain from engaging in helicopter parenting. Despite the author’s conversational tone, she imparts a strong and convincing message: Parents must let their children develop their independence in order to greet their futures with confidence and the skills necessary to survive.
Rock-solid advice for harried parents in a world that shows no signs of slowing down.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-265775-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An East German psychotherapist explores, in an occasionally affecting way, the experience of living within a totalitarian system. It was a system in which a citizen had to guard his utterances not only outside but inside the home, because parents could not speak too freely in front of children, who might themselves be indiscreet or inadvertently betray them. The individual was required not merely to conform but to show enthusiasm for the system. It was not possible, Maaz writes, ``to escape this personality deformation.'' The East German system used overt force, including torture and arrest, as well as the indirect force of legal insecurity, reprisals, intimidation, indoctrination, and fear. It required one to ``sacrifice emotional spontaneity, all frankness and honesty, as well as [one's] critical faculty,'' even to preserve a ``relatively safe life of subservience.'' Few were able to resist the pressure. Millions participated regularly in huge ``jubilation marches,'' and an estimated half a million citizens were informants of the Stasi, the secret police. It was little wonder that the capacity for independent thought and action became increasingly rare. In describing this process, Maaz is persuasive and, in a book published originally in 1990 in Germany, prescient regarding the difficulties that East Germans would face in adjusting to democracy. When dealing with the more theoretical foundations of a controlled psychological environment he is less convincing, as when he complains about the authoritarian technique of ``forcing children to sit on the potty''; he is even self- contradictory when, discussing his therapeutic work with patients, he describes the act of emigration from East Germany as a ``sadomasochistic defense of their dammed-up aggression.'' And when he fears for a new economic expansion that will ``exacerbate the ecological crisis'' and ``step up the armaments business,'' he is venturing beyond his area of expertise. Like the curate's egg, good in parts.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-393-03364-3
Page Count: 196
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1994
A courageous, often profound, and extraordinary attempt by one of England's best historians to cut through the pessimism and parochialism of the profession and to find the bonds of humanity underlying its conventional divisions. Zeldin (History/Oxford Univ.; The French, 1983, etc.) ranges with prodigious learning over different civilizations and epochs, dealing with subjects as disparate as why men and women find it difficult to talk to one another and why political scientists have misunderstood the animal kingdom. His method is anything but academic: He starts most chapters with an interview or description of a person, usually French and usually a woman (``because many women seem to me to be looking at life with fresh eyes'') before broadening the discussion to analyze the nature of the concerns expressed, their historical origins, and the ways in which different civilizations have dealt with them. In doing so, he raises some questions shunned by the academic world and asks others more likely to be raised in magazines and self-help books: ``Is it inevitable,'' he asks, ``that as women become increasingly adventurous and have ever higher expectations of life, they will find men less and less adequate?'' Why are humans ``still so awkward...with even 40 per cent of Americans...complaining that they are too shy to speak freely?'' In answering questions like this, he repeatedly produces the unusual fact or the revisionist view: Writing of Islamic societies, for instance, he notes that sociability, not war, is considered the defining element of the good life. Ultimately, this is a call for a sense of the richness of life and for optimism, which he defines as ``awareness that despite nastiness and stupidity, there is something else too. Pessimism is resignation, an inability to find a way out.'' Not always as skeptical as he might be (Stalin and Hitler, he says, ``remained desperately hungry for respect''), but no short review can do justice to the richness, humor, humanity, and range of this important book.
Pub Date: Jan. 25, 1995
ISBN: 0-06-017160-X
Page Count: 416
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1994
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