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Summary: Jan Hunt's parenting paradigm offers lifelong connection
Review: The Natural Child captures in practical terms the essence of parenting from the heart: identifying the needs and feelings of a child and respectfully working with a child towards peaceful resolution. Jan Hunt shares her collection of articles, all based in the attachment parenting philosophy of mutual kindness, compassion, and empathy. Each chapter illustrates a tidy concept (such as "10 alternatives to punishment" and "When a child has a tantrum") that truly illustrates the author's philosophy, "All children behave as well as they are treated," all the while breaking down the legitimacy of commonly practiced yet destructive parenting styles that use physical and emotional punishment. Most importantly, the Natural Child offers a parenting paradigm where all people, young and old, are treated with compassion and respect. This paradigm promotes lifelong connection and affection between parent and child, and later, child and world. This book, along with Jan Hunt's website (naturalchild.org), and her counseling service, have profoundly changed the way I parent and relate to people in general. Rather than blaming the symptom (my son's outward behavior that I may not agree with or understand), I look deeper to the source of the upset and initiate communication from that starting point. With this approach, I have lost the feelings of guilt, the unsettled, uneasy, and sad feelings in my heart when I would use consequences and threats with my son to control his behavior. I have replaced the guilt with actions that continually build our profound and playful connection. I have replaced the blaming and shaming with feelings of openness and nurturing towards myself and my son. Jan Hunt's book and counseling help me to get back on track, and I have recommended both to dozens of family, friends, clients, and coworkers over the last year.
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Summary: The Heart of Childhood
Review: The Natural Child: Parenting from the Heart is refreshing, well written and full of important insight about parenthood and childhood. It's the kind of book that makes you think how different the world would be if everyone read it.
In her passionate and poignant collection of essays, Jan Hunt repeats this simple dictum often enough for it to become something of a mantra: "All children behave as well as they are treated". As mantras go, it's a pretty good one. It serves as an excellent reminder for the harried, outnumbered mother when a meltdown (hers or her child's) is imminent. It's also a bracing dose of truth for parents who have never questioned the conventional wisdom in which child rearing in our culture is mired.
This book is a marvelously validating read for anyone who has been accused of "spoiling" his or her children by responding to their cries too quickly or too frequently, favoring creative conflict resolution over punishments, or who is struggling to swim against the tide of mainstream parenting "rules".
Hunt presents a grounded, well-researched case for a return to the age-old methods of parenting that are now called "empathic" or "attachment" style. Citing sources that range from anthropologist Jean Liedloff and pediatrician Dr. William Sears to the Book of Corinthians and the European Charter of Children's Rights, Hunt addresses the challenges of raising children with respect and compassion in a society where childhood is often viewed as a noisome aberration that must be quelled at all costs.
The book contains several of Hunt's more well known essays, including "A Baby Cries: How Should Parents Respond?", "Ten Reasons to Respond to a Crying Child", and a personal favorite of mine, "Ten Ways We Misunderstand Children". Hunt is at her best in the latter, writing simply and eloquently of parents' unrealistic expectations and of the hurtful result of criticism and mistrust. "We forget what it was like to be a child and expect our children to act like adults instead of acting their age," she writes. "A healthy child will have a short attention span, and be rambunctious, noisy, and emotionally expressive." It's the kind of essay that you want to post in every pediatrician's office, portrait studio, toy store, mommy-and-me classroom, and anywhere else young children are fidgeting.
Hunt also gives, in essays such as "Ten Tips for Shopping With Children", "Ten Alternatives to Punishment", and "Intervening on Behalf of a Child in a Public Place" some concrete advice for meeting the daily challenges of supermarkets, playgrounds, and sibling rivalries. There are some helpful alternatives to the ideas and methods found in mainstream parenting magazines. Hunt gives outstanding, off-the-beaten-path sources for parenting information and excellent advice.
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Summary: The power of respect
Review: The subtitle of Jan Hunt's new book is "Parenting from the heart." With equal truth it could be subtitled "Parenting that respects children." How strange that such a gentle motto sounds radical... almost revolutionary. In the words of the Seneca elder Grandmother Twylah Nitsch, "In Native culture, children are regarded as teachers because they have not yet had any experience of having their truth and their trust chipped away by people who want to control them." Jan Hunt celebrates the power of trust and respect, freely extended to children from birth onwards. Her goal is nothing less than the ending of all forms of child abuse, and the creation of a world where children can grow into adulthood with their inborn capacities for love and learning still intact. Her book is friendly, practical, and filled with powerful ideas expressed in simple and direct style, well supported by evidence that these ideas really work. The Natural Child shows that "parenting from the heart" is not a burden but a joy and privilege.
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Summary: Trusting and Respecting Kids
Review: This book - like all of Jan Hunt's writing over the years - is a positive addition to one of the most important bodies of information we have: how to be a better parent. In our society, childhood is a rehearsal for personhood and school is a warehouse that acts as a dull substitute for everyday life. Jan Hunt envisions a different world for children and her writing shows parents how to create that world. She understands -from both personal experience and academic training - that respect, trust and compassion are what children need to grow into emotionally sturdy, happy, productive adults. This book provides a mix of useful parenting tips that are supported by the philosophy that children reflect the treatment they receive. The Natural Child is no less than an impassioned plea for the future - not only our children's future but the future of our way of life on this planet.
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Summary: blames and criticizes parents, not very helpful
Review: This book present arguments for co-sleeping, breastfeeding, and homeschooling and against the use of punishments. I already agree with those ideas. However, I found the book had only limited and overly simplistic advice on how to implement those principles. It also contained a lot of alarming assertions about the permanant damage you will cause your children if you make any parenting mistakes. Maybe this book has more value for an academic or social worker. As a parent i found it unhelpful and full of negativity.
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Summary: blames and criticizes parents, not much helpful advice.
Review: This book reminded me of a college term paper. Lots of quoting other sources, disjointed flow, jumping back and forth between theory and practice unexpectedly. It does a lot of ranting about the damage bad parenting can do. It present arguments for co-sleeping, breastfeeding, and homeschooling and against the use of punishments. I already agree with those ideas, but I found the book had only limitedand overly simplistic advice on how to move forward with those principles. Maybe this book has more value for an academic or social worker. As a parent i found it unhelpful and full of negativity.
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Summary: The Natural Child: Parenting from the Heart
Review: This is one parenting book that will find a place in my personal library. Not very many books recieve that honor. This book gently leads a parent to a healthier relationship with her child/ren. It is a reference work that parents can come to again and again to recieve a fulfilling boost of approval, yet it challenges us to do better. This book is one of the few books that have helped me truly understand what a child really is, namely another human being on the sojurn of life, albeit in a smaller package. It made me aware that because of that smaller package, children are so often taken advantage of. How many times have you talked about your child's faults to another adult, as your sweet baby stands there and hears each word you say? Would you do the same to another adult? Would you want someone to do that to you? This book addresses that, and helps parents find a better way.
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Summary: If only everyone that needed it could read this book...
Review: what wonderful help it would be!
This is by far the best book I've ever read on parenting. I can't sing it's praises enough! I'm going to let everyone I run into know about this book.
In so many cases, children are treated like pieces of furniture, just things to be hauled and pushed around at will, Jan shows us a better, more respectful way of treating our children. For those of us that need it, this information is like the "pearl of great price" that might be recieved once in a lifetime, and how we put it to use is what will make the difference for our children and our world. Thank you so much Jan, the information in your book and on your web site is so needed today!
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