Your Competent Child: Toward New Basic Values for the Family

Rating:
Summary: A Fabulous, Important Book
Review: Jesper Juul provides parents with such an amazing, simple, and absolutely vital approach to raising children that it rings true on every page. Some of what he suggests we as parents do is difficult - as it is against our "knee-jerk" reactions we may have learned from our parents, but all of it is right on about how we can raise confident, healthy, whole humans, right from the start. Juul suggests that we listen to our children, we trust them, respect them, and approach family as a unit all together, rather than view it as a political structure. As I read the book I was constantly saying to myself "but of course, this makes so much sense", and I was thrilled to have discovered a book that allowed me to see different possibilities with child raising. Anyone with a child will gain immensely from reading this book, seeing themselves (as I did, over and over again) in his numerous examples, and learning how to move on from there. Without reservation, I am grateful for this book and highly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: No Parent Should Be Without It
Review: There are not enough superlatives to describe how helpful this book has been to our family. With tremendous wisdom and a warm, pragmatic eye, Mr. Juul helps us redefine the ways we look at a child's behavior and our relationship to our children and ultimately, each other. This is a book that doesn't offer easy answers or 'tricks' to help in the raising of your child. This is a book that helps you see with a child's eye, hear with a child's ear, and feel with a child's heart in ways that feel so natural and obvious, you will wonder why you haven't thought of them before. But trust me, you haven't. It is a book that offers day-to-day skills along with the thinking that helps generate them, leaving the reader feeling smart and well-satisfied. This groundbreaking book should be on the shelf of all parents everywhere. If you read only one book on raising your child, this is the one.
I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Rating:
Summary: Essential reading for parents and childcare staff
Review: This book takes a giant step forward in our knowledge of what children really need. It is based on a wealth of practical experience, but provides a profound theoretical basis for our interactions with children. And is easy to read. It has been available in Scandinavia for some time, and has been used by people I knew while living in Denmark in kindergartens and home environments with great success. (I read the Danish original.)

Fundamentally it declares that all children should be treated as unique human beings of equal value. It does not provide strategies or recipes for success. But encourages us to be ourselves when interacting with children, and to actively support them in developing their own sense of self. It explains that there is always a message in children's actions and reactions. And that it is by carefully listening to these underlying messages that we can support our children and find their true needs, and the reasons for apparent problems. In particular this applies to behaviour patterns that we may label as challenging, inappropriate or dysfunctional. The book is well-written, and reveals Jesper Juuls deep wisdom, love and understanding for both children and parents, as well as a good sense of humour and perspective.