John Bradshaw has done a marvelous job of writing about the "poisonous pedgogy" of authoritarian parenting that has been the breeding ground for dysfunction. He strongly advocates that we reexamine our traditional view of parenting that destroys the self esteem and self worth of children. He lays out what the poisonous parenting looks like and then addresses a more democratic style of parenting where children can grow into adults with strong self esteem and value. In order to make the much needed changes, parents must clearly see how they have been adversely affected by the poisonous pedogogy themeselves and begin a healing process of self discovery and standing in the truth of what they actually received from their parents. This allows the adult to grow into more mature, healthy results with healthy relationships. As parents, these indivduals are now free to choose to get their needs met in the primary marital relationship and can provide an environment where children can be honored and be all they were meant to be.
Bradshaw is keen on the use of acronyms, which can be a bit annoying at times, but can be a useful means of recalling points that are made throughout the chapter.
As a counselor and an educator, I use material found in this book for my counselees and students to help them to understand their own dysfunction and invite them into their own healing journey to self-discovery.
Beverly Sedlacek
Cleansing the Sanctuary of the Heart: Tools for Emotional Healing
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From the Publisher
Families, like species, can go into extinction!
Understanding how this can happen gives us valuable information for strengthening our families for future generations with values that emphasize the importance of strong marriages and mature, efficient parenting.
Our new awareness about how families shape our identities forces us to take parental discipline even more seriously and moves us to learn what discipline really means.
The family is the matrix of character—the most likely place for us to develop the foundation for true virtues and to internalize real and abiding values. We need to learn more about these matters, as the family is clearly being threatened and is failing to deliver virtuous people.
The relevance of this book is more urgent in view of the regressive cry for traditional values. We need traditional values. The information in this book makes that clearer than ever before. But the plea for traditional values that we most often hear today is asking us to go back to a monarchial system of hierarchical power and to reinstate the rules of the poisonous pedagogy.
Paradoxical as it might seem, to return to these traditional values will cause more divorce, more abusers, more teenage drug abuse, more chaotic undisciplined children, more unthinking people who will become the pawnlike followers of any strong, articulate, opinionated and rigid leader.
Dittohead co-dependents are not the virtuous people of character that we need for the new age of deep democracy. As chaotic as modern family life may seem, the high divorce rate and runaway children can actually be seen as expressions of an emerging deeper democracy. Unlike times past, many women and children are expressing their courage and individuality by refusing to live in families where they are beaten and abused.
Our consciousness is not very old. It is technologically smart, but seemingly not very wise. How can we live together as the family of the Earth? What will we choose for our future? These are the weightiest questions we face. Understanding how families work will help us to understand how we got socialized in our original families and how that socialization carries over into our larger world.
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