![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Heart of Parenting: Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child by John Gottman and Joan Declaire
2/5. What it sounds like. I know a lot of people like his advice on marriage, but this book is rough going. There are nuggets of good information here – specifically, the example scripts for how to help a kid find solutions to social/emotional issues without imposing a solution on them – but the packaging is dire. Basically, this was written in the 90's based on, as far as I can tell, observational data from the 80's. The good advice in this book is framed as 'do this instead of hitting your children or telling them that they're stupid.'* Wow, thanks. And don't get me started on the entire chapter designed to convince the reader that dads** can be good parents, and should be. I mean, not incorrect, but oi. Oh, and there's the thing where they pull some extremely 90's scare tactics – if you don't teach your kids to handle their emotions, they will end up in gangs, that sort of thing.
I was looking for something to help people who are already good at accepting a child's emotions and honoring them, but who want some more systematic ways of teaching them to think about feelings. This book does have some advice about how to teach that, but it's slanted so completely to people in another reality that it's practically useless to me.
*I actually really wonder how this study worked. Some of the narratives they report are clearly child abuse to my eye, but the book treats them as bad parental choices, which is a different thing. Is this the difference 40 years makes? Or were they just not saying that they reported a few families to child services? Probably the first one, based on context, which, I was raised in the 80's/90's and thinking back on some of what was considered normal, yeah, yikes.
**No queer families allowed here, btw.
2/5. What it sounds like. I know a lot of people like his advice on marriage, but this book is rough going. There are nuggets of good information here – specifically, the example scripts for how to help a kid find solutions to social/emotional issues without imposing a solution on them – but the packaging is dire. Basically, this was written in the 90's based on, as far as I can tell, observational data from the 80's. The good advice in this book is framed as 'do this instead of hitting your children or telling them that they're stupid.'* Wow, thanks. And don't get me started on the entire chapter designed to convince the reader that dads** can be good parents, and should be. I mean, not incorrect, but oi. Oh, and there's the thing where they pull some extremely 90's scare tactics – if you don't teach your kids to handle their emotions, they will end up in gangs, that sort of thing.
I was looking for something to help people who are already good at accepting a child's emotions and honoring them, but who want some more systematic ways of teaching them to think about feelings. This book does have some advice about how to teach that, but it's slanted so completely to people in another reality that it's practically useless to me.
*I actually really wonder how this study worked. Some of the narratives they report are clearly child abuse to my eye, but the book treats them as bad parental choices, which is a different thing. Is this the difference 40 years makes? Or were they just not saying that they reported a few families to child services? Probably the first one, based on context, which, I was raised in the 80's/90's and thinking back on some of what was considered normal, yeah, yikes.
**No queer families allowed here, btw.