Parenting Research Synthesis

One message that was discussed across several books was the idea of teaching your children to be emotionally literate. It is important for children to be able to name the emotions they are feeling and it is the job of the parent to name those emotions for children and expand that vocabulary for them (Borba, (2016), Unselfie; D. Kindlon, & Thompson, M, (1999), Raising Cain; A. Faber, & E. Mazlish, (1980), How to Talk So Kids Will Listen). This idea was discussed briefly in Unselfie and How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk which both mentioned the importance of teaching children to name their emotions in order to have emotional literacy but was discussed much more in depth in the book Raising Cain. This book spent the whole book talking about how important it is to teach boys specifically to have that vocabulary, and make certain that we are not dismissing our boys' emotions but allowing them to feel it and deal with it appropriately in order to have a healthy emotional development (D. Kindlon, & M. Thompson, (1999), Raising Cain). It was helpful to hear this from different sources because they gave different ideas on how to actually go about building emotional literacy and they gave different perspectives on why literacy is important for children.

Another message that was discussed in several books was the importance of allowing children to fail in order to grow. Several of the books talked about allowing children to experience the natural consequences of their decisions so they are better able to make their own decisions and not be completely dependent on their parents in order to make decisions (A. Faber, & E. Mazlish, (1980), How to Talk So Kids Will Listen; F. Cline, (1990), Parenting With Love & Logic; M. Seligman, (1995), The Optimistic Child). The different books talked about the importance of natural consequences in different contexts. The Optimistic Child talked about the how natural consequences allow children to fail and thus gain better emotional literacy and more tools in their toolbox to deal with future failure. How to Talk So Kids Will Listen... talked about how natural consequences take punishment out of the parent/child relationship which takes a different twist on how The Optimistic Child shows natural consequences. Parenting With Love & Logic discusses the importance of failure to allow children learn how to succeed by having significant learning opportunities. Reading about these different messages from different books was helpful because it helped me see how natural consequences and the use of failure is important for child's success in many different facets of life, not just one and thus I should utilize it in different facets of parenting as well.

The last message that I felt was discussed often across the semester was the important of allowing children to make choices throughout their development. The books that we read talked about the importance of giving children choices so that they can develop cognitively and learn from the mistakes that they make (F. Cline, (1990), Parenting With Love & Logic; A. Faber, & E. Mazlish, (1980), How to Talk So Kids Will Listen; D. Seigel, & T. Bryson, (2011), The Whole-Brain Child). The books built off of each other as they talked about the importance of choices in different stages of a child's life, some talked about the importance in childhood (The Whole-Brain Child) while others talked about the importance of allowing choices as teenagers which allows children to develop autonomy (How to Talk So Kids Will Listen). As I learned from the different books about the importance of allowing children to make decisions (in appropriate situations) for themselves in the different stages of their lives it helped me to understand how best to apply these things with my kids not just in their childhood but across all of their formative years and beyond.

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