Product Description

Informative, inspiring, and enlightening, Becoming the Parent You Want to Be provides parents with the building blocks they need to discover their own parenting philosophy and develop effective parenting strategies.  Through in-depth information, practical suggestions, and many lively first-person stories, the authors address the many dilemmas and joys that the parent of young children encounter and demonstrate a range of solutions to the major issues that arise in the raising of babies, toddlers and preschoolers.  Full of warmth, clarity, humor, and respect, Becoming the Parent You Want to Be gives parents permission to be human: to question, to learn, to make mistakes, to struggle and to grow, and, most of all, to have fun with their children.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19299 in Books
• Published on: 1997-02-03
• Released on: 1997-02-03
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Amazon.com
This may be the best parenting book to come around in years. Laura Davis and Janis Keyser take a straightforward, real, and respectful approach to parenting and children. The book gives solid information on sound child development as well as specific tips that run the gamut from getting your child to sleep to dealing with fear of Halloween to toileting (toilet training) as a metaphor for learning to disciplinary issues. Based on nine principals that deal with issues of time, optimism, struggle, anger, balancing needs, and learning as you go, this book will help you discover and work with your own parenting philosophy.

From Booklist
Most new parents are eager for practical advice and support from others more knowledgeable about the needs of very young children. Davis and Keyser's guide compares favorably to the American Academy of Pediatrics' similarly substantive Caring for Your Baby and Young Child: Birth to Age Five (1991), as it presents a warm, upbeat approach to child rearing. Davis and Keyser assume children are eager to learn, and their parents, to participate actively in their education--a philosophy that animates the nine parenting principles, which include cultivating a spirit of optimism about your children, developing a vision for your family, understanding that parents are always growing, etc., that introduce and provide a framework for the rest of the text. Davis and Keyser weave tips, techniques, and personal stories together to address children's feelings, behaviors, bodies, and relationships fluidly, readably, and confidently. Kathryn Carpenter

From the Publisher
A Sourcebook of Strategies for the First Five Years.

"Laura Davis and Janis Keyser provide straightforward approaches to the everyday questions and struggles faced by parents, and even answer questions you might have been afraid to ask. They speak respectfully to all types of families, offering insights and tools that really work. A great practical and readable resource. I highly recommend it."
--Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, author of Raising Your Spirited Child

"This unusually thorough book provides today's parents with rich and abundant insights...an enormously helpful resource."
--Polly Berrien Berends, author of Whole Child, Whole Parent; Gently Lead; and Coming to Life

Customer Reviews

interesting read
This book can be refreshing to read, fun, informative and even personal. It makes you think about you and your child rather than giving you advice how to be perfect. It is nice that families of different ethnic origin are pictured - it makes the world more round and gives a clear message. It's readable for specific topics or chapter after chapter, you don't need to know the last few sequences to understand the one that really interests you. Two thumbs up for 'Becoming the parent you want to be'.

Many wonderful parts, but not about babies
I am both a lactation consultant and a mental health counselor with families and children. I love this book, and suggest it all the time - with one very strong caveat. Despite the depth of sensitivity and understanding the authors have for preschoolers and older toddlers, they miss the boat about babies. As other reviewers have said, their views for younger children reflect a lack of understanding of the newest knowledge about the neuroscience of development (even the knowledge we had when the book was first published a while ago). Particularly problematic are the areas on early feeding and sleep. Better books include the popular books by William and Martha Sears, and Elizabeth Pantley's books, especially her book on sleep.

I'd like to take a minute to contradict the reviewer who alleged that following the methods in this book would result in "bratty" children. Other than the problems noted above, this book does a great job helping parents to incorporate the best that modern science knows about how to raise kids. When kids learn how to understand themselves and the world around them, they have self control. Sure, this means that sometimes you have to take the time to stop and explore their feelings and the world with them. It's more work early on, and few adults were raised this way. That doesn't mean it doesn't work better. Later, kids raised like this stand out because of their sensitivity to themselves and others. They know how to take care of themselves, and they know how to be kind.

This is a great "how to" book - parents can flip to a section about the problem they are facing and get tailored information about that problem. It goes very well with other books about emotion coaching and understanding your own process as a parent, such as: Parenting From the Inside Out by Siegel & Hartzel, John Gottman's books, even the classic How To Talk/How to Listen.

Mediocre blast from the past
This book would have been ground-breaking...had it been published in 1975. Or maybe 1965. I was astonished to read a book advocating gender-neutral dressing in overalls (why not simply pants, for heaven's sake), and fairy tales and toys depicting boys who sew, cook, and dress dolls, and girls who slay dragons and lead the free world -- it brought back memories of all the corny "Free to be you and me" business popular when I was a child. I found the section on child sex-play and nudity to be odd, to put it mildly. Most strange was the section on dealing with children (white children, presumably) who call darker skinned people "dirty." I am not sure what part of North America is so insulated that a child has never even seen a picture of a non-blond child in a book, magazine, or on TV. The solution is not be to deliver a lecture that, "Gosh, her skin is meant to be that way," but for the parents to actually get out more often and talk to others. The rest of the book is okay, but these sections are so strange that they overshadow the work.