All About Raising Children Review

 

The title of the book All About Raising Children, by Mrs. Helen Andelin, promises a lot. How could one book encompass everything about raising children?

There is, of course, a vast databank of information that a parent acquires while learning, day by day (sometimes hour by hour), how to care for their children. Assuming that parents have this huge bank of detailed and specific knowledge they have learned from raising their children, this book delivers on the promise of the title.

All About Raising Children covers educational philosophy and curriculum, care and breastfeeding of infants, behavior training from toddlers on up, instilling values, and an elegant framework that allows parents to gradually give more and more responsibility to their children as the children grow and learn. There is even a chapter on married adult children.

The Table of Contents is clear and helpful. Instead of an index, at the back of the book is a more detailed reference outline of the chapters. Although I wanted an index a couple of times while reading the book, I found the reference outline worked well to point me in the right direction.

Mrs. Andelin’s wisdom is staggering. She found and promoted a rewarding path for married women to follow in her book Fascinating Womanhood; this book about raising children includes just as much depth and even more breadth and practical tips.

Even the behavior training concepts, which are generally the more controversial and challenging parts of parenting publications, are well-thought-out and fitting for the applicable age groups.

It will take more than a few reads or skim-throughs to take in everything this book has to offer. Every time I open it, I find another topic of immediate relevance.

These are some of the highlights: the section on “House Appreciation,” especially useful for those who have jumpy little boys; “How to Deal with Negative Emotions,” which is a way to allow children to feel how they feel but not to bother the whole family with their outbursts; “Methods of Training,” which explains when retraining is necessary and how to do it; “Promoting Good-behavior: Ages Two to Five;” “Problems in Behavior: Ages Two to Five;” “Developing the Intellect,” a whole system for reforming education as well as teaching at home; “Help Your Child Think Confidence;” and “Our Married Children.”

It was beyond the scope of this book to fully elaborate all the details of every stage of life. Parents may want supplementary books or resources on baby care, illness, and teaching the arts. There are sections called “Musical Instruments,” “Singing,” “Art,” “How to Develop Artistic Taste and Talent,” and more, but materials that provided greater depth on these subjects would be interesting and valuable for parents.

Parents who have a strong belief in other parenting methods may not agree with every practice mentioned, but in general, the sum of this book’s reason, practicality, and inspirational parenting goals will be helpful along with the other methods.

As a mother, I find All About Raising Children to be a friendly, inspirational, easy-to-read manual for one of the very most important areas of my life.

As a person who studied school counseling, I notice a few things in particular from the book that promote healthy overall development in children. The emphasis on guidance and consistent limits is one that helps all children to learn, feel secure, and have good personal habits. What sets All About Raising Children apart from some other parenting methods is its emphasis on training, retraining, and gentle yet firm guidance that allows parents to teach their children what is expected before imposing consequences.

The book strongly supports the idea that a living example is one of the most powerful teaching tools. Parents must work on the qualities they want to see in their children. This idea is backed up by educational and health research. An author named James Baldwin had it right when he said: “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”

Another way that All About Raising Children upholds psychological and educational research is in its ideas about expressing emotions. It is important that children be allowed to feel the emotions they feel without suppressing them; on the other hand, it is not okay nor psychologically healthy for them to use those emotions to bother or manipulate other people. An outburst of a negative emotion like sadness, anger, frustration, or annoyance is not punished in All About Raising Children. It is, however, directed and guided so that a manipulative outburst or major disturbance to the household is removed to the person’s room. The child is allowed to feel badly, but may need to express it in the safety and privacy of a separate area. This also effectively deals with tantrums because there is no audience to give the tantrum its value.

A last note on acquiring and owning the book: The only place I know of that has All About Raising Children at a reasonable price is the official Fascinating Womanhood website which was started by the author, Mrs. Andelin, and her family. Please see the tab at the top of the page, "Where to Find the Books," for more information. These copies are thick little books but light for their size. I found that the pages needed to be handled with some care. Shipping costs are reasonable through the Fascinating Womanhood website as well, and my copy came very quickly.