Constructive Parenting

Rating:
Summary: A Very Good Guide for Parents!
Review: As a parent of a four and six year old I was very interested in what this book had to say. I found a lot of helpful, well researched information to help me raise my kids.

Constructive Parenting is divided into three sections.

Section One: Understanding the Basics

1. Building Your Child's Self-Esteem

2. Parent-Child Interaction

3. Areas of Child Development

This section lays a strong foundation for parents to be actively involved in your child's emotional, physical, and intellectual development.

Section Two: Play and Learn Activities

4. Facilitating Development through Activities

5. Activities for Cognitve Development

6. Activities for Motor Development

7. Activities for Social Development

8. Activities for Language Development

This section gives you specific activities that you can do with your child to help them grow. Activities in each chapter are broken down by age:

- Birth to Six Months,
- Six to Twelve Months,
- One to Two Years,
- Two to Three Years,
- Three to Four Years,
- and Four to Five Years.

Section Three: Childcare Parameters

9. All About Play

10. The Three Parts of Health

11. The Parent-Teacher Relationship

12. The New Brain Research

Section Three helps you create an environment to nurture your child's growth.

- How play is a child's work;
- Nutrition (diet), Exercise, and possibly the most important, Sleep;
- How parent and teacher can complement each other in creating a well educated child;
- What you as a parent can look to in the future from research in helping your child grow.

In the appendix of the book are parenting tips to cut out and use to remind you of the learning in the book. I, like probably a lot of people, am loathe to cut up a book. I hope in the future she provides a flash card deck of these tips.

I also would like to have seen Chapter Two, Parent-Child Interaction, fleshed out more. I really like the concept of pillars of parenting. Adding real Life examples would help a lot.

Maybe Sally could put out a workbook for the pillars with a card deck of tips.

All in all, I wish I'd had this book about six years ago. I'm always looking for help in parenting my children in ways that will help them grow up happy, healthy, and wise. Constructive Parenting is a very good tool for parents trying to figure out just how to raise a child.

If you're about to become a parent, have a child under five, or just know someone in that situation I recommend you buy a copy of Constructive Parenting.

Kevin Decker: Author, Speaker, Coach

Rating:
Summary: Brenda Nixon, author of Parenting Power in the Early Years
Review: If you're teachable and want to learn how to be a more involved parent then this book is for you. It is packed with Dr. Goldberg's research and practical activities to do with your child.