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40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Heart of Childhood, February 16, 2003
The Natural Child: Parenting from the Heart is refreshing, well written and full of important insight about parenthood and childhood. It's the kind of book that makes you think how different the world would be if everyone read it. In her passionate and poignant collection of essays, Jan Hunt repeats this simple dictum often enough for it to become something of a mantra: "All children behave as well as they are treated". As mantras go, it's a pretty good one. It serves as an excellent reminder for the harried, outnumbered mother when a meltdown (hers or her child's) is imminent. It's also a bracing dose of truth for parents who have never questioned the conventional wisdom in which child rearing in our culture is mired. This book is a marvelously validating read for anyone who has been accused of "spoiling" his or her children by responding to their cries too quickly or too frequently, favoring creative conflict resolution over punishments, or who is struggling to swim against the tide of mainstream parenting "rules". Hunt presents a grounded, well-researched case for a return to the age-old methods of parenting that are now called "empathic" or "attachment" style. Citing sources that range from anthropologist Jean Liedloff and pediatrician Dr. William Sears to the Book of Corinthians and the European Charter of Children's Rights, Hunt addresses the challenges of raising children with respect and compassion in a society where childhood is often viewed as a noisome aberration that must be quelled at all costs. The book contains several of Hunt's more well known essays, including "A Baby Cries: How Should Parents Respond?", "Ten Reasons to Respond to a Crying Child", and a personal favorite of mine, "Ten Ways We Misunderstand Children". Hunt is at her best in the latter, writing simply and eloquently of parents' unrealistic expectations and of the hurtful result of criticism and mistrust. "We forget what it was like to be a child and expect our children to act like adults instead of acting their age," she writes. "A healthy child will have a short attention span, and be rambunctious, noisy, and emotionally expressive." It's the kind of essay that you want to post in every pediatrician's office, portrait studio, toy store, mommy-and-me classroom, and anywhere else young children are fidgeting. Hunt also gives, in essays such as "Ten Tips for Shopping With Children", "Ten Alternatives to Punishment", and "Intervening on Behalf of a Child in a Public Place" some concrete advice for meeting the daily challenges of supermarkets, playgrounds, and sibling rivalries. There are some helpful alternatives to the ideas and methods found in mainstream parenting magazines. Hunt gives outstanding, off-the-beaten-path sources for parenting information and excellent advice.
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41 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Important, Heartfelt, and Engaging Book, February 2, 2002
If the Quaker prophet John Woolman were alive today, and contemplating parenting issues, this is the book he would have written. Hunt's thesis is simple: a happy childhood lasts forever, and every child is no less a human being than we are, and must be treated as such. Adults behave as well as they are treated, and the same holds true for children. Adults generally do not improve their behavior when they are insulted, criticized, threatened, publicly humiliated, or beaten; or in the rare instances when they do so, the costs in fearfulness, anger, and resentment are extraordinarily high. Fortunately, argues Hunt eloquently, the seed of how to be with children is implanted within us. If we listen hard enough, the direction of how to act toward a child comes naturally. Crying, for example, is a signal provided by nature meant to disturb parents so they can seek out the causes of the child's distress. The Natural Child offers a consistent and compelling approach to raising a loving, trusting, and confident child, without resort to coercion or manipulation, simply by following the Parenting Golden Rule: "Treat your child as you would like to be treated if you were in the same position." This book is a must for every public and church library, and the perfect gift for the individual or couple expecting the arrival of their first "distinguished visitors".
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37 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The power of respect, January 4, 2002
The subtitle of Jan Hunt's new book is "Parenting from the heart." With equal truth it could be subtitled "Parenting that respects children." How strange that such a gentle motto sounds radical... almost revolutionary. In the words of the Seneca elder Grandmother Twylah Nitsch, "In Native culture, children are regarded as teachers because they have not yet had any experience of having their truth and their trust chipped away by people who want to control them." Jan Hunt celebrates the power of trust and respect, freely extended to children from birth onwards. Her goal is nothing less than the ending of all forms of child abuse, and the creation of a world where children can grow into adulthood with their inborn capacities for love and learning still intact. Her book is friendly, practical, and filled with powerful ideas expressed in simple and direct style, well supported by evidence that these ideas really work. The Natural Child shows that "parenting from the heart" is not a burden but a joy and privilege.
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