Tomorrow I get to go to a workshop by Beverly Bos, one of the gurus of early childhood education. Not only will this be useful for my work and my writing, I hope that it will be useful for my parenting too. She is speaking about the importance of childhood play.
Who are your parenting gurus? Our local Gordon Neufeld is one of mine. He has written the book called Hold On To Your Kids, a guide to staying attached to your children no matter what. In a culture where we encourage our children to be independent from birth, staying attached to your preschooler, your school-aged child, and your teen can be a challenge. Neufeld stresses that a community of loving adults is extremely important to a child’s development.
Since I can be a grump a lot of the time, I also enjoy Lawerence Cohen’s work on Playful Parenting. It reminds me that I can have fun being a parent, especially on those days when I desperately need to be reminded. While I tend to shy away from conflict or grump headlong into it, Cohen provides a different approach, a playful approach that says that joking and having fun with your child in daily life and in challenging moments is just fine, thank you.
Although he is not a parenting author per se, I also love Richard Louv’s work on getting kids outside. I value outdoor time and outdoor play, especially free play and hiking in nature. Louv’s work Last Child in the Woods outlines the deep need children have to go outside and be connected with their local natural places.
I also value Jean Liefloff’s work called The Continuum Concept. It is an anthropological look at babyhood and childhood in a tribal culture. Although I don’t know whether all of her thoughts apply to North American urban parents, I like to try and balance a child-centered approach to parenting with a family and community-centered approach. I like the idea of the child as a member of a larger community and participant in many activities that people might think of as for adults. I love it when my daughter works beside me.
Who are your parenting gurus? Do you read parenting books?
(Image courtesy of rocknrolli at stock exchange)