by John Mordechai Gottman, Nan Silver
According to most relationship books, the key to a solid marriage is communication, communication, communication. Phooey, says John Gottman, Ph.D., author of the much-lauded Why Marriages Succeed or Fail. There's much more to a solid, "emotionally intelligent" marriage than sharing every feeling and thought, he points out--though most couples therapists ineffectively (and expensively) harp on these concepts.
Harville Hendrix has illuminated the paths to healthy, loving relationships in his New York Times bestsellers Getting the Love You Want and Keeping the Love You Find. Now, with his coauthor and wife, Helen Hunt, he brings us to a new understanding of the most profound love of all -- by helping parents nurture their own development as they encourage emotional wholeness in their children.
This groundbreaking book offers a unique opportunity for personal transformation: by resolving issues that originated in our own childhood, we can achieve a conscious, and thus healthier, relationship with our children, regardless of their age. Harville Hendrix and Helen Hunt help us explore:
"While it's easy to allow little things to take over our lives, there are things we can do to make life around the house less stressful," writes Richard Carlson in Don't Sweat the Small Stuff with Your Family: Simple Ways to Keep Daily Responsibilities and Household Chores from Taking Over Your Life. In this collection of 98 brief essays, Carlson (author of Don't Sweat the Small Stuff ... And It's All Small Stuff) meditates on small, but meaningful ways to avoid being overwhelmed by life, particularly family life. From Number 8: Make Peace with Bickering, to Number 14: Encourage Boredom in Your Children, to Number 72: Stop Exaggerating Your Workload, Carlson's messages serve as reminders for truisms most readers already know but have lost sight of in the bustle of daily life. Carlson's "ways" may be simple, but simplicity is not stupid--his book offers vital injections of wisdom. --Ericka Lutz
Whoever you are, and however you operate as a family manager, this book can
help. Use it as a yearly planner, a reminder, and a good friend with good
ideas."
Whenever Pipher strays from her expertise
as a family therapist, she comes a cropper because her memories of history
and literature can be ludicrously faulty. Fortunately, after the first chapter,
she sticks to what she knows to movingly advocate an up-to-the-minute
cause--reviving American families. She sees current American culture as toxic
to families because of its emphasis on consumerist autonomy at the expense
of the cooperative interrelationship that families require.
"Attachment to and dependency on parents... is a normal, healthy aspect of childhood and not something that needs to be discouraged." This quote from Attachment Parenting: Instinctive Care for Your Baby and Young Child sums up the attitude behind the growing shift in many Western cultures toward a labor-intensive but arguably more rewarding, effective, and "natural" way to raise children. This philosophy, termed "Attachment Parenting" by its champion, pediatrician and father of eight Dr. William Sears (author of the popular child-care manual The Baby Book, among others), sees infants not as manipulative adversaries who must be "trained" to eat, sleep, and play when told, but as dependent yet autonomous human beings whose wants and needs are intelligible to the parent willing to listen, and who deserve to be responded to in a reasonable and sensitive manner
