I reviewed the book What Every Child Should Know Along the Way and I was also able to check out the DVD Navigating the Rapids of Parenting. I think every parent could use a bit of encouragement when it comes to raising children so I was looking forward to watching and reviewing Navigating the Rapids of Parenting from Parenting Made Practical.
This book is intended for parents of preschoolers through college (there's a spread!), and it's written by a homeschooling mom.
To be honest, it was a little...heavy...on the Biblical side for me. I'm sure I'm just encouraging people to worry about my family by saying that, so please know that it's not necessary. I certainly wouldn't classify myself as someone who eschews anything Biblical. We attend church and Sunday school and are bringing the girls up in a Christian way. But it was a bit too much for me and I don't know that I'd be totally comfortable recommending it to my homeschooling friends who are less religious. They may be off put and give up early. In addition, although it's just a general idea, the pages and pages and pages of rules and don'ts were overwhelming. Personally, that kind of list isn't the most helpful for our family. We're more likely to say "you CAN play here" and "these are the things you ARE allowed to use" than give them endless "don't this" and "you can't" that.
However, once I wrapped my head around that and distilled the ideas down to the big picture, the big picture is a good one, and the charts and suggestions for each age are very helpful. I'll keep this book around as a reference.
Although I thought I would only get the book, I was surprised by getting a DVD surprise in my package! Always fun.
In the opening scene Carla says: "During transitions our children are changing and so are we, because they are moving through a phase that for them they are growing into new things that they don't know how to handle." This is exactly the heart of parenting. It's a road of transitions for you and for your child. I've written about this before - every time you feel like you've confidently figured out how to work through a hard stage, they're out of it and onto the next hard stage. They can't yet make sense of where they've grown into.
I'm running into this with my almost 8 year old. She's growing from little kid to big kid and there are plenty of struggles in there. She wants so desperately to be independent, but she's not quite there yet - but I also know that keeping her down isn't the right choice.
The DVD is about an hour and a half long, but it's broken into four phases. I watched phase one and two, since that's where my kids are, which is the first 40 minutes. We're just out of the birth - 5 phase (very rule focused) and are now completely in the elementary stage (training). The goal is to anticipate these "rapids" before the kids hit them, so we can guide them through, rather than fight our way through with them.
I wasn't shocked to see that it is just as religiously driven as the the book. Again, this isn't a BAD thing. It's just for a very specific audience. Would I share it with our friends in town who are Jewish? Our co-op friends who are non-religious? Probably not, which is a shame, because it's good overall information. It's just a little much.
Other Crew members reviewed different products so be sure to read the other reviews to learn more about the other products available from Parenting Made Practical. When the girls are older I'll be interested in the book and DVD of Taming the Lecture Bug and Getting Your Kids to Think.
