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Overview
The Natural Child makes a compelling case for a return to attachment parenting, a child-rearing approach that has come naturally for parents throughout most of human history. In this insightful guide, parenting specialist Jan Hunt links together attachment parenting principles with child advocacy and homeschooling philosophies, offering a consistent approach to raising a loving, trusting, and confident child.
The Natural Child dispels the myths of “tough love,” building baby’s self-reliance by ignoring its cries, and the necessity of spanking to enforce discipline. Instead, the book explains the value of extended breast-feeding, family co-sleeping, and minimal child-parent separation.
Homeschooling, like attachment parenting, nurtures feelings of self-worth, confidence, and trust. The author draws on respected leaders of the homeschool movement such as John Taylor Gatto and John Holt, guiding the reader through homeschool approaches that support attachment parenting principles.
Being an ally to children is spontaneous for caring adults, but intervening on behalf of a child can be awkward and surrounded by social taboo. The Natural Child shows how to stand up for a child’s rights effectively and sensitively in many difficult situations. The role of caring adults, points out Hunt, is not to give children “lessons in life”—but to employ a variation of The Golden Rule, and treat children as we would like to have been treated in childhood.
Praise for The Natural Child
“I had grown jaded with the flood of parenting books, but The Natural Child is a rare and splendid exception . . . . I can’t praise it sufficiently, and would place it along with Leidloff’s Continuum Concept and my own Magical Child . . . . It could make an enormous difference if read widely enough.” —Joseph Chilton Pierce, author of The Magical Child
“In prose that is at the same time eloquent and simple, [Hunt] provides a mix of useful parenting tips that are supported by the philosophy that children reflect the treatment they receive. This is no less than an impassioned plea for the future—not only our children’s future, but the future of our way oof life on this planet.” —Wendy Priesnitz, Editor, Natural Life Magazine
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781550923247 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | New Society Publishers |
| Publication date: | 09/17/2021 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 193 |
| File size: | 713 KB |
About the Author
Table of Contents
FOREWORD BY PEGGY O'MARA
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
PARENTING WITH EMPATHY AND TRUST
"Getting It" About Children
The Importance of Empathic Parenting
Nature or Nurture?
Tough Love
Confessions of a Proud Mom
Memories of a Loving Father
LIVING WITH A BABY
A Baby Cries: How Should Parents Respond?
Ten Reasons to Respond to a Crying Child
Siblings Arrive All at Once
Lonely Cages
Ten Ways to Grow a Happy Child
LIVING WITH CHILDREN
Ten Ways We Misunderstand Children
Ten Tips for Shopping With Children
When a Child has a Tantrum
The Hidden Messages We Give Our Children
Ten Tips for Finding a Medical Professional for Your Child
Natural Grandparenting
GUIDING CHILDREN
The Parenting Golden Rule
The "Magic Words" Must be Spoken from the Heart
The Trouble with Rewards
Praising our Children: Manipulation or Celebration?
It Shouldn't Hurt to be a Child
"I Was Spanked and I'm Fine!"
The Dangers of Holding Therapy
Ten Alternatives to Punishment
HELPING CHILDREN LEARN
Nurturing Children's Natural Love of Learning
When does Guidance become Manipulation?
School Grades: Helpful or Harmful?
Should Homeschoolers be Tested?
"Learning Disability": A Rose by Another Name
Is "I Love Lucy" Educational?
ADVOCATING FOR CHILDREN
Is There Room for Children in our Society?
Intervening on Behalf of a Child in a Public Place
Intervention can Save Lives
Age Discrimination Harms Young and Old Alike
The Kids' Project: Breaking the Cycle of Abuse
CONCLUSION
ENDNOTES
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Introduction
The Natural Child is a collection of essays on parenting and education which I wrote between 1988 and the present. The essays were written to help parents and future parents understand the critical importance of treating their children with dignity, respect, understanding, and compassion from infancy into adulthood. I hope to inspire parents toward a new way of being with their children that allows for a mutually trusting and loving relationship based on respectful, gentle guidance and emotional support.
This approach has been called "attachment parenting" or "empathic parenting" . It is often considered to be "New Age" but it is in fact, age-old. Many of the practices that I recommend in this book were the norm for thousands of generations, and have only been questioned within the last 100 years or less.
Empathic parenting, to put it most simply, is believing what we know in our heart to be true. Children raised with love and compassion will be free to use their time as adults in meaningful and creative ways, rather than expressing their childhood hurts in ways that harm themselves or others. If adults have no need to deal with the past, they can live fully in the present.
It is my belief that through empathic parenting the world can become a more peaceful and a more humane place, where every child can grow to adulthood with a generous capacity for empathy and trust. Our society has no more urgent task.