Solid, logical tips for readers to be better parents than their own parents.
A veteran London-based psychotherapist uses her training and numerous case studies to formulate advice on how to develop strong and lasting relationships with your children.
“I take the long-term view on parenting rather than a tips-and-tricks approach,” writes Perry (How To Stay Sane, 2012, etc.). “I am interested in how we can relate to our children rather than how we can manipulate them….This book is for parents who not only love their children but want to like them too.” At the beginning, the author asks readers to examine their own childhoods—the good, bad, and everything in-between—and assess what made them feel safe, nurtured, and loved unconditionally. If one did not have a childhood that fostered these positive emotions, as many have not, then she suggests that the emotional discomfort one feels is the clue to what not to do with your own child. By identifying these difficulties, one is more readily able to do the opposite and nurture positive feelings in your child. Perry looks at pregnancy and the first few months of life with a newborn, noting how the months prior to birth and immediately after create significant changes in a parent’s life as they assume one of life’s greatest responsibilities. The author encourages parents to talk to and engage with their child as soon as they can, accepting them as a fully aware person and not someone to talk down to or ignore by constantly being on the phone or by using electronic devices to entertain them. Her common-sense advice is backed by research and case studies as well as a variety of exercises for parents, including one about “how to predict difficulties.” Although Perry’s theories are hardly groundbreaking, the presentation of the information is friendly, accessible, and candid, making it easy to digest and act on.
Solid, logical tips for readers to be better parents than their own parents.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-984879-55-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Science for liberal-arts students.
A brainstorm that brings regrets yields a different sort of popular book on the state of neuroscience.
Grappling with a bad bout of writer’s block, freelancer Cass suddenly asked himself: How can you expect to live by your wits if you have no idea how your wits work? He would explore the inner workings of the brain, he decided, entering into communion with the organ. So, notebook at the ready, Cass visited state-fair exhibits and serious labs. He interviewed various doctors, researchers, behaviorists, cognition experts and one transcendental-meditation guru. He checked out legions of lab rats enlisted in the cause of brain science. He started a “brain log” and considered how Malcolm Gladwell and Bill Maher affected his mind. He got himself tested for ADD. He studied—and reports assiduously on—evolutionary psychology, the galvanic skin response to nicotine and, inevitably, alcoholic cognitive impairment. He contemplated the cracks and fissures of the brain, the cortex, nuclei, gyri and suki, neurotransmitters, the hippocampus and dopamine receptors. With flimsy protocols, he conducted amateur experiments at home, in the Mall of America and at an Arby’s fast-food restaurant. But there was a dark history interlaced with the sometimes antic behavior. The author blends his excursions into the science of attention and emotion with the harrowing tale of his stepfather, a seriously crazy man: arrogant, addicted and out of control. The birth of Cass’s first child makes for happier tales, but on balance, his text brings stark news. For all its wonders, through the mysterious amygdala so carefully described, the human brain is also responsible for stupidity, aggression and the sport of competitive eating. Despite the intelligence and easy wit of Cass’s prose, it is all somehow a bit dismal, and he ultimately expresses regret for the effort that produced his earnest, honest testimony.
Science for liberal-arts students.Pub Date: March 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-06-059472-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2006
Like other cultural phenomena, psychosomatic illnesses are subject to changes in fashion; here, Shorter (The Healthy Century, 1987, etc.) has applied his considerable skill in researching medical history to an examination of these trends from the mid-18th century to the present. Shorter defines psychosomatic illness as ``any illness in which physical symptoms, produced by the action of the unconscious mind, are defined by the individual as evidence of organic disease and for which medical help is sought.'' He identifies doctors' attitudes and beliefs as major cultural factors in determining what symptoms the unconscious mind selects, and examines how doctors' ideas have changed as new theories about disease have evolved. He also looks at the changing doctor-patient relationship over the past two-and-a-half centuries, making clear why ``the vapors'' and hysteric fits of paralysis, once especially common among women, are now quite unacceptable (as are the horrific treatments devised by some doctors to deal with them). Shorter notes that today chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is perhaps the most fashionable psychosomatic complaint in a spectrum that includes yeast infections, food allergies, and what has been called the ``twentieth-century disease,'' or ``total allergy syndrome.'' Using CFS as an example, the author traces how a psychosomatic illness becomes fashionable as the mass media, supplanting medical authority, disseminate pseudoscientific information about genuine, difficult-to-diagnose organic diseases to suggestible individuals with quite different symptoms. Whereas the ``stifling intimacy of family life'' in Victorian times increased the propensity for certain psychosomatic illnesses, he explains, today social isolation and exposure to media sensationalism produce others. A fine, example-filled account of how different times and different mores produce different psychosomatic illnesses.
Pub Date: Dec. 16, 1991
ISBN: 0-02-928665-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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