⋙ [PDF] Raising Children Who Think for Themselves Elisa Medhus 9781582700472 Books

Raising Children Who Think for Themselves Elisa Medhus 9781582700472 Books

Download As PDF : Raising Children Who Think for Themselves Elisa Medhus 9781582700472 Books

Raising Children Who Think for Themselves Elisa Medhus 9781582700472 Books

A very good and informative read.


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Raising Children Who Think for Themselves Elisa Medhus 9781582700472 Books Reviews

in today's media-driven world, this is a great and much needed guide for parents and grandparents.
Great resource
I bought this book years ago, in preparation for child rearing, as I wanted to prepare myself not only physically but also mentally for parenthood. I started reading it, but for some reason could not finish it.. I could not tell why. I am a voracious reader, and can tolerate even the most drawn out and/or challenging reads. Thinking that I was not exactly ready to be a parent anyway, I put it down for later read.

Fast forward to today, I am pregnant with our first child. I pulled out our collection of expecting and parenting books and realized that this was the only I had not finished, so I began to read it again. Somehow, having an imminent family of three now makes the book's lack of appeal more clear to me. Many things are opinion based - her opinion, mostly, which is fine, except that the author has no expertise in child psychology and writes simply from anectodal experiences. That I can get through just fine, but then some of the ideas in the book just seemed unreasonable to me.

Curious, I looked her up to see if she has published other books - after all, perhaps I am just missing something here. I found out that her first child had committed suicide, that she has started a blog about communicating with his spirit, and that she believes Darwin's ideas have been conducive to violence and greed in our modern society.

So basically, I was reading a book which contains solely her subjective personal opinions on child rearing, not research based data on child rearing or psychology. Not that I am all that crazy about the latter, but at least they would have been more objective foundation grounds for a parenting book. However, as the book is based entirely on her own personal experiences, the results of her personal experiences become very relevant. And sad as the tragedy is for her and her family, as the author of this book she has lost all credibility for me. I will simply be recycling the book, without finishing it.
I call this book our parenting bible; it's like our own little parenting instruction booklet. How many times have you said "I wish there were a good instruction manual for this parenting stuff"? This book is it. The last half of the book contains a set of if / then scenarios for when children "do this or that" then parents could "do this or that" for all types of situations we find ourselves in as parents. It's brilliant and better than that... it's alphabetized so you can look up situations up like you would in a dictionary. We keep the book handy and refer to it often.
This is a GREAT book for parents to help their children grow up with the right tools to help them in their lives. I recommend this book to ANY parents, stepparent, or anyone who is around children on a regular basis.
my daughter is 18 months old and our son is due any day. during my first pregnancy, i thought a lot about what i wanted to accomplish as a parent, what i wanted to do for/give my children to prepare them for the world. and i came to just this phrase, i wanted them to think for themselves. so naturally i was drawn to this book.

i'll be honest, i have not finished it, and i'm not sure i will. i believe whole-heartedly in the author's intentions, but here's the thing, i've already read a book that covers the same ground, leads us parents in the same direction, wants us to achieve the same goals for our children and our relationships with them and this other book does it more efficiently, with better research and better examples of what to say and do. i recommend reading "how to talk so kids will listen and how to listen so kids will talk." this book is sold more as a way to stop fighting with your kids, but ultimately it's about teaching them to recognize and identify their emotions, express the emotions in healthy and constructive ways, and to make their own decisions and accept consequences while respecting the fact that they have to live in a family and cooperate with others. the authors have a section on autonomy and how to encourage it, how to let go as parents, admit we don't have all the answers, and direct kids to asking other qualified adults, eg, a doctor, for answers.

in reading "raising children who think for themselves" i kept feeling that i was reading a rough draft of "how to talk...". "raising children..." feels more earnest in tone, but also more naive and less practical. the best thing about "how to talk..." is that the authors ran support groups wherein the techniques were used by parents who then reported back with the results. so you have numerous examples of actual conversations between children and parents and how it all went. you also get to read how parents 'feel silly' or 'awkward' talking this way, but then you can see that their kids responded positively to it. i just didn't get the concrete, real world experience from "raising children..." my hat is off to the author for wanting to make the world a better place in this way, but so much of her advice seems to be off the top of her head from her experience being around children. i'm around children a lot and i have very similar values to her, but that doesn't make me an expert.

read "how to talk so kids will listen..." instead. it's the same goals, but better researched with better examples of what to *actually do*. it's a much better use of our precious time as parents.
I found this book to be very boring. It was written in a very monotone sort of way. It does have some helpful advice, but everything in it seems to be what others have already written about. I was very disappointed. A much better read that hits on almost all of the same ideas is called "Peaceful Parenting, Peaceful Kids" by Naomi Drew.
A very good and informative read.