Special Book Reviews

Special Book Reviews

MIND THE GAP!: By Graeme Codrington and Sue Grant-Marshall
Own your past, know your generation, choose your future.

This is the most fascinating book I have read in ages. It is compelling reading for everyone but especially for those working in a therapeutic milieu. It is easy to read and can be referred to ad infinitum as it is a mine of information and in addition will bring many smiles to your face!

It gives insight into a better understanding of many of the simple and complex problems of family dynamics - we can learn to be less critical by accepting the ways, ideas and idiosyncracies, etc of other generations, which can enrich our relationships and make day-to-day living less stressful and anxiety-ridden.

Potential future relationship problems could be obviated with this new-found awareness and sensitivity.

Here are some excerpts from the book......

"The way you parent, the clothes you buy, your relationships with your boss and your daughter, your attitude to money and sex, are, to an extraordinary extent, defined by the era in which you were born. Parents, the church, teachers and employers think that they understand youngsters because they, too, were young once. But, adults no longer live in the world that existed when they were teenagers. We may occupy the same space, home, classroom or office but we live in different worlds. And, these worlds often collide. We've moved in one century from a ' built to last' to a ' throwaway ' society. No wonder age differences are so vast. In this book you will discover your generation and those of the people who make up your life. Once you understand what makes them, and you, tick, the ' gen gap ' begins to shrink. Fasten your seatbelt for a generational roller coaster rid - you may never think the same way again!"

WHAT GENERATION ARE YOU IF YOU HAVE PARENTS:

Who don’t understand that ' whatever ' is a valid answer;
who believe that children should be seen and not heard.

IN THIS BOOK YOU WILL UNDERSTAND WHY:

You are changing both your baby's and your parent's nappies;
You're in your 40s and still trying to prove yourself to mom and dad.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Graeme Codrington is a business consultant and strategist who has worked with most of South Africa's top 100 companies. Together with his partners in their consultancy, TomorrowToday.biz, he has worked around the world, helping companies understand the emerging emotion economy. He is passionate about helping people to understand people. The Generational Theory is one of the frameworks used by TomorrowToday.biz and one that Graeme is particularly passionate about. Sue Grant-Marshall is a multi-award winning journalist who worked on The Argus and The Star ...and was assistant editor at Fair Lady.

It is available at Exclusive Books etc for R 113. and the Parent Centre Library

Reviewed by Margie Davison

Children need Boundaries: by Anne Cawood

Anne is an experienced social worker, mother and grandmother. The book is easy to read and each chapter concludes with a point form summary and includes a skill for effective discipline. The book emphasizes the importance of giving children clear and consistent boundaries to enable them to flourish. The book also includes special interest issues on sibling rivalry, grandparents, boundary setting in the classroom, the difficult or challenging child and maintaining boundaries in challenging situations. Children Need Boundaries is a book well worth reading and using as a parenting manual.

Raising Cain – Protecting the emotional life of Boys: by Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson

The authors both have extensive experience working as child psychologist. The book is an interesting read and the authors give examples of cases they dealt with to introduce the topics covered in each chapter. The authors challenge the reader to look beyond the stereotypes we have for how boys should be and to look instead at their feelings and emotions more. They highlight that boys receive destructive emotional training and are miseducated about their emotions. The chapter on “What boys need” give seven practical insights into nurturing and protecting the emotional life of boys. Raising Cain is an excellent read for anyone raising a son, teachers or anyone working with boys.

The Shelter of Each Other: Rebuilding Our Families To Enrich Our Lives, Mary Pipher. Ph.D

It is not a “how-to-do” book but rather a book which encourages us to think about how we perceive families and how we manage our families in modern times. Taking this time to think is very important even though we often feel that we do not have “the luxury” to stop and think, that we just have to be out there doing what needs to be done in order to survive. Taking time to think, and perhaps then making much needed changes, can help us and our families to be far healthier and happier in the long run.

It acknowledges that family members can cause each other pain and suffering but shows that families, even imperfect ones, can also be “a shelter from the storm”.

The author’s stories of family members who were helped and healed through increased contact with each other, a grandparent, an aunt, a sister, etc, were particularly touching and I found myself shedding a tear more than once.

I was very strongly reminded to show appreciation to the people in my life who have helped me parent my daughter and who have added value to her life. I was also reminded of the old adage, viz, “It takes a whole village to raise a child”. It reminds us of how technology has changed family life and suggests that we ask “Do we like the ways we are changing? How will this new technology affect humans?” The author’s statements “Many children have been conditioned via media into having highly dysfunctional attention spans” and “Rapidly our technology is creating a new kind of human being, one who is plugged into machines instead of relationships” are startling and have made me much more aware of whether my family’s use of the television, the computer, etc, is beneficial to us.

It features a lovely chapter titled “character” which certainly gets one re-thinking the term “self-esteem”.

The author suggests that we should be more concerned about our children’s character which she defines as “that within a person which governs moral choices.” and that we help our children when we:

1. Teach them how to work. “People who have skills and accomplishments feel good about themselves.”
2. Allow them to face challenges. “Challenges successfully met, produce resilience.
3. Are more concerned about them being good than happy. “In reality making wise moral choices is the most direct route to true happiness”.
4. Teach them responsibility and hold them accountable.

By Venecia Barries, Social Worker at the Parent Centre

Projects from around the world that promote critical thinking in young children.
(June 2004 edition; a Bernard van Leer Foundation publication)

This edition presents a fascinating selection of programmes run with children in many countries such as India, Iceland, Mozambique, the Andes Mountains in northern Argentina and South Africa. The editors describe critical thinking as requiring children to engage in looking, understanding, reflecting, judging and making choices. The programmes use stories, fables, games and activities to develop these skills in young children.

Understanding their reality in this way is an important element in the development of resilience in children. Resilience is the capacity to thrive despite adversity. It is the capacity to act in creative ways to confront an ever-changing world.

With critical thinking you make sense of what is happening now and creative thinking helps you to make sense of what you should be moving towards in the future.

Promoting critical thinking is not an intellectual activity in which children simply think, rather it means their total involvement and it means that the adults have to conduct themselves differently, and connect differently with the children. It requires adults to trust children and value their thoughts.

Critical thinking has it roots in infancy. For the natural curiosity of children to flourish children need a strong bond with an adult and this must develop in the first months and years. With very young children, such as those who are not yet verbal, adults need to be able to recognize and understand the signals that these children give. It is about recognizing ‘the excitement of discovery’ in the child from a very early age. Thought processes can be stimulated if the adult notices the child reach for something or watch something that has caught his or her attention and talk about it. In this way children learn about their surroundings and can have some of the questions answered before they are even able to articulate their curiosity.

For the natural curiosity of children to flourish children need a strong bond with an adult and this must develop in the first months and years. With very young children, such as those who are not yet verbal, adults need to be able to recognize and understand the signals that these children give. It is about recognizing ‘the excitement of discovery’ in the child from a very early age. Thought processes can be stimulated if the adult notices the child reach for something or watch something that has caught his or her attention and talk about it. In this way children learn about their surroundings and can have some of the questions answered before they are even able to articulate their curiosity.

As babies grow into toddlers, they become more expressive, and move from the tactile (touch) to the verbal. As they grow older, the different parts of their world start falling into place. Children aged about 18 months to 4 years do not always have the natural ability to distinguish the real from the unreal. This may bring with it unsettling experiences that can be frightening. If adults do not understand the cognitive development processes of children, they may react to their fears in the wrong way. This may cause the child to shut down and remain fearful.

Later children’s powers of expression and rationalization increase. All the questions that children might ask about a situation or their repetitive behaviours are their ways of trying to understand the situation and find a solution. Children need to test and check, question and probe, in order to understand and engage with the world around them.

The ability to ask a relevant question is a very important skill to acquire, as is the confidence to have an opinion and express it, the ability to disagree and yet respect the opinion of others.

The child – who is seen and heard - develops the capacity to think critically and creatively. This quote says it for us: “he speaks about everything that frightens him or that he finds beautiful; he talks about everything between heaven and earth”.

By Joan Eastwood, Social Worker at The Parent Centre

The Childhood Roots Of Adult Happiness: Dr Edward Hallowell

After our own hearts, Dr Hallowell reminds us that although as parents our job is to do what has to be done, we must not limit our interaction with our offspring to prodding them to achieve or simply behave themselves.

His plea, as is ours, is as follows: “let us never, ever forget how deeply children need to feel that they are safe and that they are loved.”

In answer to the question “how much love?” he wisely answers “enough”. He goes on to say “You can feel it, hear it, see it when a child is not getting enough love. On the other had, if you smother your child with love and provide too much, you can see that, too.” How wise that is in its simplicity.

“Unconditional love does not mean that you say yes to everything or that you spoil your children. Loving parents must set limits and deny requests all the time. Good parents often do too much for their children. That can be their great mistake.”

Dr Hallowell uses the term “connection” to mean feeling understood, loved, wanted, and paid attention to by family members. He points out the enormous risk of disconnection.

One form of disconnection is, or course, neglect. The other form of disconnection he describes as follows: “Beware of the rip tide that sucks children out of their childhood and into an achievement lane as early as nursery school.”

He warns; “Don’t over schedule your children with enriching activities that obliterate their time for unstructured play.”

He explains’ “you can’t overestimate the importance of play, especially the kind of play the child makes up on his own or with a friend or group of friends. It is the most important ‘work” your child can do.”

“Go outside and play” used to be what parents said to children as a matter of course, when there were responsible adults at hand to keep an eye on them. Whatever our circumstances, he challenges us with the need to find a safe place for our children, safe from harm and safe from unnecessary intrusion, so that our children may do what children are supposed to do in order to develop naturally - that is to play.

Unhappy Teenagers - A way for parents and teachers to reach them. Author: William Glasser, M D

William Glasser’s vast experience working with parents and teenagers is very apparent in this down-to-earth, practical and extremely readable book.

Case “stories” are used to explain his “Choice Theory” in such an interesting way that the book is hard to put down.

Glasser’s basic premise is that, when one’s teenager is on his own, the only control you, as parent, have over him is the strength of your relationship – an awesome thought, isn’t it. Thus, when a parent uses Choice Theory, one is always thinking and acting to preserve and strengthen that relationship. Parents accomplish this by replacing our ingrained 7 “deadly habits” of external control, criticizing, blaming, complaining, nagging threatening, punishing and rewarding to control (bribing) with the 7 “connecting habits”:

1. Caring, trusting, listening, supporting, negotiating, befriending and encouraging.

William Glasser demonstrates the success of this parental shift with a range of teen-related problems. The range includes academic underachievement, extreme acting out, depression and anorexia nervosa.

By Julia Starck