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A review by joanna_banana
Raising Human Beings: Creating a Collaborative Partnership with Your Child by Ross W. Greene
5.0
It's like this book was written for me! At first I thought he was making it sound too easy and kept asking myself "How am I ever going to do this?" In the heat of the moment it's so easy to count to 5 or threaten "no cartoons!" Or "I'll take your legos away" Or beg and plead to get out of the house on time. None of those approaches solves the problem in a way that's mutually satisfactory. The author is clear that collaborative parenting is NOT living in "Pushover Provinces" just because it's not the "Dictatorial Kingdom." It's about communicating with your child, figuring out the cause of a problem from their perspective, allowing them to come up with a solution, and discussing what you think based on your experience and wisdom of being the adult. It's important to try something that meets your values and expectations and is still responsive to who the kid is and wants to be. It takes practice and the first attempt at solving the problem often doesn't work and you have to keep working on it. I liked the emphasis on figuring out the major unsolved problems you see, checking in with your kid, and talking about them at a time when you both are relaxed and focused, not pressed to leave the house or distracted. How does it work? There are three approaches the author discussed:
Plan A: Our common default as parents, directive and punitive, solving problems for our kids. Author argues we need to steer away from Plan A.
Plan B: The collaborative approach using empathy, appreciating how one's actions are affecting others, resolving disagreements in ways that do not cause conflict, taking another's perspective, and being honest.
Plan C: defer unsolved problem until kid is ready developmentally or until kid has tried to solve on her own. Plan C is usually arrived at after talking to your kid.
I found his discussion about teachers' role to play: Academia still heavily relies on high stakes testing, unattainable expectations and punitive reactions instead of collaborative problem solving. We would do well to all work together with educators.
He also has a chapter on "parental angst" on why we tend to use Plan A: we care a whole lot about our kids and want them to be safe and succeed. That was the chapter that made it seem more doable.
Bottom line: Parent in a way that fosters the better side of our human nature. He states at the end: "The real world needs more human beings." Truth.
Plan A: Our common default as parents, directive and punitive, solving problems for our kids. Author argues we need to steer away from Plan A.
Plan B: The collaborative approach using empathy, appreciating how one's actions are affecting others, resolving disagreements in ways that do not cause conflict, taking another's perspective, and being honest.
Plan C: defer unsolved problem until kid is ready developmentally or until kid has tried to solve on her own. Plan C is usually arrived at after talking to your kid.
I found his discussion about teachers' role to play: Academia still heavily relies on high stakes testing, unattainable expectations and punitive reactions instead of collaborative problem solving. We would do well to all work together with educators.
He also has a chapter on "parental angst" on why we tend to use Plan A: we care a whole lot about our kids and want them to be safe and succeed. That was the chapter that made it seem more doable.
Bottom line: Parent in a way that fosters the better side of our human nature. He states at the end: "The real world needs more human beings." Truth.