The Family Dinner: Great Ways to Connect with Your Kids, One Meal at a Time by Laurie David & Kirstin Uhrenholdt

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Summary: Advice and suggestions from celebrities, nutritionists, chefs and parents about how to connect with your children during the dinner hour. 

This book was like the September Issue of Vogue magazine, but for dinner. It's not quite a cohesive book, but a series of short articles, recipes, ideas and games to make eating dinner as a family a goal.

However, it's inspiring and thought-provoking. I loved it. Laurie David, wife of Larry David (Seinfeld co-creator) and environmentalist, hired a chef to cook for her when her work got too involved for her to cook for her kids and still eat together. Their cook Kirstin Uhrenholdt provides many of the recipes but celebrity chefs from Cat Cora to Mark Bittman (currently my new foodie crush) share recipes. Hiring a personal chef is ridiculous to me, but keep in mind they live in Hollywood, where there's often more money than sense. However, if I could afford a personal chef, I would in a heartbeat.

The book talks about meatless Mondays, alternative protein sources and ways to eat better without hurting the earth. There are also game a discussion ideas (my kids eagerly played long), gardening advice, storage advice - really, a little bit of everything; just like a magazine.

What I really wanted, and partially got, were guidelines for how we should act as a family together. Laurie's 10 steps are what I wanted even if Step Five: Everyone Tries Everything led to table pounding, slammed plates and one child in tears.There's also advice from Ellyn Sattler, one of the food experts and someone with whose philosophy I struggle.

I so want my husband to read this book, but he's too busy. (Yes, I do appreciate the irony.) But this advice only reinforces the ways I can practice my beliefs about good citizenship, parenting, and nutrition. My only disappointment was that there was only a casual mention of food allergies and sensitivities, but planning meals when two children have different food issues is difficult even for a nutritionist, and not just a busy mom who loves to read.

Parentonomics: An Economist Dad Looks at Parenting by Joshua Gans

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Summary: A blog expanded into book form by an Australian economist professor, who tries to explain economic principles through parenting examples. 

This is an odd parenting memoir. It's not quite an economics books, but more or a parenting memoir. Joshua Gans refers to his children as Child No. 1, Child No. 2 and Child No. 3. I can't tell if his "children's mother" is his current wife, an ex-wife, an unmarried domestic partner or if this is some social experiment or Australian cultural norm. Names, even pseudonyms, would have humanized this book a little more. I was especially turned off when Gans explores the incentives to parents of letting a child "cry it out" and the economic principles that child is exploring by night waking.

Gans touches on toilet training, labor and delivery, breast-feeding, kids birthday parties, car seats and safety, and punishment. His unique take on each of the situations is sometimes funny, sometimes disturbing (Is it cultural or a different style of parenting? - I don't know) but always thought-provoking. Am I glad I read it? Yes. Would I read more by him? Doubtful. As a writer, his style may be better suited to his blog, as I found it a hard book to get through.

The Idle Parent: Why Laid-Back Parents Raise Happier and Healthier Kids by Tom Hodgkinson

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Summary: The best way to be a parent is to relax and do as little as possible.

I tend to be an uptight parent, worrying that my kids will act as brats in public, which will lead to vandalism, promiscuity, drug use and anarchy.

This book didn't quite inspire me to embrace every concept the author espouses, but the overall message that kids learn by doing and are more competent than we give them credit for was quite a healthy one.

Paradoxically, the idle parent is a responsible parent because at the heart of idle parenting is the respect for the child, trust in another human being.

This is a lovely sentiment, and one that seems directly to contrast with the new book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua. The author quotes heavily from A. S. Neill, the founder of the Summerhill School. I often felt like I should be reading A.S. Neill's book, instead of this one. He also darws from Rouseau and Locke and even D.H. Lawrence.

Banish the TV, sleep in, give the kids peas to eat, music to play (ukuleles are great) and let them have pets. All very sensible, normal advice that seems radical once he delves deeper into his reasoning. It turned me off a little when Wilkinson said,

My idea of child care is a large field. At one side of the field is a marquee with a bar serving local ales. This is where the parents gather. On the other side of the field, somewhere in the distance, the children play. I don't bother them, and they don't bother me. Give them as much freedom as possible. 

I am always stunned when people who have more than one child seem to resent being parents. How can the work and joy of one child be forgotten when you decide to have a second? If you see kids as a bother, then yes, be an idle parent. You'll likely be happier.

Part of the freedom that Wilkinson praises is the freedom to let them play with their arseholes in public. Whoa, kinda lost me there, buddy.

Even a broken watch is right twice a day, so I can't totally dismiss this book as the writings of a neglectful crackpot, nor can I recommend this book to American parents who are searching for guidelines on how to raise happy kids.

Between Parent and Child by Dr. Haim G. Ginott

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Summary: By mirroring your child's frustration back to him or her, you express empathy and understanding.

This parenting book opened with a charming example of how to parent your child:

What do we say to a guest who forgets her umbrella? Do we run after her and say, "What is the matter with you? Every time you come to visit you forget something. If it's not one thing, it's another. Why can't you be like your younger sister? When she comes to visit, she knows how to behave. You're forty-four years old! Will you never learn? I'm not a slave to pick up after you! I bet you'd forget your head if it weren't attached to your shoulders!" That's not what we say to a guest. We say, "Here's your umbrella, Alice," without adding, "scatterbrain."

Parents need to learn to respond to their children as they do to guests. 

How loving and what an inspiration to parents. But the rest of the book seemed incomplete to me. Perhaps it's because my children are too young to respond or perhaps the advice does not offer enough follow through.

The principle piece of advice in this book is that you mirror back your child's frustration, often putting words or ideas in their heads. "You seem disappointed. " or "That must have made you so mad!"  But what I felt was lacking was any form of trying to help the child figure out a solution for next time. Just expressing sympathy doesn't seem like enough of a response to me. The next step was missing. I tried this with my son and he whined even longer and harder. "You really want a gum ball and you're sad that you can't have one." Any parenting advice that extends the tantrum won't work for us. This also seemed to focus on children who are in school full-time, a situation not yet appropriate to us.

Another valuable piece of advice was to avoid blank statements like "That was bad." or "Good job." What would be more helpful would be to express characteristics you would like your child to embody. "You shared your toy with your sister. How kind." or "Look at you, you did it!"  This is advice often found in other parenting books I've read, including Easy To Love, Difficult to Discipline.

One skill I'm still working on:

When children interrupt adult conversations, adults usually react angrily: "Don't be rude. It is impolite to interrupt." However, interrupting the interrupter is also impolite. Parents should not be rude in the process of enforcing child politeness. Perhaps it would be better to state, "I would like to finish telling my story."

Originally published in 1965, this book did seem out of date, with just the basics mentioned in more recent parenting books. It's not that the advice wasn't good, it just wasn't complete enough or relevant enough for my life. I considered three stars, since this book is not bad, but found that if I were to recommend any parenting book, this one wouldn't even make the list.

NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman

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Summary: Nurtureshock challenges many accepted modern parenting beliefs by sharing case studies and research.

"Nurtureshock," as the term is generally used, refers to the panic - common among new parents- that the mythical foundation of knowledge is not magically kicking in at all.

I was hoping this book would simply say: Calm down, parents, but instead it actually made me more nervous. (I think I'll have to reread Free-Range Kids, now.) Since Po Bronson is also the author of What Should I do with My Life?, I had hoped that Nurtureshock would end up being more like How Should I Parent My Kid? but it feels scold-y and superior.

Each chapter states a commonly held parenting belief - My kid doesn't lie; PBS television is better than regular TV; Gifted kids always stay gifted; Siblings make for better adults - and tears them down. It opens with the oft-repeated conventional wisdom, then uses a specific case study of one child to disprove that theory. Then comes a fairly obscure and limited research project that invalidates the original (wrong) belief.   The research answers are encouraging, but somehow they just don't make for sexy headlines.

If you're an insecure parent who relies on lots of statistics, this book will appeal to you. If you feel able to buck parenting trends and have one or two parenting books that make sense to you, you can skip this book without feeling like you're missing anything.

You're Teaching My Child What?: A Physician Exposes the Lies of Sex Education and How They Can Harm Your Child by Miriam Grossman M.D.

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Summary: The emphasis on all sexual behavior being normal leads to high rates of STDs.

Say what you like about abstinence education (Bristol Palin would be the first to tell you it doesn't work), but when you bash Planned Parenthood on page 4, you've pretty much lost credibility with me.

I understand the author's point - that making any kind of sexual deviancy seem normal actually harms children and their sexuality.

Experimenting with multiple partners, S&M, same sex intimacy when a child is NOT gay, all of this behavior can lead to sexually transmitted diseases, the potential for infertility and emotionally unhealthy adult relationships.

I am not unsympathetic to the author's concerns over STDs, but the blind anger against Planned Parenthood and other sites about teen sexuality do not do much to solve the problem.