Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child -- Book Review

Just finished reading this book and I am impressed. This book feels like the continuation of Between Parent and Child and fills in the missing pieces in Between Parent and Child. Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child focuses on using five key steps for Emotion Coaching. 1. Being aware of the child's emotion. 2. Recognizing the emotion as an opportunity for intimacy and teaching. 3. Listening empathetically and validating the child's feelings. 4. Helping the child verbally label emotions. 5. Setting limits while helping the child problem-solve. I learned about how to be empathetic to a child's feelings through all my previous readings, however, I have always felt a little permissive as a result, but this book fills in that gap with step 5. It teaches you how to be empathetic and understanding and yet still set limit and gives example of how to, setting limits is very important. Just being empathetic and not setting limits or helping your child to move on, is not going to help the child's emotions any better. I also love how the book does consider practicality, and list times that emotional coaching is not appropriate and how it can be delayed, like example when you are in a rush.
The book categorizes Parents into four types: 1. The dismissing parents, who disregard, ignore, or trivialize children's negative emotions. 2. The disapproving parents, who are critical of their children's displays of negative feelings and may reprimand or punish them for emotional expression. 3. The Laissez-Faire parents, who accept their children's emotions and empathize with them, but fail to offer guidance or set limits on their children's behavior. And of course the ultimate goal for me, 4. the Emotion Coach that follows the mentioned five steps above.
Another interesting point mentioned in this book is the strong influence of the father to a child. Even though for reasons unknown, their studies show that the father actually has a stronger influence on the child's emotional intelligent than the mother. So it is actually very important for the dad to get involve with emotion coaching too.

Unconditional Parenting Review

This book has a point, and it definitely did open up my mind. I always thought that I wouldn’t want to use spanking as punishment on my child, but I thought that time-out is a good idea, and that lots of praising is good for self esteem. Oh boy this book sure changed my view. It is true, even the gentle method of time-out and using praise is really just tactics that we parents use in trying to manipulate our children into good behavior. We withhold our love from them when they behave in ways we don’t approve, meaning we only conditionally love them (at least it appears to them in behavior), so how are they going to know they can still come to us and count on our support in the future when they are in trouble. We praise and reward them excessively when they do act according to how we want and we turn the act into solely something to please mom and dad and instead of something that is rewarding in itself, so how are we going to expect them to do good on their own once we are not around to praise them. I definitely want my child to not behave badly, but I want her to do it for the right reasons, because of empathy and knowing the harmful effect on others from their behavior, not because there is a punishment. I also want her to do good and love learning and strive for higher achievement out of the reason that it is enjoyable and rewarding to herself and not just to please others including me. I know this is definitely a method that we are not use to, but it is definitely something that I want to try to achieve for my daughter.

Reading the book has really got me to start thinking, and I start to realize the horrible effect that traditional parenting has on me. I have memories of how it felt being a child and receiving the traditional punishments, threats, praises, and rewards, etc. I remember that the threats and sarcasms never motivated me, and my gut feeling will keep on telling me to do the opposite just to prove a point, but then the fear of punishment usually stops me from rebelling my parents physically, but doesn't stop the hate inside. I remember that those direct praise, good girl, and you are such an obedient kid, never felt good. Couldn't quite figure out why as a kid, but now I know why. Why would anyone want to get that kind of praise anyway? I know how I will feel if my boss says good girl to me, I will feel like a pet, it is not even a positive attribute. Anyway, but these are just memories, and how it didn't work effectively on me as a child, even though I was extremely obedient and well behaved. But now, I am realizing the effect it has on me today. Not saying this to blame my shortcomings on my parents, I wouldn't know how to unconditionally parent if I haven't been introduced to it either, but I do feel it is related. I feel like I have no passion for a lot of things, I am still desperately trying to figure out what I am passionate about, either it is for career or just for hobby, which I have none (although this is improving now since I am studying more and being passionate about my daughter’s upbringing). I picked a major in college just because it was a well respected and money earning career choice, and because that is what my parents expected me to. Maybe all that reward and punishment system just robbed me of all my natural passion. I read books only if it is required for a test during school age and now only if I feel it is practical, I never developed the natural love for reading, so forget those novels. I also admit I lack the general consideration for others, I have dificulty "reading people", which is a skill that is vital in society. I am working hard on improving myself, and it has gotten better as I open up my mind more. But just thought I would want to share my story for others to also see that traditional parenting does have long term effects. If I didn't learn about the AP way, I would have never realized this also. I would just be saying, I grew up this way and I turned out fine.


http://www.alfiekohn.org/parenting/gj.htm

Between Parent and Child Review

I love this book! I am a very practical person, so I tend to like books that are straight to the point, have directions, and examples. Between Parent and Child is exactly like this. This book was written a while back, but definitely a classic that has withstood the test of time. Because it is base on one very important principle, “respect.” This was the first parenting book I read. When I first read the book, I definitely had doubts about it, won’t children run wild then? But then I reflected on my own childhood, my mom and dad pretty much did every single thing the book tells you not to, and I remember how I felt and how it affected me to today, which is definitely not good. The book teaches you very valuable social skills that I believe you can use beyond just with children.

I personally like to compare parent and child relationship with manager and worker relationship. I see a good parent like a good manager. Think about how you want to be treated by your manager at work. You want to be valued and be heard, doing work that you feel meaningful and contributing and involved, you want to be motivated, you want to be treated with respect. You don’t want a manager that is his/her way or the high way, but you don’t want a manager that is like your equal and can’t provide you guidance either. And to be a good manager/parent, definitely requires some skill, and this book helps you see this.

My favorite example in the book is when the author gives a group of women a scenario of a bad morning and a wife ended up accidentally burning a breakfast toast. The author asked them how they will feel and respond if the husband had criticized them for the burned toast. The group responded that they would not be happy and their whole day would be ruined. The author then asked if the husband sympathized with them how will they feel. The group responded that they would be so happy that they would give the husband a kiss. And finally the author asked how they would feel if the husband had say “here honey, let me show you how to properly make toast.” The group got the point, and realized that this is even worse than the first response, and that they would be furious. We as adults often use the third response with children thinking we are helping them, but with this example, we can see how unhelpful that really is.

The Wonder Weeks Review

The Wonder Weeks

This is a wonderful thing for parents to know about, however, I feel like buying the book is a big waste of my money. The book basically tells you about the 8 fussy periods of your child in the first 60 or so weeks, there are developmental milestones reached, not ones that you can necessary see physically and these are not growth spurts either. The most important thing in this book is the time chart listing out the 8 fussy periods, which is available for free on their website. Each chapter in the book starts out by telling you what kind of development is going on each time, this information is also available when you sign up for the free email alert on their website. Then it goes into how your child might act during these time frames, reading the first chapter was really amazing, because that was exactly how my child acted, but then you start to realize that this information is repeated every single chapter. Yes, your child might act clingy, fussy, aware of strangers, etc. Finally, each chapter ends with games that you can play with your baby to assist in each developmental phase. This sounds a bit more interesting, but it is really just a list of games that most parents will do with their kids at those times, pee-ka-boo, pat-a-cake, singing, reading, etc. All in all, don’t bother buying this book, but do go to their website to get the chart. I think it is important to know about these time periods, and be mentally prepared, something developmental is going on, and that is why your baby is fussy, without taking these fussy periods into account, I will find myself worrying about things like is my baby sick? Teething? Or plain trying to challenge me? (which is a concept that I no longer believe in now, when your baby is fussy, chances are, there is something going on.) This is a book that helps you, the parent, to relax and not stress out.

Happiest Baby on the Block Review

Happiest Baby on the Block
by Dr. Harvey Karp

Another useful DVD, I notice it has a book too, but I would think that something like this I would like to see live action demonstrating. Dr. Harvey uses what he calls the 5 S's to calm down the crying babies. The 5 S's, which are swaddling, side/stomach position, shushing sound, swinging, and sucking triggers the babies's natural reflexes to calm down. In his DVD he demonstrates how to use the 5 S's. Compared with Dunstan Baby Language, I still rate Dunstan's higher, even though they kind of address different issues, I find the 5 S's to be more of a temporary relief, if there is an underlying problem, you will still need to fix it before your baby will stop crying, unless the issue was the baby was sleepy. So I find using the 5 S's with the combo of Dunstan Baby Language the best. The 5 S's again have an age limit around 9 months max, I think I read this on a forumn before, once you reach around that age, the 5 S's just don't work anymore. With Dunstan Baby Language, it is often very hard for the untrained ears, like ours, to be able to quickly identify the issue before the baby cry escalated to just pure screaming, then at that point, you need the 5 S's.  5 S's calms the baby down enough to give you the second chance of identifying their cries. However, often times I do find the technique to be hard to apply, especially since I don't have enough experience like Dr. Harvey. Swaddling and holding the baby side ways to an exact correct angle is very difficult for me, and yes, it has to be an exact angle for it to work on my daughter. But I often just resort to the shushing, I do worry about my daughter's ear drum though, the shushing does seem really loud to be that close to the ears, but with a screaming baby, I guess I don't have much choice, I did end up just getting a sound track of rain and playing it super loud. It got me through a lot of hard times.

Dunstan Baby Language Review

Dunstan Baby Language
by Priscilla Dunstan

Highly recommended, this DVD was a real life saver for me, so glad I watched it before giving birth. The DVD shows you the five cry sounds that babies make for five different needs. 'Neh' for hunger, ' Eairh' for lower wind gas, 'Eh' for upper wind gas, 'Owh' for sleepy, and 'Heh' for discomfort. There, I pretty much summed up the whole thing, there is really not much content in the DVD, but these sounds are very important, and the DVD shows you bunch of samples of babies crying, to familiarize yourself with the sounds. Note that these sounds only work for from birth to up to about 3-4 months, but by then you should know your baby enough to not rely only on these. For my daughter, truthfully I have only heard her make the first three sounds, or unless I just can't distinguish the other two, but the first three sounds are what bothered her the most. While I was still at the hospital, I was already able to tell these three sounds, a bit surprised about how often the sound for hunger comes out (I know people always say babies nurse a lot, but really ending up nursing that much still surprised me). The sound for lower and upper wind gas was a bit hard to differentiate at first, but I soon learn that upper wind gas is a much shorter vowel cry. Regardless, both of these cries means burping time, I bust out all the moves until she burps, from either end. I often just play the part where it demonstrates how to burp (which at first I thought was just a useless clip to take up space) and burp along with the video just to make sure I am burping long enough and patient enough. My husband is always surprised when my daughter is crying and I make a comment like, "she wants to fart," and then farts immediately after I said that.