Image: Raising Good Humans Every Day by Len Lantz (CC BY-NC-ND)
Synopsis: Len's Star Rating: 8 out of 10. A helpful parenting book on using mindfulness strategies in parenting children.
BY LEN LANTZ, MD, author of unJoy / 10.13.2023; No. 113
Disclaimer: Yes, I am a physician, but I’m not your doctor and this article does not create a doctor-patient relationship. This article is for educational purposes and should not be seen as medical advice. You should consult with your physician before you rely on this information. This post also contains affiliate links. Please click this LINK for the full disclaimer.
Star Rating – 8 out of 10
Rating guide: 1 = horrible, 5 = average and 10 = wow
Author
Hunter Clarke-Fields
About the author
Hunter Clarke-Fields, MSAE, is the host of the Mindful Mama Podcast and author of a parenting bestseller, Raising Good Humans: A Mindful Guide to Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Parenting and Raising Kind, Confident Kids. She has a background as a practitioner and instructor of yoga and mindfulness, and she obtained her masters in art teacher education at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She is the creator of a parenting course, which is called Mindful Parenting.
General description
Raising Good Humans Every Day is a book with 50 short chapters on parenting from a mindfulness standpoint. In the book, readers will find strategies for calming their thoughts and emotions, as well as parenting tips and strategies. The premise of the book is that parents who effectively manage their emotions will have a better chance of helping their children manage theirs. Several chapters contain step-by-step practices for recommended strategies, and there is a “Take action” section at the end of each chapter to encourage the reader to apply what they learned.
Unique and most important aspects
Raising Good Humans Every Day is a book devoted to helping parents regulate their emotions and thoughts, because it is much harder to raise kids when you are not calm and grounded emotionally yourself. Mindfulness is a powerful strategy that all parents could benefit from. Author Hunter Clarke-Fields shares many strategies for emotional regulation and presents easy-to-use approaches that are supported by other parenting experts.
While this book is less than 200 pages, I would recommend that parents read it slowly to understand and apply the concepts. I think it would be overwhelming to read it cover-to-cover in one sitting. The author delivers on the subtitle: 50 Simple Ways to Press Pause, Stay Present, and Connect with Your Kids, as there are 50 short yet meaningful chapters in this book with perhaps hundreds of useful tips. Raising Good Humans Every Day is promoted as a daily guide, but I would see it more as a weekly guide. There are 52 weeks in a year, so I think that reading one chapter per week to reflect on and apply strategies that you are interested in trying would be a good pace. Also, while the mindfulness strategies presented in this book will work for parents with kids of all ages, I found that the parenting suggestions were geared toward parenting younger children.
I found myself disagreeing somewhat with the author’s perspective on boredom in kids (chapter 25). I agree that it is not a parent’s responsibility to entertain their kids or give in to excessive time on electronics. However, in my work as a pediatric psychiatrist, I have observed that excessive boredom is unhealthy for kids, and the thing that sometimes follows excessive boredom, especially in teens, is a depressed mood. While we don’t want to overschedule our kids with activities or feel the need to entertain them, we also want to actively direct our children into healthy activities if their boredom is dragging them down. Important features of this book include:
Interrupting negative self-talk
Practicing 4-7-8 breathing
Scheduling “mindful special time”
Modeling forgiveness
Using relationship repair
Supporting free play
Practicing gratitude
Best quotes
“If you’re at a low point, that’s okay—the breakdown often comes before the breakthrough. My own feelings of shame and frustration broke me down; I was literally on the floor in tears, miserable. My breakthrough came when I gave up my idealistic expectations and started to focus on the place where I actually had some control: myself.”
“So we yell at our children to calm down. Yet parents are effectively telling children, ‘You change your behavior and emotions so that I can feel better.’ We’re asking our children to regulate our feelings. However, we are the adults in the relationship—the ones with the fully developed brain and nervous system. Isn’t it strange that we’re asking our kids to calm down when we can’t?”
“When we practice self-compassion, we tap into our innate nurturing system and naturally become more effective and responsive parents.”
“The holy grail of parenting is our children becoming able to regulate their emotions.”
“Stuff from our childhood can directly impact how we parent our children, unpredictably interfering in that relationship.”
“The answer is not to avoid or suppress all conflict, but what psychologists call ‘rupture and repair.’ Stress, conflict, and frustration are moments of rupture in your relationship with your child. As the adult, it’s your job to repair the relationship, bringing you both back to a place of connection and attunement. We can take responsibility for our part of the struggle and apologize. As we model this process when our kids are little, they eventually learn to initiate repair on their own.”
“We parents are the most important factors in either defending the measured pace of childhood or accelerating it. Supporting and protecting this slower pace allows children the time to learn who they are, to wonder, and to learn to learn.”
Who would enjoy this book?
Readers who are interested in a parenting book that helps them to better control their thoughts and emotions in order to parent more effectively are likely to enjoy Raising Good Humans Every Day.
Who would not enjoy this book?
People who are interested in a book with a primary focus on parenting teens or who would be overwhelmed by a large variety of suggestions and solutions are unlikely to enjoy Raising Good Humans Every Day.
Conclusion
Raising Good Humans Every Day is a helpful parenting book on using mindfulness strategies in parenting children.