Does My Child Need Me to Lead or to Follow?

DOES MY CHILD NEED ME TO LEAD OR TO FOLLOW? by Claudia Schwarzlmüller is an international best-seller which covers “A Radically Simple Way to Parent Children from Infancy Through Age 6.” Schwarzlmüller is a child psychologist with over twenty years of experience. Her tone is wonderful – calm, compassionate, nonjudgmental, and definitely striving to represent the child’s viewpoint. For example, in the Your Toddler section, she describes behavior which is SO familiar (e.g., a toddler “loves taking things out and putting them away”… and “needs to repeat behaviors many times in order to learn … repetition is the name of the game”). She discusses thinking and playing (when a child “learns about objects by putting them in his mouth, banging them against something else, studying, turning, rubbing, or throwing them”), as well as feelings and relationships, movement, and speech. To me (a relatively new grandmother), the insights Schwarzlmüller offers are spot-on, valuable and actionable (e.g., she lists a series of play schemas and what your child learns from practice like Positioning (a sense of length, height, distance), Transforming, Connecting, Enveloping, Transporting, Dividing/Scattering (geometry/math, quantity, shapes, volume), Sorting, Filling, and Orientation). She writes about allowing your child to lead (“give them the freedom to try things out and as much free time to play as possible”), but also notes, “Children need to find their bearings and to feel safe. You are the missing partner in this social dance if you don't assume your role in moments of leading. Your child is searching for balance between moments of leading and moments of play, just like the rest of us.” Additional parts of the book deal with Your Baby, From Toddler to Preschooler, From Preschooler to Kindergartener to First Grader, plus introductory material, a list of references, and further reading suggestions. Publishers Weekly called this text “a valuable resource for parents of young children [in which] research-based insight meets practical guidance.” I heartily concur and I am highly recommending DOES MY CHILD NEED ME TO LEAD OR TO FOLLOW?

THE MIXED + MULTIRACIAL GUIDE TO WELLBEING by Namalee Bolle is subtitled “Navigating Family, Identity + Healing.” Bolle divides the text into three parts: Unpack, Discover and Thrive. She describes her own history (British born of Sri-Lankan and Dutch-Jewish heritage) and that of other multi-racial people as she encourages readers to reflect on their unique situations. It felt at points as though this text was more about therapy-type exercises and less about actual research findings (of which there may not be many). However, I did gain insights from reading about children who are multiracial – as she says, they are racially different to both parents. That may seem obvious, but it is worth pausing and contemplating that idea along with how difficult it is for all of us to find our identities as adolescents and how these children must learn to recognize/accept that “I am this and this and that.” I plan to look into the children’s books that she recommended (e.g., The Truth about Dragons) and also to watch 1000% Me, an HBO/Max documentary. Overall, an interesting starting point for more discussion and research.

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

I will be posting about several great LibraryReads selections for September 2021

and one worth waiting for is CLOUD CUCKOO LAND by Pulitzer Prize winning author Anthony Doerr (All the Light We Cannot See).  Once again Doerr crafts a story told by multiple narrators, although in his newest work they live at different times and in different places. Anna and Omeir are alive in the Middle Ages - about 1453 – living around Constantinople so the siege and eventual capture of the Byzantine Empire's capital by the Ottoman Empire is a key event in their lives. War also enters later in the more contemporary story line – stretching through the Korean War and environmental awareness and protest in the 1970s and beyond for Zeno and Seymour. A third story thread involves Konstance who is a passenger on a spaceship in the future, heading away from Earth to find a new planet to inhabit. Adding to the complexity, short passages from an ancient Greek text are interspersed. Overall, the writing is exquisite (e.g., “September closes around August like the pincers of a claw”). Doerr’s skill at drawing parallels and weaving together the disparate stories will keep readers enthralled despite the length (640 pages – but honestly, barely noticeable in digital format). He raises deep questions about grief and healing, about hardship and selflessness, asking, “Why is it so hard to transcend the identities assigned to us when we were young?” and observing through one of his characters: “That’s what the gods do … they spin threads of ruin through the fabric of our lives, all to make a song for generations to come.” I was not at all surprised to learn that CLOUD CUCKOO LAND received starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal and Publishers Weekly. Highly recommended.