PROJECT LOVE

WHAT LEGACY DO YOU WANT TO LEAVE?

by Payman Fazly ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 22, 2021

A book about teaching and encouraging young children to be more loving people.

At the beginning of this debut, Fazly reminds readers that “Our childhood home is our first school” and that learning about love is just like learning a language: If children are exposed to it at home, they’re far more likely to become proficient at it in the wider world. This places all the emphasis for cultivating loving personalities on the shoulders of parents, as Fazly states unambiguously throughout the book: “The health and wholeness of children,” he writes, “depends on the health and wholeness of those who care for them.” Infants, he asserts, are “hardwired” with a need for emotional connection, and Fazly consistently stresses to parents that, in order to create a loving environment for a child, one must learn to be a loving person in general and be acutely aware of what their kids see in them. The author takes pains to remind readers that they are fallible and that although mistakes will happen along the way, one can learn from them: “Mishaps are like knives,” he writes. “They can cut us, as we grab them by the blade, or serve us, when we grab them by the handle.” The resulting approach is appealingly holistic.

Over the course of this self-help guide, Fazly present readers with a cleareyed view of the underlying morals of enlightened parenting, and new parents, in particular, will likely find it a great help. The author’s considerations range widely, covering a broad spectrum of human emotion, and he shows confidence in his judgments: “Shame is destructive to our emotional and physical health,” he writes, for example, and he asserts that “boredom makes us doubt the meaningfulness of life.” His tone is empathetic throughout, and he enlivens his account with a great many stories from his own life, including exercises that he used in bringing up his own children. He also makes sure to highlight the concept that kids are always watching the adults around them and absorbing behavioral examples from what they observe. At one point, for instance, he says that his Iranian upbringing instilled in him a grinding work ethic that he tried hard to shed so that his own children would have a better, more balanced view of the subject; specifically, he wanted them to emphasize their passions in life: “Work that is aligned with our passion and creativity is always energizing,” he writes, “no matter how demanding it may be.” His use of factual examples can sometimes go astray, as when he writes that “Animals kill and eat members of other species, but when it comes to the members of their own kind, they rarely cross that line.” (Cannibalism is actually quite common among nonhuman animals.) But the humility and encouragement of the bulk of his book win the day, cheerfully reminding readers that failure is not the end of the world and that love is truly the center of everything.

A sweeping and highly readable guide to raising caring, sensitive kids.

Pub Date: July 22, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-73756-370-9

Page Count: 210

Publisher: Payman Fazly LLC

Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2021

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS | SELF-HELP