Creating a Collaborative Partnership with Your Child
A child psychologist friend recommended Raising Human Beings: Creating a Collaborative Partnership with Your Child, Ross W. Greene, PhD, Scribner, 2016. In it, renowned child psychologist and bestselling author Dr. Ross Greene offers great insight on maximizing the parent-child relationship, while developing the critical character skills of empathy, honesty, resilience, and independence.
As parents, we have the important task of helping shepherd our child(ren) move toward an independent life with important beliefs, values, traits, and goals. To be a good parent is to navigate the balance between a child’s characteristics and our desire to have influence.
Dr. Greene helps forge a case for rethinking typical strategies of parenting and discipline. His collaborative model of problem-solving provides an excellent resource so that parents can stop badgering, berating, bemoaning, and belittling (that’s a lot of alliteration), and instead allow their kids to feel heard and validated, thus giving them more beneficial influence.
Below are multiple fantastic takeaways from the book.
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As parents, we want our primary focus to be the child’s development.i
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Question: As a good parent, do you want to be authoritative or authoritarian? I assume authoritative. Instead of seeking to show your power and coercion, you can strive to enhance communication, improve relationships, and better prepare your kid for a lot of what actually lies ahead in The Real World.ii
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Certain parents want to be seen as being “in charge.” To me, what being truly in charge of your child’s positive development means: (1) you recognize that if your child is struggling meeting specific expectations, something must be getting in her way; (2) your child is likely to be your best source of information; and (3) you should maximize working together with your child to help her problems.iii
i paraphrase p. 168: 3-6 | ii paraphrase p.3: last 12-7 | iii paraphrase p. 63: 8-14
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