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Playful Parenting (Paperback)
by Lawrence J. Cohen
| Category:
Parenting, Child raising, Education |
| Market price: ¥ 158.00
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Author: Lawrence J. Cohen
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Pub. in: April, 2002
ISBN: 0345442865
Pages: 320
Measurements: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA01264
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0345442864
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- MSL Picks -
The premise of the book is that children need a strong connection with their parents in order to have good self-esteem, self-confidence, happiness and good behavior. The author is a play therapist that feels that the key to getting and staying connected with our children aged three through the teen years is through play. If you think your child has great behavior then following the ideas in this book will still help foster close connections and reduce the minor issues such as whining, begging, etc. The author contends that simply by spending time playing with our children with the child in control of the nature of the play, that a strong connection can be made. Specific ideas for play "tactics" are given when the parent wants to solve some particular problem or fear. This book is not just for "problem kids" who have sought professional counseling with the author.
The gist of the book is that at about age 3 and up children are in the play mode, they like to play, want to play, need to play. They also at this time live in a world where they feel powerless or isolated at least some of the time, even in the best family situations. The theory is that they have "cups" that fill with love and sometimes when feeling isolated or powerless the cups run low and need refilling. When the cup is low the negative behaviors begin. The author feels that at these ages 3 through teen years, the fastest and most effective way to fill the love cup is by playing with your children. Most of his examples are with the work he has done with his child and his patients. He tells of certain games that can be played to overcome
this or that, such as how to deal with the child who wants to play guns and shoot at the parent, how to deal with swearing, what to do when the child is hyper and aggressive, etc. He made this seem so very simple that I didn't believe it would work. I also at first, didn't want to think my own children would ever need this. But I started using it immediately with my 4
YO and it DOES WORK.
The author discusses the negative issues of permissiveness and the negative aspects of the opposite extreme of over-strictness/authoritarian style of discipline. Regarding punishment methods, the author also is against yelling, threatening, or using verbal abusive techniques such as shaming as well as physical methods such as hitting in any way or spanking. He is also against using time-outs for punishment and explains why they don't work but instead foster more feelings of isolation and detachment. He discusses why letting a baby "cry it out" should not be done. The author is also against behavior modification tactics such as rewards and bribes, giving a brief overview of why they fail in the end, then he suggests reading "Punished by Rewards" for more detailed information.
The author is supportive of attachment in infancy and continuing throughout the teen years. The author interestingly enough never mentions actions to be taken in infancy that would secure an attachment. If you are looking for ways to foster this attachment in your birth through two year old I would recommend books on the subject of attachment parenting such as "The Baby Book" or "The Discipline Book", both written by William Sears MD and his wife Martha Sears RN. However, "Playful Parenting" expands on the information outlined by the Sears' and this book gives more tools and techniques while the essence of this book flows seamlessly from the philosophy as the Sears'.
Unlike other parenting book author "experts", Cohen is able to give the special perspective of a psychologist and really gives some useful information, psychological-wise, on the importance of fostering a close connection with our children and how and why these exercises (play therapy) can and does work. Cohen does not use psychological terminology and the writing style is easy for parents to read and understand. While some other parenting books identify certain behaviors as "normal" for this age or that age, Cohen cites these behaviors as signals that the child is in need of some attention (via play) and once given, the behavior stops. (I recently read a parenting book by psychologists that simply listed multiple negative behaviors as normal for that age. I prefer Cohen's book because he cites the reason for it and suggests solutions.)
He talks about power struggles and about parents who don't like to play,
that are serious all the time or preoccupied and begs parents to loosen up
and play with the kids.
Near the end of the book he does discuss individual issues of importance
such dealing with children's sex play, sibling rivalry, gun play, etc.
Lastly, Cohen admits throughout the book that as a parent he is not perfect and that he even has to sometimes push himself to get down and play Barbie games with his daughter. He does not write with a holier-than-thou attitude. I've done a lot of reading about parenting but have never read anything as great as Cohen's theory and ideas for parenting the three-plus year old.
I'm glad to see this is now out in paperback, the low paperback price will be appreciated by parents.
(From quoting christinemm, USA)
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Lawrence J. Cohen, Ph. D., is a clinical psychologist specializing in children's play, play therapy, and parenting. He is the coauthor, with Michael Thompson and Catherine O'Neill Grace, of Best Friends, Worst Enemies, a book about children's friendships and peer relations. He is also a columnist for The Boston Globe. Dr. Cohen leads Playful Parenting workshops for parents, teachers, and child-care professionals. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, with his wife, Anne, and their daughter, Emma.
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From Publisher
Have you ever stepped back to watch what really goes on when your children play? As psychologist Lawrence J. Cohen points out, play is children’s way of exploring the world, communicating deep feelings, getting close to those they care about, working through stressful situations, and simply blowing off steam. That’s why “playful parenting” is so important and so successful in building strong, close bonds between parents and children. Through play we join our kids in their world–and help them to
• Express and understand complex emotions
• Break through shyness, anger, and fear
• Empower themselves and respect diversity
• Play their way through sibling rivalry
• Cooperate without power struggles
From eliciting a giggle during baby’s first game of peekaboo to cracking jokes with a teenager while hanging out at the mall, Playful Parenting is a complete guide to using play to raise confident children. Written with love and humor, brimming with good advice and revealing anecdotes, and grounded in the latest research, this book will make you laugh even as it makes you wise in the ways of being an effective, enthusiastic parent.
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CHAPTER 1
THE VALUE OF BEING A PLAYFUL PARENT
Play is the essence of life.
Think about the loving gaze of an infant, the no-holds-barred embrace of a toddler, the intimacy of a shared bedtime story, or a silent hand-in-hand walk. These moments of heartfelt connection with our children are part of the great payoff for the hard work of parenting. Yet this connection all too often eludes us. We find ourselves locked in battle instead of joined in partnership. We all know the rest: the inconsolable baby, the toddler in the throes of a tantrum, the third-grader in a huff over bedtimes, the twelve-year-old sulking in her room.
Children’s natural exuberance and exploration often gives way to what I call “fighting and biting.” Or they hide themselves behind a Gameboy or a locked door. Meanwhile, our profound feeling of parental love is replaced by resentment and aggravation, even rage. We nag or punish, or we say, “Fine, stay in your room.” We yell when we reach the end of our rope, or just out of habit. All because we feel helpless, rejected, and cut off. We want to reconnect, as much as our children do, but we don’t know how. We still love them, but we barely remember those melting eye gazes of babyhood. If we do remember, it is a bittersweet memory, as if that closeness were lost forever.
Play - together with what I call Playful Parenting - can be the long-sought bridge back to that deep emotional bond between parent and child. Play, with all its exuberance and delighted togetherness, can ease the stress of parenting. Playful Parenting is a way to enter a child’s world, on the child’s terms, in order to foster closeness, confidence, and connection. When all is well in their world, play is an expansive vista where children are joyful, engaged, cooperative, and creative. Play is also the way that children make the world their own, exploring, making sense of all their new experiences, and recovering from life’s upsets. But play is not always easy for adults, because we have forgotten so much. Indeed, children and adults often seem to reside in radically different worlds, even within the same household. We find each other’s favorite activities boring or strange: How can she spend all afternoon dressing up Barbies? How can they sit around all evening just talking?
Parenting and playfulness can seem like contradictions, but sometimes we just need a little push to find one another and have fun together. I was at an outdoor concert, dancing off on the side with my nine-year-old daughter, when a mother and son came over to the dance area. She started dancing a little, but he just stood with his arms folded, a little too shy to dance now that he was there. He was about six or seven. His mother said, starting to get angry, “You dragged me up here, and now you’re not going to dance?” He folded his arms tighter and literally dug his heels in. I thought, We can all see where this is going. I said, “Oh no, he’s doing a new dance,” and I folded my arms just like his and gave him a big smile. He smiled back and moved his hands to a different position, which I copied. His mom caught on right away and started copying him, too. We all laughed. He started moving his shoulders up and down to the music, and his mother said, “You’re dancing!” Then he started to dance, and he had a great time. We all did (including my daughter, who waited patiently while I did “the Playful Parenting thing,” and then wanted my complete attention again). A little playfulness turned the tide.
This small episode demonstrates that Playful Parenting can happen anywhere and anytime, not just during designated playtimes. Playful Parenting begins with play, but it includes much more - from comforting a crying baby to hanging out at the mall; from waging pillow fights to taking the training wheels off the bicycle; from negotiating rules to dealing with the emotional fallout of a playground injury; from getting ready for school to listening to a child’s fears and dreams before bed. Sadly, these simple interactions can seem out of reach sometimes, or full of complications and hard feelings.
The fact is, we adults don’t have much room in our lives for fun and games. Our days are filled with stress, obligations, and hard work. We may be stiff, tired, and easily bored when we try to get on the floor and play with children - especially when it means switching gears from a stressful day of work or household chores. We might be willing to do what they want - like the mom at the outdoor concert, above - but then we get annoyed when they don’t play the way we expect or when they demand too much from us.
Others of us may be unable to put aside our competitiveness or our need to be in control. We get bored, cranky, and frustrated; we’re sore losers; we worry about teaching how to throw the ball correctly when our child just wants to play catch. We complain about children’s short attention spans, but how long can we sit and play marbles or Barbies or Monopoly or fantasy games before we get bored and distracted, or pulled away by the feeling that getting work done or cooking dinner is more important?
When my daughter was in preschool, she made up a great game that helped me be playful instead of shouting at her to hurry up and get ready. One morning she came downstairs, hid behind the doorway, and whispered to me, “Pretend that I’m still upstairs and that we’re really gonna be late and you’re really mad.” So I shouted upstairs, “We’re late, and I am really mad!” and I started storming around and stamping my foot. Meanwhile, she was behind the door giggling, her hand over her mouth. I said, “You better get down here, or I’m leaving without you. I’m going to go by myself to Big Oak Preschool!” She started laughing out loud, so I pretended I couldn’t hear her. While letting her sneak out ahead of me, I made a big show of leaving the house without her, supposedly not noticing she was there. She got in the car and I pretended I was talking to myself out loud, saying, “I am so mad. The teachers are going to say, ‘Where is Emma?’ And I’m going to say, ‘She wasn’t ready, so I just left with- out her.’ ” She was giggling and giggling and trying not to let on that she was really there. She was making getting ready for preschool fun for me! Pretending to be mad helped me not to be really mad, and playing instead of shouting helped her get ready faster!
WHY CHILDREN PLAY
Some children are leaders and some are followers; some prefer fantasy dress up while others are drawn to ball games. But virtually every child has an instinct for play that buds immediately after birth and is in full bloom by the age of two or three. Play is possible anywhere and anytime, a parallel universe of fantasy and imagination that children enter at will. For adults, play means leisure, but for children, play is more like their job. Unlike many of us adults, they usually love their work and seldom want a day off. Play is also children’s main way of communicating, of experimenting, and of learning.
A child who won’t or can’t play is instantly recognizable as being in significant emotional distress, like an adult who can’t work or won’t talk. Severely abused and neglected children often have to be taught how to play before they can benefit from play therapy. Why do we consider child labor such an abomination? Because it means children grow up without having a childhood, without play. It’s even worse when their labor is exploited so that adults can have more leisure, as depicted in this nineteenth-century poem by Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn:
The Golf Links Lie So Near the Mill
The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And watch the men at play.
Many experts describe play as a place - a place of magic and imagination, a place where a child can be fully one’s self. As psychologist Virginia Axline wrote about children in preschool: “They can build themselves a mountain and climb safely to the top and cry out for all the world to hear, ‘I can build me a mountain, or I can flatten it out. In here, I am big!’ ”2 I had a great reminder of the basic nature of play at my daughter’s third birthday party. I had organized all kinds of games to play in the park across the street from our house, and, of course, being a psychologist, I explained all of these complicated games to the children, who stood around looking at me as if I were from outer space. I wasn’t sure what to do. The children were too revved up to go back inside, but they weren’t going for my games. My wife interrupted and said, “Okay, everybody, run to the other side of the park and back!” They all ran happily across the park, shrieking and laughing, then ran back and flopped on the ground, giggling and panting for breath. They looked at me, and one boy asked, “That was fun, can we do that again?” I got the point.
Nevertheless, I can’t quite stop talking about the serious side of play. Play is fun, but it is also meaningful and complex. The more intelligent the animal, the more it plays. Unlike slugs or trees, every human learns new things about the world, and themselves, through discovery and practice. Some of this learning just happens automatically, by virtue of being alive, but much of it happens through play. Human childhood has gotten longer and longer, which means an increasing amount of time available for play. Play is important, not just because children do so much of it, but because there are layers and layers of meaning to even the most casual play.
Take an apparently simple game like catch - a child and a parent tossing a baseball back and forth. Much like observing... |
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Amazon.com (MSL quote), USA
<2008-03-27 00:00>
Tag, you're it! In Playful Parenting, Lawrence Cohen demonstrates that parents need to lighten up and spend a few hours giggling with their kids. Play is inherently educational for children, he claims, and parents can learn plenty by examining the games kids play--from peekaboo to practical jokes.
Cohen is quick to point out that no matter what your child's temperament, she has a playful side. In its most basic form, play is a way to communicate. The author examines, with plenty of hilarious personal anecdotes, the details of play at every age and across genders. From his daughter and a new male friend discussing how "cool" nuclear weapons are and how "gross" a love song is, to a younger child zooming full-speed around a park at a birthday party, we're shown the exuberant truth behind playing: not only is it just plain fun, it can spark a variety of important sensations. One short section discusses the common phenomenon of happy giggling turning instantly to tears. Cohen suggests that "the fun play opens the emotional door to let out the giggles, and a flood of other feelings come pouring out after." Some specific ideas for games are included, and you'll find recommendations for everything from play wrestling to gentle storytelling. One chapter focuses on how to cope with play you don't find enjoyable, and how learning to appreciate these games can lead to surprising emotional insights. This is where Cohen's years of practice come in handy--it may be true that we all play, but not everyone immediately grasps the underlying messages. This is not simply a book filled with family activities, but rather an exploration of play for all ages. -Jill Lightner
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Publishers Weekly (MSL quote), USA
<2008-03-27 00:00>
"Pretend... that we're really gonna be late and you're really mad," Emma, daughter of psychologist and play therapist Cohen, whispered one morning, cleverly transforming their morning ritual his grumpy attempt to get her off to preschool into a fun game. According to Cohen, children of all ages have an ongoing need for connectedness, security and attachment; playful interaction with parents is an important way to develop such bonds. Through play, parents can help their kids develop greater confidence, express bottled up or difficult feelings, recover from daily emotional upheavals, negotiate agreements, express love and not least have fun. In his therapy practice, Cohen has used play to help both severely troubled and securely attached kids negotiate the daily travails of life; he demonstrates how to prevent and address serious problems with silliness and laughter. Cohen acknowledges that it is sometimes difficult for busy and harried parents to relearn play, and that playtime is both physically challenging and tiring. However, using examples from his practice, research and personal experience, he intelligently guides parents through the possibilities awaiting them if they are willing and able to loosen up. The book explores play with compassion, but is often so funny that parents will find themselves chortling out loud with recognition and anticipation. Agent, Josh Horwitz. (On-sale date: May 29)Forecast: Cohen takes his practice on the road for a five-city author tour, which should help convince the Scrooge-like of play's primacy. His lessons on the deflection of anger are applicable beyond the m‚nage.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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Library Journal (MSL quote), USA
<2008-03-27 00:00>
"We all know we are supposed to turn off the TV and spend more time together," writes psychologist and Boston Globe columnist Cohen, "but then what?" Good question. Cohen provides some answers in this thorough, practical guide to the role of play in parenting. Chapters (e.g., "Join Children in Their World") describe how play can assist in decoding behavior and unspoken emotions while enabling parents to forge intimate connections. Cohen reminds us "that play is fun" and when we play with children on their terms "we unlock the door to their inner lives and meet them heart to heart." Cohen occasionally generalizes, e.g., "untrained in nurturing, men feel helpless," when attempting to bond with children. On the whole, however, this is a sound and useful book. Reminiscent of Alvin Rosenfeld and Nicole Wise's refreshing Hyper-Parenting: Are You Hurting Your Children by Trying Too Hard? (LJ 2/15/00), this book is recommended for all public libraries. Douglas C. Lord, Hartford P.L., CT
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. |
Family Life Magazine , USA
<2008-03-27 00:00>
Rich with ideas for using creativity to be a first-rate playmate and a first-rate parent too. |
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