Reviews

Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Teach Us about the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans by Michaeleen Doucleff

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ehenselbecker's review against another edition

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funny informative medium-paced

4.0

meessmeeth's review

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funny informative reflective medium-paced

3.75

sakusha's review against another edition

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hopeful informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.5

The woman who told me about this book also advised me to say “yes” to everything my kid wants for a week. So I assumed the book would be more positive parenting junk. But I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t. The author even criticizes positive parenting herself. I actually liked this book a lot, because instead of going on theories like positive parenting does, it goes on what actually works for several different cultures; it’s like blue zones for parenting! Secondly, the author tries out their parenting methods on her own unruly three year old child and gets great results. She calls this method TEAM parenting:

*T stands for together. Parents constantly stimulating kids with play and child-centered activities make the parents stressed and the kids bored or grumpy when not stimulated (84). Go about your business and let the child watch and join in at her own will. Forcing can create resistance (70). Minimize dictating what the child does with her time. The young child shouldn’t be told to go play while the parent does the chores, because this demotivates kids from doing chores when older and teaches kids that they are exempt from work (87). Young kids naturally find it fun to help parents with chores (and should be allowed to do so even if they make a mess or do it wrong). (This was true of my own kid too.) Rewarding kids for chores teaches them to only do a chore when there’s something in it for them, so they wont help unless they get something external out of it. Chore charts teach kids to only do what’s on the chart (56). If the task is too advanced for the child, the parent may ignore the child’s request [to help], let the kid watch, or break the task into a smaller, more doable subtask. If the child begins to waste precious resources, the parent will guide the child into being more productive or tell them to leave (60, 70). With younger kids, make sure to be doing the chore together, not just telling the kid to do it alone (66). Also make sure that they are helping you with things you actually need, not fake tasks which the kids will soon learn are not worth anything (70). With older kids, give indirect requests for help like “The dog’s bowl is empty” instead of “Feed the dog” (75). This encourages kids to take care of what needs to be done without being told what to do. Older kids should be raised to care for younger kids (260).

*E stands for encourage. Encourage kids to share by saying something like “It’s your little sister, the poor thing. Give her a little” or “You don’t like your brother? Poor thing, he’s hungry” (166, 218). Parent with questions, like “Who made this mess?”, “Who’s ignoring me?”, “What am I, your maid?” It encourages thought. Model what you want the child to do (190). Don’t give the child choices; just do what you want, and the child will follow; fewer words create less resistance and stress (191). Giving the child choices encourage the child to be selfish and inflexible instead of assimilating to the family (192). Discourage misbehavior with ignoring (193). If your child hurts you or someone else, say “Ouch, that hurts” (162). (Some kids may just find this funny though and want to do it again to get the same reaction from you. . . .) Or put it down by saying “Only babies hit.” Connect bad behavior or bad manners with being a baby (118, 266). Tell the child to try harder, because the parents are trying hard (119). Show disapproval with facial expressions too. Kids can’t argue with a facial expression (182).

*A stands for autonomy, which is the book says is not the same as independence. An independent person is disconnected from others, while an autonomous person is still connected and responsible for helping others (258, 272). Avoid speaking for your child; let them speak. If they are shy, you can answer in this way: “Joey told me he’s feeling/interested in . . .” (266) Let the child do things on their own so they develop skills and confidence. You or another person can be nearby to make sure they don’t get into real danger (blood, death, broken bones) (185, 262). Avoid making the child feel controlled or dominated. Instead of telling a kid to stop hitting, walk away from a hitting child. Instead of telling a kid to stop using a thing, just remove it from the room (190). Instead of telling them to get out of danger, you or someone else should silently spot them (253). You can explain the common sense consequence of their action using stories. Instead of saying “don’t throw rocks,” you can say say, “You might hurt someone with the rocks” (183). (Unfortunately not all kids will believe this or care if they hurt someone or someone else.)

*M stands for minimal interference.

*Minimize telling your kids what to do/not do, but when you do tell them what to do/not do, use a calm voice (17) and try to make your commands be about helping (253). Be direct and don’t phrase it as a question (79, 260). Example: “You need to comb her hair.” If you have to repeat yourself, wait five minutes before repeating, and stay calm (80). When you have to go somewhere with your kids, often just telling them that you’re leaving and then going out of the home gets them to hurry more than you sticking around inside telling them to get ready to go.

*When you’re angry at your child, stop talking and leave the room if you have to (150-151). Don’t yell or argue (157). For kids who are trying to get attention from you, this works well.

*When your kid is angry, try to stay quiet and impassive because noise, movement, & emotion are stimulating (169). And kids likely won’t listen to reason when they are upset (174). Can try tickling the child to get them to forget their anger (174). Or try replacing the anger with awe (176). Or send the child outside (178). If the child is older (7+) and knows better, then parents should ignore the outburst (179). See tantrums as a chance for the child to practice calming themselves down and for you to model calmness” (179-180).

*Minimize toys. If the child doesn’t clean up their toys, throw them away or donate them to charity (94).

*Minimize rewards. Don’t give gifts for specific tasks. Instead you can give gifts for general helpfulness, and make sure that the gifts are something necessary like clothing or a special meal (117).

*Minimize praise. Starting in the 1980s, “experts” began telling parents that praising kids was necessary for helping them have good self-esteem (40). Yet in other cultures, parents praise little and the kids still have confidence, empathy, and good mental health (41). Praise causes siblings to get jealous and competitive with each other (112). Praising less makes the kid more likely to listen when you do speak (42). Instead of praise, you can use facial expressions to show approval (112). When you do praise, connect it to maturity, like “You’re a big girl now” or “You’ve learned to work” or “You’re growing up” (117).

Other advice:

*Expect kids to misbehave and be irrational; it’s your job to teach them to behave (154).

*Give misbehaving kids more tasks to do (188). (Okay, but what if their misbehavior is refusing to do the tasks they already had?)

I think one reason why kids are better behaved in these other cultures is because there is less exposure to electronics/media and toys, and in some of them the kids (like the ones in Tanzania and possibly the Arctic too?) don’t go to school. When there is little exposure to electronics/media and other toys, helping parents is seen as fun. The book advocates for not forcing kids to learn or engage in a bunch of activities (298), but school forces kids to do just that. School takes away kids’ autonomy. Another reason kids in those other cultures are probably happier, more confident, and better behaved is because they have the freedom to explore the world outside their house, which isn’t really possible in WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic) societies because of strangers, traffic, homeless people, drug sellers, gangs, and even laws against letting your kids out alone.

“How do we expect children to learn to act maturely if we never expose them to mature adults on a regular basis?” (90) That is another reason not to put kids in school. Here’s another: Kids five years older than another child can be better teachers than adults (281). The book mentioned the reasons being energy, fun, and skill level. I would add that kids are more likely to want to learn the thing when it’s being taught by a kid who they are more likely to look up to than an adult.

Interesting:

The book says the nuclear family (mom, dad, kids) and the mom being a housewife didn’t start becoming the norm until the Catholic church prohibited marrying relatives (25-29). But I don’t see why this would stop people from living with their extended families. Hunter and gatherer people obviously needed to live in groups because they relied on each other for food, but other than them, I suspect that people only resorted to living with extended family when they didn’t have the money to live separately.

Christina Hardyment read and reviewed over 650 parenting books and manuals from the 1600s to the 1990s and found that most parenting advice isn’t based on scientific/medical studies or traditional knowledge. Most was based on written by male doctors and intended for nurses who cared for orphans (33). Feeding babies on a schedule and making kids get a certain number of hours of sleep is based on institutions which wanted the group of kids in their care all doing the same thing at the same time (34). Our culture makes us believe that kids need to be stimulated with toys and activities in order to become smart, but there’s no scientific evidence that they are needed (36). Kids before the industrialized revolution made their own toys, and the smaller amounts of possessions made the kids appreciate them more. The abundance of toys makes kids less likely to want to help parents with chores/work (37, 107). The government encourages kids to learn math and science in order to compete with other countries in war or space technology (38).

Doucleff said that she had a lot of trouble getting her kid to go to sleep each night. I was lucky not to ever have this problem with my own kid. I think kids tend to resist being told to go to bed because they know that the parents are going to stay up, and the kids want to continue being with the parents, seeing/doing what they’re doing, or just continuing to have fun playing. I think if the parent just lies down in their own bed and goes to sleep, the kid would want to do similar because they’d be bored without the parent awake. The book advises: Don’t yell at the kid to go to bed or make threats. Stay calm, turn down the lights, say you’re tired, get ready for bed yourself, give the child quiet positive attention when she does as she should (305). I suppose probably the reason stories get read at bedtime is to get the kid to be quiet, and the book often puts them to sleep. The author’s kid stayed up late the first few nights. On night four, she went to bed on time. By day seven, she got ready for bed almost entirely on her own, and on day 10 she went to bed by herself (304-305).

Things I disagreed with:

When your kid hurts you, the book says to fly the kid in a circle like an airplane (173). How is this good? It rewards the violence.

The book advises saying yes to kids’ crazy ideas even if it’s impossible to do (77). The kid will likely forget about their idea (78). What if they don’t? Then the kid learns you’re a liar.

The book advocates for extended family members and friends helping a mother out with childcare after she gives birth (279), but it seems like an unrealistic thing to do in modern countries where everyone has their own things to deal with (school, work, health problems, appointments). And even in primitive societies, it doesn’t seem very possible, since many women in the tribe could be new mothers at the same time, so how is a new mom supposed to help out another new mom when she’s busy with her own baby? In these cultures where they don’t use birth control, it’s easy to imagine that the women are constantly pregnant or with a new baby. And don’t use breastfeeding as a way to prevent pregnancy, because I exclusively breastfed and still got my period two months after giving birth.

The book says that anxiety/depression in kids is caused by too much parental control (7), feeling powerless (264), and not enough time with extended family members (26). I think anxiety is caused by a shy disposition, bullying, and lack of social experience which is made worse by electronics. I didn’t start out shy, and my parents were not controlling. But I developed anxiety after getting bullied in school. Living with more relatives wouldn’t have helped me. I didn’t feel powerless, but I did feel pressured to be good and not retaliate against kids who bullied me. If I’d been allowed to retaliate, kids likely still would’ve shunned me for retaliating. I’d either be perceived as the weak nerd or the scary psycho. Being around people who are not welcoming or friendly causes the anxiety and depression.

“When you yell at children, they stop listening” (137). I disagree. With my own kid, yelling gets her to obey better; yelling tells her I’m serious and that she’s upset me. I think the kids who stop listening when they’re yelled at are kids who are yelled at on a regular basis so they learn to tune it out. For me, yelling isn’t that common.

“Every time you stop yourself from acting in anger, your child sees a calm way to deal with frustrations. They learn to stay composed when anger arises” (146). Modeling doesn’t work for my kid. I’ve modeled being polite and having manners for a decade, but she still doesn’t copy me.

“With little kids, you often think they’re pushing your buttons, but that’s not what’s going on. They’re upset about something, and you have to figure out what it is” (144). Not always true. What about when a kid repeatedly takes off his shoes in the car and throws them at your head as you’re driving and laughs about it? What about when you tell a kid not to spit out their drink but they do it anyway and laugh about it? Some kids just misbehave because they find it fun(ny).

The book says when a kid hits others, you should do this (217):

Parent: “Why don’t you hit me?”

If kid hits the parent, the parent says “Ow, that hurts!” in a playful tone. “Don’t you like me?” “Are you a baby?”

I imagine a kid taking the playful tone to mean that it’s okay to hit their parent, and thinking of this exchange as one big joke/game. The kid will think, “Yes I like you, no I’m not a baby, but it’s fun to hit people, and even funner when I get to hit you and you give me positive attention for it.”

The book says these things fuel intrinsic motivation: sense of connectedness, autonomy, and competency (110-111). I disagree that these things are needed. I think what fuels intrinsic motivation is pleasure. I had intrinsic motivation to write books at age 10, and it had nothing to do with feeling connected to anyone or feeling good at it. (I wasn’t even praised for it! My mom criticized my stories!) I just found it enjoyable. Little kids get pleasure out of helping adults, showing that they can do it too.

The book says to discourage children from doing bad things, tell them stories. I don’t have a problem with telling common sense stories like “Once a boy walked onto thin ice, fell in, and died.” But the book advocates for telling monsters stories like, “If you get too close to the water, the sea monster will get you” (204). These kind of stories are lies, and they only work on young kids. Eventually the kids will grow up, stop believing them, think of you as a liar, and then do the bad thing because they know the consequence you told them was false. Cultures doing things like this is probably how religions got invented. The stories also use fear to get kids to behave—fear of an imaginary creature—yet the book says parents shouldn’t use fear to control kids—fear of the parent (207). But the parent is real, and a monster is false, so IMO it’s better to make the child fear the parent rather than a monster.

Although i disagreed with the monster advice, i tried it on my 10 year old kid. She wanted me to read her a book, but i said i wouldnt til she got her underwear on. She said “why do i need underwear on?” So i said, “cuz if u dont get ur underwear on, a monster will come and get you.” She said “whats a monster?” I didnt even answer because I’m pretty sure she already knew what a monster was. Without me having to say anymore, she took off laughing upstairs to get her underwear. After she came back down, she said something like “u know what the nicest word is? ‘Gimme.’” I said “no, the nicest word is ‘please.’” She said “no, its ‘gimme.’” I said, “if u keep saying gimme, the gimme monster will get u.” She laughed and asked what the monster looked like and where it was. So I made up some stuff on the fly and told her.