I received an email pitch to review this parenting book over 2 months ago, and finally able to read through everything! I have always been interested and keen to read books on parenting, teaching children and so on, hence I requested for a PDF copy (since I read books on my iPad most often nowadays and it is so convenient for me to bookmarks certain important points and tips in the book) Here goes my review...
Title: Parenting for Education
Author: Vivian W. Owens
Publisher: Eschar Publications, LLC (2013)
ISBN-13/-10: 978-1929221011 / 1929221010
Paperback: 233 pages
Description from the product page:
"Simple educational how-to, why-to, and what-to-do book. Practical guidelines assist parents with helping their children at home to build basic learning foundations. Motivational and inspiring. Many topics will lead you to help your children raise academic performance in math or reading. Particularly useful to parents of children aged six months to fourteen years old."
The book comes in 10 chapters touching on topics like guidelines to start off our young ones to learning, examining the root causes of learning and the solutions, how to raise academic performances and deal with underachievers, setting goals for future and using your home as a learning environment.
In Page 19, I agree with the statement of "Think not of grades and test scores as the school year begins. Instead, think of individuals. Your child is a unique human being with feelings and needs unlike another. He needs your love, guidance, and support in order to rise to his best potential. You are the over-seer of his education, and good things happen when you take that responsibility seriously." Each child is different and we progress in our own pace and it is because of this factor that I am looking after our kiddos at the moment.
While we are still on page 19, I also try to implement one of the tips which is "Children need to hear parents say, “I know you can do it!” ". Whenever I see our 4.5 years old boy struggling to do something, I quickly assure and calm him down before he erupts into a tantrum believeing he is a failure and everything is going against him. And when our boy is finally able to do a task, I also make sure and gently reminded him 'See, mummy knows you can do it!'
I also agree with the statement of "Celebrate your child’s unique personality. Compliment him for the strengths that enable him to be a productive human being, and you increase his sense of self worth." also on page 19. I mean, not just our child, even us adults would appreciate some words of compliments every now and then.
I find myself nodding with the tips on page 39 'Look for your child’s good actions. Catch him in the act of controlling his temper, doing homework without needing to be reminded, talking less while working, cleaning his room'. I try to make sure our kiddos know mummy is watching him and knows he is doing good things and behaving well, not just scrutinising and scolding / nagging when he's not behaving well.
On page 55, "Playtime is very important to young minds. It allows creative, intellectual expression as well as motor development. And, we, parents should not intrude on playtime with our suggestions and our ways of doing—most of the time. Playtime without intrusion is called “Free Play.”" I have recently registered both my kiddos to a playgroup sessions (twice a week, each session 2 hours and parent must be around to accompany their children, which is what I like) and the playgroup sessions incorporate freeplay time as well so I really appreciate and thank God we managed to find this playgroup sessions!
I learned a new thing from this book, on page 65, something about Underachievers, according to the book, "a category of underachievers who are generally highly creative and intellectually inclined. Students such as they quite often do poorly on tests because test masters expect you to choose one best answer, and these children have insight into several correct answers." Wow! I've never thought of this. So this statement is an eye opener for me!
However, I personally do not agree with the statement on the same page "Additionally, parents should assist their child by seeing to it that they prepare for quizzes, tests, and exams. Carefully review questions with them, showing them how to arrive at conventional answer" as I believe if we are trying to coerce child into conventional answers, it would stifle their creativity and confidence.
In page 80 "Help For Dyslexia", I also need to pay more attention and observe our boy as he had some signs of this, for example writing in mirror image and he occassionally has trouble with left-right coordination.
In summary, this is a helpful book that opens up my eyes towards understanding our child more, that each child matures at a different rate; and there are many other factors that affect that maturity and we should not gauge a child's development and progress based on their age as it does not confer readiness.
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I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with a PDF copy of the book by the author in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine. And if you'd like to read my previous book reviews, you can do so by reading this post of mine called "My Book Reviews" 