Customer Reviews

Parents Who Think Too Much: Why We Do It, How To Stop

5 star:		(13)
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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is not a parenting book, but more of an "anti-parenting book" book. The author is not going to tell you how to raise your kids - she is going to tell you to stop letting other authors tell you how to raise them.

Cassidy tells the story of her own experiences with parenting theories and advice, as a mother and as a parenting magazine author. She analyzes the trends and history that make today's parents obsess over parenting.

Cassidy's thesis is that over-consumption of expert advice coupled with geographical distance from and mistrust of one's own family make today's upper middle-class parents doubt and second-guess themselves until they're incapable of taking charge and giving their children the guidance and firmness they need.

The immediacy of Cassidy's narrative style made this a very enjoyable book for me to read. I read it during my baby's first summer, when it opened my eyes to the value of occasionally leaving a baby alone to discover the world on her own, rather than constantly playing with her and talking to her. I'm glad I read it when I did; it has influenced the path I have taken. It encourages parents to lighten up, to trust themselves, to take the long view, and to enjoy their children while they can, since they won't be children for very long. It cautions against the intense focus on doing everything "right" that leads to parental burn-out, and can blind parents to the best moments of their children's childhood. Most of all, it reminds parents that there are other things in life besides one's children, and that it's okay to pursue them.

Every parent should read this book.

This book has some valid points about the way some parents raise their children, however, the solution it offers is not what it claims to be. It is, rather, a reaction to permissive parenting books and a return to raising kids the way Grandma used to do it. Her Grandma, I should say. It's not about doing things according to our instinct, but hers. It is nothing but the same old tired advice from the fifties- if you pick up your baby too much, the baby will become demanding. Tell your kids to leave you alone, etc. It sounds like the author was fed up with trying to be a better parent (and maybe she truly did try too hard at the expense of herself) but then has overcompensated and adopted the attitude of "I'm too busy to try to do a good job so I'll do whatever I want and my kids will turn out just fine."

In spite of what she says, it does matter what you say to your kids, how you phrase it, and how you react to their feelings. But discipline is important, too. And you shouldn't drive yourself crazy worrying about every little thing you do. Every parent needs to find their own balance.

This is just another parenting book, disguised as an anti-parenting book.

Like the previous reviewer, I found the book highly negative. I did not like it all, but let me start with what I did like. The author does makes a couple of good points about child centered parenting, and about parenting books that make you feel inadequate. The quote: "read enough and you begin to think there are lots of neat pathways to deal with bedtime, tantrums, homework, you name it. You begin to think there are one-size-fits-all answers to every childrearing query. When the one-size-fits-all answer doesn't fit you and your child, which it often doesn't, it's easy to worry what's wrong with me?" is spot on, as far as I am concerned.

She bashes books like "How to talk so kids will listen", said that they do not really work anyway. My experience is different, I have learned a lot from those books, even though they are not perfect, I am glad that I can parent much more positively than my parents did, and some books and online communities have helped a lot with that.

Cassidy, on the other hand, says: "The truth of the matter is, most of us are happy, productive, civilized human beings, and we got that way being raised more or less as our parents and grandparents were". I think this is the point were I disagree most with Cassidy. Even though she detests terms like 'parenting', she still thinks around those lines. She still says things like that you should determine what you want your child to be, and actively work on that. Parenting is not about making adults, children will grow up perfectly fine by themselves. Parenting is about living with children, and I know quite a lot of perfectly well adjusted adults who do not look back so happily on their childhood.

She presents the book as an anti-parenting-book-book, but it really is just another parenting book with a lot of simple criticism about other books. Cassidy promotes authoritive parenting (you may occasionally spank your children, but you must also reason with them), something she got from a book herself. Not all parenting books are evil, appearantly, only the ones she does not like.

I wholeheartedly recommend "Hold On To Your Kids" by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate instead of this book. It has sort of the same premise, namely: parenting is not a set of skills. It is also fairly negative about "today's children", and critical about child-centered parenting, but the authors explain the problem much better, much more eloquent, and with scientific backup.

Thanks to Anne Cassidy, I'm getting out of the brat race. My oldest was raised 'the old fashioned way' - my youngest had the benefit of a mother with experience , a mom who could afford to stay home and who read the latest studies, books, and every parenting magazine out there in an effort to find 'the right way' for baby dear. Guess what ? My youngest is a brat ! Ok, maybe not a BRAT, but he was well on his way. My life went from balanced, to kid-centered. My parenting techniques went from, 'you'll get over it' to 'we can't blame him for expressing his feelings, he needs to be heard'. I still wanted to be the best parent I could be, but how was it that after spending all this time paying so much attention to my kids, I couldn't leave the house ? Thanks to Anne Cassidy, I've learned to have more faith in my gut - and more appreciation for the hard -learned lessons my Granma taught.

Anne Cassidy offers insights that sometimes made me cringe in recognition. She offers a new way of looking at parenting and encourages us to just "be parents" rather than being paralyzed while we analyze the hell out of everything our child does and how we respond. I thank her for giving me more to think about (oops! did I really say that?). Seriously, I often find myself reflecting on Ms. Cassidy's words.

Ms. Cassidy has reassured me that I am not alone in thinking that something has gone wrong with a parenting world where children are accorded all of the negotiating rights of a labor-management sitdown. I look forward to seeing the results of this wake up call to well-meaning and ill-directed parents.

Being a former high-school teacher, I can easily say that most of Anne Cassidy's observations are true! The majority of kids I taught were disprespectful and unruly, and seemingly didn't know appropriate behavior for the classroom. Evidently, I set very high expectations for these children of the 90's, i.e. to sit quietly, to pay attention to the lesson, and to practice what they learned after the lesson. Believe it or don't, this was too much for most of my students to handle. Cassidy hits-the-nail-on-the-head on how parenting of late has gone awry. Every parent should read this book.

Before I read this book, I really couldn`t understand why my daughter was so snappy, to me and everyone around; now I know, it`s been 3 days I started reading the book, and started to act firmly, I can see the change in her behaviour. Thank you so much Anne Cassidy!

Ms. Cassidy has produced a book that most parents I know need to read. Common sense and our own intuition are underutilized in today's world. Many of the children I know would benefit from parents who spend less time over-examining everything their children do or do not do at a certain age and more time enjoying their children. A must read for all modern parents - and then they do not need to read anything else!

I had a love-hate relationship with this book! I could not put it down, yet I hated it! Although the author made some good points about our activity-packed, consumerism culture, her view of parents and children of today is highly negative. This is the book to read if you want to be totally discouraged about your parenting skills. She presents such a negative view of our child-centered culture that anyone who reads this without kids will probably decide not to have any! Parents Who Think Too Much will definitely make you think about your role as a parent in today's world, but I doubt that the majority of the well-intentioned parents out there could be possibly as bad as she says we are. Encouraging self-esteem, being kid-centered, and spending more time with your chihldren are all habits that I think more families should do, not less, as Anne Cassidy so tactlessly encourages. This author is a burnt out parent and magazine writer that took her career burnout and turned it into a very negative book.