What's Beyond Loving.... :

Rating:
Summary: I am not alone.
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. For a long time, I have been feeling lost as a single parent. After reading Cynthia's book, I have learned that I am not alone and most importantly, there is something that I can do about it. If you are a parent, you have got to read this book! Thank you Cynthia Keen for writing it!

Rating:
Summary: "Effects based" parenting
Review: This book exceeded all my expectations because it contained original, thought-provoking ideas. I did not find any rehash of ideas from other books I have read on parenting. The author (Cynthia Keen) reduced in common sense language the path to engendering happiness in ourselves and in our children.

The first step is to define what we want. What is it that we want from life and the parenting experience? By making this explicit to ourselves, we will influence our behavior toward our children and so influence them to positive development. In sum, we want them to be happy, well-developed human beings.

So Keen answers the question of her book, "What is Beyond Love?" by telling us that we must facilitate our "children's deepest being" to develop an ability to be responsible (in a sense they must become "response-able") to the circumstances of life. In turn they will be better response-able to their life circumstances/problems to achieve what they will later define/want from their own lives. That capacity to live and love life--to actualize one's capacity/achievements--will be to our children their happiness. So as the title suggests, love in itself is not enough--we as parents have to go a step farther and act to assist our children to develop character and be responsible (or "response-able") people. To do so will engender in them a greater capacity to view life as a gift--a treasure to be revered--and so have the highest expectations of life and for themselves.

Thus Keen tells the reader that there are plenty of life opportunities (provided by divine Providence) to develop that innermost being or character in our children. However, this process is counterintuitive (that is, it might contravene what we feel as love). We as parents need to allow our children to experience the effects of their own negative decisions no matter how much we may want to interfere from a sense of parental love (and so Keen explains "what is beyond love"). Keen is careful to advise, however, this should be within reason, of course. To illustrate her point, she cites an example from her own life (pp. 66-67) when her own son was suspended from the school bus for several days for misconduct on the bus. Keen flat out told her son that she would not drive him to school. She instead recommended that he contact friends for a ride to and from school. She ingenuously (and ingeniously?) coached him on other possible alternatives to include phoning the school principal, which is what he did! He called the principal at home on a Sunday evening (without Keen's interfering or participation) and arranged a compromise with the principal so that he would be able to ride on the school bus. (He was to receive his discipline through other arrangements at school.) Unlike many parents who would otherwise "love" their children and so drive them to school notwithstanding, Keen's point was to teach her son that he had an ability to respond to the circumstances of his life (to be responsible or in my own words "response-able"). The result was that he became more self-confident, more responsible for a positive outcome of an otherwise adverse situation. Keen posits that if a parent interfered in such circumstances the parent would first risk the child feeling not bound to the law of cause and effect; and secondly make the child feel incapable of meeting similar problems on his or her own, problems that may, in some cases, be worse in the future. Keen advocates that the parent go "beyond love" and help their children develop self-confidence by allowing them not to precociously solve their own problems per se, but, more importantly, to learn cause and effect in society; to respect other people; to value self-control; to recognize limits, boundaries, and rules; and to build self-confidence in their own ability to effect positive outcomes to their circumstances in life (without parental interference).

Let me pause for a moment. Keen's ideas are not tough love tactics. Tough love typically is motivated by intent to punish or humiliate whereas Keen's intent is that the child have an immediate appreciation that he or she can favorably determine the outcome of their adverse circumstances with confidence. Unlike the tough love parent, Keen has already defined what she wants from her parenting experience, and that is that her children treasure life and have the highest expectations of themselves. Tough love would presume that the hard knocks of life would influence children toward becoming self-confident, happy individuals. It does not, and Keen would not endorse this tactic as representative of her thoughts.

To continue, the difficult moments of parenting, then, are for Keen opportunities provided by divine Providence to influence the development of our children. If we are willing, the Divine Spirit will use us as parents to develop our children's character through the adverse experiences of life. When our children are frustrated or fail, this is a clue (better, a cue) that we must correct something. To repeat, we as parents must use these opportunities for teaching our children about respect for other people and their property; understanding the cause and effect relationship of behavior on other people and circumstances; understanding how our self-control influences people and circumstances; understanding tolerance and acceptance of others--in a word: understanding to respect life and other living beings. AFTER a child has developed that character, then they will be best prepared to meet the challenges of life with high confidence and expectations in themselves; this here is then the key--our children will then be "response-able" to establish and achieve their life goals--they will feel confident, nay, deserving to them--this development will result in great contentment and happiness for them and even to us as parents--in a word, their self-actualization within the miracle of life . . . this is the point of Keen's book.