Child
Rearing for Fun. Trust your instincts and
enjoy your children!
Author
: Anne Atkins
Instinctive parenting is easier than you think.
Child rearing is simple, satisfying, and above all, fun! Don't Panic! Returns
confidence to parents and assures them that parenting is not unduly
complicated. It's not child development professionals, psychologists, or
parenting specialists who know best how to bring up children, but the parents
themselves. Their instincts are better than any expertise and their love far
more powerful than any mercenary motivation. Rather than a problematical skill
understood by professionals, child rearing is an act of love best done by
amateurs.
ISBN 0310254175 (9780310254171)
Zondervan,
2004
£8.99
Review
Child
Rearing for Fun. Trust your instincts and
enjoy your children!
Anne Atkins writes from the perspective of a
mother of five. I'm reading—and writing this review, of course—from the
perspective of Child No. 3 in a family of five children, and I feel obliged to
point out that I don't have any children of my own. I do, however, have plenty
of nephews and nieces (12 at the last count) courtesy of my brothers and
sisters, so I think that gives me a reasonable handle for getting to grips with
this book.
If you disagree, my advice is simple: buy the
book and decide for yourself – you certainly won't regret it. Because this is a
book that sparkles with all of Anne Atkins' wit and humour. She writes exactly
as she speaks: if ever you've heard her on BBC Radio 4's "Thought for the
Day" you'll immediately recognise her voice as you start to read.
Alongside the sharp wit, there's a wry wisdom: the voice of experience, not
telling you how to do it but saying, quite openly, "This is how it is for
me: this is how it can be for you: but you're the parent, you're the expert
when it comes to your children."
Anne insists that she is not an expert and—in
case you're under any illusions to the contrary—gives a rundown of some of the
problems that she and Shaun, her husband, have encountered along the way. I
won't steal her thunder with examples: suffice to say it hasn't been an easy
ride. Expert advice is not what this book is about: but it is about encouraging
you, as a parent, to hang on in there, to enjoy being there for your children
and your spouse, to hold on with the sort of determined grip that only love can
give.
Notice that use of the word "spouse".
Anne is a firm advocate of marriage, of life commitment, as the best
environment for bringing up children. No compromise, she says: rule out the 'D'
word at the outset. But she's also a realist: she knows that many of her
readers will be single parents, some through divorce, some through widowhood.
Others will be remarried or living with other partners or in other convoluted relationships
– but the basic principles of loving commitment between parent and child remain
the same. Yes, marriage is the ideal starting point, but we all have to work
from where we are (and yes, she cracks the almost inevitable one about the
Irishman giving directions...).
Anne's not interested in political correctness.
You already know that you're not necessarily going to agree with everything she
says, and for sure the so-called experts won't. But what's the point of a book
that simply makes you nod in agreement all the time? Here you'll find a
conversation partner you can engage with, laugh and weep with — and believe me,
you'll come out of the conversation stimulated and all the more enriched for
it. Child rearing can be fun: and with Anne Atkins it is. Enjoy.
Phil Groom, January 2005