Thursday, March 6, 2008

The Whole Parent: How to become a terrific parent even if you never had one.


by Debra Wesselmann.

This book was written by a therapist from my home state. In fact she is going into partnership with our attachment therapist soon. It is a very clearly written, easy to understand (thank goodness) book on how our childhood effects how we parent. She goes through the different experiences we may have had as children. She talks about different negative parenting styles. She then says when we parent our children one of two things can happen. We can act just as our parents did and repeat the negative parenting. Or we can see ourselves in our child and react to the negativity in a childlike way as we did when we were parented. The last part of the book gives exercises you can do that will help you to deal with this and overcome those parenting behaviors and thought patterns. We can all be loving parents. Now as a disclaimer I will say I am not reading this book because of my parents. No one is perfect but I think they were good loving parents. I am reading it because so many things in it are helpful in dealing with my son with RAD. He is dealing with those same issues of behavior and thought patterns resulting from the early years. I think this is a great book for all parents RAD children or not.

2 comments:

Aves @ Call of the Phoebe said...

Hi, I love your blog too.

I am adopting 2 non-bio girls, one 4, and the other 7 from Haiti. The youngest will be home hopefully sometime this summer/fall and the older one probably early 2009. My daugter at home was born in Guatemla and came home at 5 1/2 months (2006). My posts are all over in topics so I don't know where to exactly direct you to. The archives may help. I met both girls last summer when I went to visit. I am learning much from reading your posts. They are extremly helpful in knowing what to expect if there are attachment issues.

Aves

Brenda said...

Thank you for you kind words Aves. I will investigate further into your blog. I look forward to getting to "know" you.