Customer Reviews

The 7 Worst Things Parents Do

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Most "parenting" books have common goals (e.g how to raise a happy, moral, responsible, self-confident child that achieves his/her full potential). The books just disagree about the best way to achieve these goals. In this book, however, I found myself disagreeing with the stated goals of good parenting. The Friels describe several examples of parenting "failures" that I would consider successes. For example, if your 24 year old daughter says her mother is her best friend, she's a failure (and you've failed as a parent). If your child graduates from college and turns down a good job across the country in favor of a lesser paying job closer to home, you've raised a dependent, clingy person who failed to separate from family appropriately. I guess one person's pathological intertwined relationship is someone else's good close family tie! Nevertheless, the book contains lots of good old-fashioned common-sense advice about raising children and I enjoyed the book thoroughly.

The authors explains the 7 worst things parents do:
Baby Your Child
Put Your Marriage Last
Push Your Child INto Too Many Activities
Ignore Your Emotional or Spiritual Life
Be Your Child's Best Friend
Fail to give Your Child Structure
Expect Your Child to Fulfil Your Dreams

I rated it 4 stars because I felt that the topics weren't throughly discussed on how we can avoid falling in one of the 7 traps.

Part 1: Get Ready
Chapter 1: The Seven Worst Things Parents Do
Chapter 2: The Rules of the Game

Part 2: The Seven
Chapter 3: Baby Your Child
Chapter 4: Put Your Marriage Last
Chapter 5 Push Your Child into Too Many Activities
Chapter 6: Ignore Your Emotional or Spiritual Life
Chapter 7: Be Your Child's Best Friend
Chapter 8: Fail to Give Your Child Structure
Chapter 9: Expect Your Child to Fulfil Your Dreams

Part III: Go For It
Chapter 10: If Rats Can Do It, So Can You
Chapter 11: The Best Things About Parents Who Choose to Grow: A Typical Success Story
Chapter 12: Some Final Parenting Thoughts

In this book, I agreed much of what the authors wrote about how to avoid the 7 mistakes. There was a few tips of advice that I disagreed with such as putting your child to bed at the same time everynight with NO exceptions such as watching fireworks.

My husband and I had very different point of views concerning education... We agreed on how to raise our son, but he felt a lot of guilt in disciplining is 9 year old who never had any rules, structure, and boundaries in her young life. This book helped him understand that discipline equals love and explained the ABC of parenting very well by showing the direct effect of behaviors through simple examples. We all fall into pitfalls trying to do our best, but it can be hard sometimes and this book reinforce our conviction that we are our children's guides and we must prepare them to live in society.

I tend to like television advertisements that are upbeat and informative over those that are gloomy and negative. ("Our company doesn't have a second line so the competition will destroy us. Boo hoo.") This book's title starts out negative and the cover admonishes us: "you cannot afford not to read this book". What's more, the book adopts a style that I find gratingly patronizing at times, sometimes to the point of being condescending. (p.58: "Third, know that it will hurt, and then it will hurt some more, and then just when you thought the hurt would end, it will hurt some more.") (p.102: "In the meantime, have a nice cold glass of lemon ice water and watch the sunset. Life is great, and if life is great, your kids will be fine.") (p.176: "That's all we need to say here. We've said it over and over throughout this book. Just remember it. Please.") I found the section "How to Sabotage Spirituality in Eleven Easy Lessons" especially annoying. (p.70: "Here come the hard-nosed scientists again, bless their hearts.")

At other times, the book takes on a pedantic slant that might alienate less-educated readers (cf. the section on B.F. Skinner and behavior extinction). These sections could perhaps have been relegated to appendices.

Nevertheless, though I often had to grit my teeth, I did get a lot out of the book. When I mentally translated the seven mistakes into seven pieces of advice and negated the negatives, I found that the seven points were on-target and especially appreciated the insight on giving a child structure. What's more, the book is concise and is an easy read. I have given copies of the book to friends and their comments have also been favorable.

This book showed me various ways that I am being successful with my child rearing as well as some areas that I could work on without making me feel like a failure. The greatest message I got from this text was that I could "fix" anything that I need to--if I just identify that problems that already exist. The "Seven" were logical and showed thought about the issues. Of course, they did not all apply to my situation; however as with any text, if you read the areas that sound familiar, you may find there is something you can learn. I did not like the title--the seven worst--but they are not accusatory or guilt-ridden in their presentation. Overall a good read that I may look at again as my children grow.

I have to disagree with some of the previous critics. The title is meant to attract the attention of some of us like yourself looking for a smidgen of parenting advice from 2 very qualified Authors on the subject. I read the book over this past weekend and couldn't put it down.

It has confirmed to me that some things I have been already thinking are okay to implement in our family and not unmarked territory. This book also validates some old fashioned family values and made me realize that we all know parents who are struggling with these very issues.

After reading this book I have educated myself just that much further in how to avoid these family dividing mistakes.

It sure does help to know you are not alone when you are trying to survive the times your children are acting like teenagers! I had a few good chuckles with this book, and I learned a lot too. Most of all, it made me feel maybe I'm not such a rotten mom after all.

This is the most timely parenting book on the market. The Friels have captured THE essential mistakes made by contemporary parents. They provide clear solutions that are based not only on their clinical experience as psychologists and personal experience as parents, but also on solid psychological research. I thought that the chapters on "Putting Your Marriage Last," "Babying Your Child," and "Ignoring Your Emotional And Spiritual Life" were especially important given the direction the American family has taken over the past 15 years. I enthusiastically recommend this book!

Although I don't agree with everything they say, I think the Friels' recommendations are generally sensible and well-thought-out, and I like their "we don't know everything, so do what works for you" attitude. On the other hand, the book is being marketed as a return to Traditional Values in Parenting, a corrective to an overly permissive era of child psychology run amok, and that's just flat-out not true. I was raised in the 1950's, which conservatives hark back to as the Golden Age of American Values. My parents made four of the seven mistakes listed in this book: they put their marriage last, they pushed their children into too many activities, and they expected their children to fulfill all their unfulfilled dreams and ambitions. And, while they didn't "baby" us in the sense of indulging infantile behavior, they did resist every effort we made to grow up and become autonomous. While I think the Friels are doing a great service to parents by addressing these issues, they're mistakes that arise out of common parental mind-sets, rather than being aberrations of child psychology in the second half of the 20th century.