What’s It All About, Alfie?

I’ve been slow to post about my latest two reads. Mostly because they are non-fiction (again) and have to do with my children. They are potentially even self-help books. Who, me? Perish the thought.

The first book was Unconditional Parenting, by Alfie Kohn. I was in desperate need for some parenting advice. My eldest child was defying us at every turn and no disciplinary technique seemed to be working. (I know. Not MY child.) To make a long story short, I picked up this book.

Kohn’s book is the anti-behaviorist parenting book. He asks a fundamental question of what can we do to work with our children rather than doing to our children. He suggests moving away from rewards and punishments and moving to love and reason.

At first, I thought he belonged to the same school of thought as “Love and Logic”, but after talking to some other parents and doing a little research of my own, I realized he really did not belong in this camp. He is not a “there will be consequences for your actions” type of guy. In fact, he could come across as a real softie with his parenting approach.

However, a lot of things work in his favor. He backs up his argument with scientific studies which separates him from one those “Hey, it worked for me, so maybe it will work for you” authors that litter the how-to-parent literature landscape these days. He also strongly defies the conventional wisdom of parental discipline today, which is depressingly heavy on correcting and controlling children. He is not overly prescriptive with his solutions – he does not offer scripts or scenarios that I can never remember or apply at just the right moment, but instead gives overarching principles. Many of those principles resonated with me.

While I find it extremely difficult to pull off all of his suggestions all of the time, putting his practice in place for just a few weeks resulted in an immediate change of responses from our child. It is still too easy to fall back on a more dictating style of parenting, but I’m striving to be more respectful of my children and minimizing command and control, so it’s a start. Recommended. And he’s coming to a theatre near you:

The other self-help book was Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, by Richard Louv. I picked up this book at Wordsmiths Books in Decatur on my way to the North Carolina mountains with my family. I thought it would be appropriate given the gorgeous natural landscape we’d be surrounded by for the next 8 days. I also wouldn’t have to feel guilty that my children would be experiencing any kind of nature-deficit for the next several days. Whew!

I have to say I’m inherently disposed to the argument Louv is making, which is: Being outside and in nature is an imperative for children. I was a child who spent a lot of time outside and my husband had a similar experience. Big backyards, lots of other neighborhood children outside, lots of opportunities to explore. Both of us have great memories of playing outdoors and my husband, at least, is very well-adjusted.

I would like to try to provide the same experience and environment for my children, but it hasn’t been easy. We don’t exactly live in paradise. Another challenge has been that one of my child’s “best friends” gets creeped out by the feel of grass under his bare feet. It has been nice to have this book provide support to the thinking that getting your child outside, in nature, is important of and by itself.

Taking a trick from Nitro Nicole, the pros/cons of the book are as follows:

(+)

• strong arguments for advantages to children spending time in nature
• easy examples of how to get your child in nature and involved in nature
• tries to overcome fear factor that has increasingly pervaded our culture and has had dampened enthusiasm for outside experiences
• made me scope out perfect tree for backyard fort

(-)

• -is he preaching to the choir?
• could be taken as another manifesto to make parents feel guilty about their child-rearing

The One Thing You Need to Know

In an effort to be like the cool kids with MBA’s, I decided to read The One Thing You Need to Know (. . . About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success), by Marcus Buckingham. I had seen Mr. Buckingham speak at an internal company meeting before, and I, like pretty much everyone there, was pretty much mesmerized. He’s a very dynamic speaker, and he throws out some pretty unconventional ideas in a very convincing fashion. After seeing him speak, and after seeing this book (his third) on all the cool kids’ bookshelves, I felt that I had to add it to my stack.

I think this might be the first B-school type book to be reviewed on BGB. Call me a trailblazer, a trendsetter, a pioneer, or whatever you like. But I figure If I’m going to spend my precious reading time on something, well then I’m going to post on it.

The book is a pretty interesting read. Despite a surprisingly large number of typos (maybe the editor’s boss should have read the book for its content and moved the editor into a position that wouldn’t exploit his or her weaknesses in spelling and grammar), it flows pretty well and is pretty engaging. By the way, my editor just told me to stop using the word “pretty”, which by my count has made six appearances already (including the one in this sentence).

I don’t want to cheat Mr. Buckingham out of royalties by giving away the “secrets” revealed in the book, but I think I can safely say that he tries to distill the essence of great leadership, great management, and sustained individual success each down to one critical philosophy. My problem with the book (not to say that I didn’t enjoy it or that I don’t give due credit to Mr. Buckingham’s ideas) is that I’m not sure what the takeaway from the book should be. As I mentioned, I don’t read many books in this genre, and so I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with what I’ve “learned”.

This is due to a couple of factors. First, I think it’s safe to say that some of these guiding principles or philosophies that make you a great leader or a great manager apparently can’t be taught or learned. So you either have them or you don’t. In that respect, this book doesn’t provide the type of insight that can turn you into something that you’re not; rather, it provides a method for you to determine if you should bother trying your hand at leading or managing. Second, it’s really difficult to figure out how to apply his “one thing” for sustained individual success in the real world. While he acknowledges that it may seem a bit far-fetched and somewhat impractical, he didn’t convince me that it actually isn’t. Without giving it away, suffice it to say that I agree with him that, for example, if I didn’t like fighting fires, I shouldn’t be a firefighter, because I would have difficulty exhibiting sustained success in that role. Gotcha. But when you take his theory down to a more granular, real-world level, it’s hard to understand how I’m supposed to change my role in the manner suggested and get away with it.

This is not a negative review. If you like this kind of stuff, I would recommend this book, because it may change the way you think about your career, or at least provide you with a different lens to look through. But I think my strength, and my path to sustained individual success as a reader, lies in reading fiction or humor.

Back to the Scatological

So the potty has been on the brain lately, as our child has just begun to try hers out. We have lots of interest and some actual “leavings”. So far, so good. I was intrigued then horrified when I came across a link to reviews of two books that are geared towards “a diaper free” baby. The gist is that children in other (i.e., third world) cultures don’t use diapers. Therefore, their methods of training are better than ours, which leave children marinating in their own filth. These methods also reportedly build a closer bond between parent and child and lead to quicker training. And its environmentally friendly. Sounds great.

Here are a few red flags:

• It “requires a pretty big commitment of time (natural elimination does not work in full time day care), and a different way of thinking (pee is sterile, not dirty)” – No jobs for you moms, but you knew that already.
• “It’s going to be a long struggle to get folks used to carrying chamber pots around, or having their baby pee on your lawn, but I think it will happen in small numbers”. Not on my prize-winning begonias!
• It will take a “re-education of the modern public to accept”. And then some. I can see this happening on a future episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm and Larry becoming irate.

Here’s my favorite: “Our family is long past the diaper age, but if we were doing it again, this way makes a whole lot of sense”. So there you go. My children won’t be taking a dump in the Target parking lot, but you should seriously consider it.

Time Off For Good Behavior

I’m not going to post much about this “self-help” book which would only be appealing to my fellow Type-A female members of our blog (and upon reflection we are all intense, type A overachievers) but let’s just say if you are looking for some support to “get out of the rat race” – this book does it.

Mary Lou Quinlan was CEO of the largest ad agency and one day packed it all in and founded her own marketing company and now leads a much happier, fulfilling life. In this book – she interviews about 40 extremely successful women who have all made the change out of their stressful, corporate, high paying jobs to something much more rewarding and balanced. If you can relate to having the good girl DNA which is defined by the “combination of the urge to win and achieve with the desire to please and do the right thing” (sound familiar – anyone) then you will definitely relate to this book. If you want to make a change in your professional life – head toAmazon right now.

The Blessing of a Skinned Knee

I boycotted the State of the Union address last night (because I certainly wouldn’t describe this country as a “union” these days………) and finished my first self-help book of 2005 – The Blessings of a Skinned Knee by Wendy Mogel.

This is a hit book amongst the young, Jewish, family set across America these days. Anyone who has their kid in a JCC nursery program has certainly had a discussion group around this book. The premise of the book is to provide parenting guidance from the perspective of beit din (the ancient court of Jewish law). While I clearly don’t want to bring religion into our blogger site, I am posting this book because it is relevant regardless of your faith or lack thereof.

The book basically covers topics such as: Discovering your unique and Ordinary Child, Teaching your child an attitude of gratitude, the blessing of self-control, bringing moderation and sanctification to your table, etc. etc. I found this book extremely helpful with real tactics to improve the interaction with your children and to modify those behaviors that are driving you crazy. It ain’t so easy bringing up a kid these days and I’m at the point that I will take any advice that I find.

I highly recommend this book for anyone with kids ages 2-8 years old. It reminded me that the way I was brought up (discipline, some fear of the wrath of my parents, etc is okay) and that I’m not always going to make my kids happy.

Anyway – I leave you with a couple quotes that I loved……….

“If your child has a talent to be a baker, do not ask him to be a doctor.” (Hasidic)
“When a person honors the parents, God says, “I consider it as though I lived with them and they honored me.” (Talmud)

I hope I didn’t offend anyone with the religious overtones of the post………..