"Playful Parenting"

I read half of it.

Too many cheery anecdotes about Lawrence Cohen's own family and therapy patients, which all show what a Goofy Guy Larry is.

Important good things: play is an important means of communication for children; play can be a means of changing the energy of a situation, of backing off from an area of conflict for a time, or a tool with which to resolve it; play can be a way of reconnecting with the people we cohabit with.

Bad things: "follow the giggles" - because IMO giggling can indicate fear and nervousness
: he does not like TV and thinks that it stops children from being able to play imaginatively - because they are following someone else's script. I've seen 4 year olds tell/act out The Three Bears without tolerating hesitation, repetition or deviation and it didn't take a TV show to fix the narrative.

Attitudes to children

Overheard on a bus:

"Oh, children are manipulative little s*ds, aren't they?"

This comment would be socially impossible to make in a western country in a public place about any other group of people (blacks, hispanics, joooos, women, old people...)

It also reveals a complete lack of understanding of the aims of very small children.
"Gah I can't sleep alone in the dark here... I know, I'll really annoy my parents by screaming so loudly that they get as miserable as me... mwahahaha that'll show them not to force feed me tasteless goop three times a day"

"Gateway Books"

There is a thread on the TCS list at the moment about books people have found helpful in learning how to treat their children as small autonomous people rather than property, untamed savages, extensions of the self etc etc.

I want to put the books on here so I don't lose the list!

Lawrence Cohen 'Playful Parenting'

Jan Hunt 'The Natural Child'

anything by John Holt or Deborah Jackson

Alison Stallibrass, "The Self-Respecting Child" (for a reminder that some good ideas have been around
for a while...)

Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn

Hold On To Your Kids

"Raising Your Child Not by Force but by Love," by Sidney D. Craig

Jan Fortune -Wood's 'Winning Parent Winning Child', 'With Consent', 'Without Boundaries'