Pride and Joy is a different kind of parenting book. In Pride and Joy, child psychologist Kenneth Barish brings together the best of recent advances in clinical and neuroscience research with the author's three decades of experience working with children and families. He shows how a deeper appreciation of our children's emotions offers parents a new understanding of their children's development and better solutions to the problems in their lives. Barish offers advice to parents on how we can restore more joyfulness and pride in our relationships with our children and how we can help children bounce back from disappointment and defeat. He shows how we can repair family relationships that have been damaged by frequent anger and resentment and how we can preserve our children's idealism and their concern for others - how we can raise children who feel good about themselves and also care about the needs and feelings of others. Barish also offers advice on how to solve problems of daily family life - establishing rules and limits, doing homework and going to sleep, winning and losing at games, our children's reluctance to talk to us, their tantrums and lack of motivation, and their addiction to television and video games. He presents down-to-earth recommendations for solving these common family problems - problems that too often erode the joyfulness of our children and our pleasure in being parents. Pride and Joy is both informative and highly practical, and a balanced answer to the extreme methods that too often dominate parenting debates. Few parenting books address the central issues of concern to today's parents while also offering parents as much day-to-day advice. --- from the publisher Contents: Part I: How To Nurture Our Children's Emotional Health 1. Good Feelings or Good People? or Images of Our Children's Future or Finding A Balance 2. Emotional Health in Childhood: Optimism and Resilience vs. Demoralization and Defiance 3. Positiveness 4. Repair 5. The Character of Our Children Part II: Solving Common Problems of Family Life 6. Getting Unstuck: 5 Essential Steps for Solving Family Problems 7. The Problem of Discipline: How To Set Limits and What Limits To Set 8. Homework 9. Why Won't She Talk To Us? 10. He's Not Motivated 11. Tantrums and Meltdowns 12. Winning and Losing 13. Sleep, Television, and Electronic Games Part III: Conclusion 14. The Emotions of Childhood: Interest and Joy; Pride and Shame; Anxiety; Anger; Sadness 15. A Philosophy of Childhood and Final Take-Aways About the Author: Kenneth Barish is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychology at Weill Medical College, Cornell University. He is also on the faculty of the Westchester Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy and the William Alanson White Institute Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Training Program. |