Parenting Advice Blog

Parents frustrated with trying to relate to their child or teenager might find relief later this month through a class offered at Liberty Union Elementary School. The six-week class parenting class, called Love and Logic, will start Sept. 16. The course, which is open to all parents in Fairfield County, is designed to help parents decrease power struggles with their children and learn how to ...

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Newton Project Self-Sufficiency will offer free parenting workshops for parents with children of all ages in September.

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Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering: A Doctor’s Guide to Natural Childbirth and Gentle Early Parenting Choices

An authoritative guide to natural childbirth and postpartum parenting options from an MD who home-birthed her own four children.

Sarah Buckley might be called a third-wave natural birth advocate. A doctor and a mother, she approaches the question of how a woman and baby might have the most fulfilling birth experience with respect for the wisdom of both medical science and the human body. Using current medical and epidemiological research plus women’s experiences (including her own), she demonstrates that what she calls “undisturbed birth” is almost always healthier and safer than high-technology approaches to birth. Her wise counsel on issues like breastfeeding and sleeping during postpartum helps extend the gentle birth experience into a gentle parenting relationship.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars A Natural Approach To Child Birth and Parenting
/Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering/ was inspired by Dr. Sarah Buckley’s home birth of her third child. In an era where pregnancy and birth are considered to be a medical condition, rather than a natural process that women’s bodies were designed for, this book challenges such topics as testing for gestational diabetes, antibiotics for group B strep, and induction for being “overdue.” Buckley discusses the cycle of intervention during labor–induction, epidurals, and hurrying along the third stage of birth. The book continues with topics on long-term breast-feeding, bed-sharing, and discusses cultural disapproval. /Gentle Birth/ includes the stories of Buckley’s four births at home.

Being a proponent of natural childbirth and allowing one’s body to labor sans intervention, I was excited to find this wonderfully written book on all the topics I’ve come to believe in and embrace. While this book won’t send someone who looks at birth as “something is about to go wrong,” running to set up the kiddie pool for a home birth, for those who already lean towards the natural side of birth, it’ll be a wonderful addition to your pregnancy, birth, and baby-rearing collection.

5 Stars Authoritative, truthful, compassionate

I love Sarah Buckley’s book! It accomplishes a rare feat: combining a compassionate voice with the weighty authority that a practising doctor and meticulous researcher can bring to her subject. Sarah’s book is a treasure-trove. For anyone who cares about the critical formative period of child development from conception to early childhood, it delves beyond the sentimental to provide a formidable data-base, as practical as it is touching and inspiring.

As a father I found Sarah’s book brilliant and a pleasure to read.

As a psychologist in private practice, parent-educator and author, her book has been one of my most valued and oft-quoted resources.

I doubt that anyone who reads Sarah’s book could ever again choose a hospital birth with obstetric intervention (unless there are clear medical complications). Reading left me feeling angry that the many psychological and medical risks presented by today’s obstetric excesses have been so heavily downplayed by the industry. Why weren’t we told? On the other hand, Sarah has presented clear neurological and endocrinological evidence of the blissful beginnings that natural and gentle birth, and gentle parenting, can bring about. Her book paves the way to a far more loving world.

The great gift of Buckley’s book is that she relieves parents of a century of needless and baseless iatrogenic fears: fear of pregnancy, fear of birth, fear of babies, fear of the body. The reward is a font of natural, undisturbed hormonal bliss; for mothers, newborns, and even for fathers. Buckely’s extraordinary book midwives the birth of a new, healthier, and more loving culture.

Robin Grille, psychologist, author

5 Stars heart and head
REVIEW FOR

GENTLE BIRTH, GENTLE MOTHERING

I need to declare a bias in reviewing this book.

I am a grandmother of 3 little boys whose mothers have felt reassured and validated by reading and rereading `Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering’ .

And I am a co-journeyer with Sarah Buckley in the Melbourne based `Women’s Mysteries Advanced Circle’ led by Shivam Rachana..

As I opened the covers of this book and moved from the foreword and introduction to the initial pages, I was inexorably drawn to skip to the moving stories of Sarah’s birthings of Emma, Zoe, Jacob and Maia, to her piece on breastfeeding `The Gift of a Lifetime’, to her celebration of the intelligence of Jacob’s placenta and her other gentle family practices. Then my brain wanted to know more about the science behind the `overdue baby’, `Gestational Diabetes’, and the practice of ultrasound etc. And then more finding out about the `nocebo’ effect (constantly reminding the pregnant woman about potential problems and the stress that this places on a pregnancy). And after that I flipped to the exhaustive 41 pages of notes, book references and studies which back up the scientific aspect of the book. And then to Ch 6- the groundbreaking work on the `ecstatic birthing hormones ‘.(To my knowledge Sarah is unique in gathering for the scientific world an understanding of this `hormonal orchestration of the birth process’).

The gift of this book is exactly as has been so often said - a marriage of the deeply authentic and personal with the best of our scientific heritage - the data, the tests, the studies.

The brain and the heart dancing together.

I reflect, as someone who did the best I knew how with my own births in the 70’s - a book like this would have been gold. I would have devoured it. I would have found it readable, thought-provoking, gentle and poetic.

I would have felt looked after emotionally, and as a thinking person.

And I would feel stronger in listening to the ancient echoes of my own mammalian instincts.

2 Stars Easy enough to sum up
Don’t have an ultrasound, don’t have an epidural, don’t have a C-section, do give birth at home, don’t cut the cord, do breastfeed, and do sleep with your baby. These are the choices you will make if you love your baby.

There–I’ve spared you some time–you’ve read the entire book.

I’m speaking as someone who did give birth naturally and nurse for two years, so I’m not just being sour grapes that someone else did something I couldn’t. But “gentle birth” and “gentle mothering” are simply not the be-all and end-all of life. Mothers who do the opposite of all these things love their babies just as much. Women who don’t have children have just as fulfilling lives as mothers–if not more so, given Buckley’s dismissal of sleep as a physiological need, preferring to define it instead as an unrealistic Western cultural expectation. I happen to think Western culture isn’t as awful as Buckley makes it out to be. Especially if it means I’m allowed to sleep alone and have my breasts to myself every now and then while still loving my baby.

2 Stars Truely gentle? Choose Ina Mae.
I approached this book with an open mind, knowing that I was going to give birth in a hospital but wanting to do it drug-free…I first read Ina Mae’s Guide to Natural Childbirth which was a tremendous resource and inspiration for my own birth experience last June. Since it was mentioned on the website that Ina Mae wrote the forward for “Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering” I assumed that this would be similarly inspirational. I, however, found this book to be rather punitive in it’s approach to traditional medical interventions and felt berated if I had resorted to any kind medical assistance in the anticipated birth of my child. The author struck me as more of a militant, hostile protestor rather then an uplifting, supportive guide like Ina Mae. I recommend skipping this book and purchasing one written by a true pioneer - Ina Mae.

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A LITTLE boy was caught scribbling all over the wall of his sister’s room. When asked why he did that, he replied: "My wall is already full, I can’t scribble there anymore."

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Unhappy Teenagers: A Way for Parents and Teachers to Reach Them

The bestselling author of Choice Theory and Reality Therapy offers a powerful approach for helping troubled teens.

During his decades-long career as a therapist, Dr. William Glasser has often counseled parents and teenagers, healing shattered families and changing lives with his advice. Now, in his first book on the lessons he has learned, he asks parents to reject the “common sense” that tells them to “lay down the law” by grounding teens, or to try to coerce them into changing their behavior. These strategies have never worked, asserts Dr. Glasser, and never will. Instead he offers a different approach based upon Choice Theory.

Glasser spells out the seven deadly habits parents practice, and then shows them how to accomplish goals by changing their own behavior. Most important, however, in Unhappy Teenagers, Dr. Glasser provides a groundbreaking method that all parents can use with confidence and love to keep a strong relationship with their child.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars An Essential Resource
If you are the parent of a teen who is having developmental problems of any sort, then you need this book. This book takes the essence of Choice Theory and applies it to the relationship between teens and their parents. The book consists of a number of case studies featuring the stories of typical young adults with all different sorts of problems ranging from anorexia to poor performance in school. As he is relating the story behind each case, the author will frequently turn to a brief discussion of various facets of his Choice Theory and how they apply to the case at hand.

Glasser’s enlightened discussion of the Quality World concept of Choice Theory is central to the book, and how this applies to the teen’s relationship with his/her parents. Coupled with this are discussions of the concepts of control and choice. Relinquishing one’s control over a teen, and gently guiding them toward making better choices is another common theme running through these case studies.

My advice is, if you have a teen, or young adult, and you are experiencing some turbulence (and who does not?), buy this book, read it, underline the passages that strike you as most important (there are many), then keep this book at your side, within reaching distance, as you navigate these years. It is well worth it to be able to reach for this book in times of trouble, when your relationship with your teen or young adult seems to be deteriorating, to open a page at random, and just read. Very often, you will encounter an extremely important insight that can guide you forward.

Thank you Dr. Glasser for helping us parents to understand that the relationship is everything.

5 Stars Unhappy Teenagers
This is a good book that discusses and provides excellent examples of Choice Theory parenting, as well as Choice Theory teaching. For the sake of this review, I am concentrating on the parenting aspects of the book. A few years ago, my son was dating a girl whose parents were very strict. They didn’t allow her to do much independently with her friends that wasn’t associated with school activities–activities that they usually attended as well. This may sound like a good way to keep their daughter safe and free from the distractions and negative behavior that most parents fear. However, what actually happened is that this girl, who really did want to please her parents for the most part, started to rebel. She wasn’t allowed to do many of the things her friends did so she began to lie to her parents to get to do “normal” things. When her friends were having a party that her parents wouldn’t approve of, this girl, call her Sarah, would tell her parents that she was staying at Susie’s house and Susie would tell her parents that she was staying at Sarah’s house and the two girls would be out all night unsupervised and no one knew where they were or what they were doing. This is an incredibly dangerous situation.

I was concerned about Sarah. One day, she saw Unhappy Teenagers: A Way for Parents and Teens to Reach Them on the back seat of my car and asked to borrow it. I let her take it and she loved the book and wanted her mother to read it. She showed her mother the book and her mother was so hurt that she threw the book outside in the yard. She also proclaimed that Dr. Glasser probably never had any children of his own. Well, I wish I could say that this story had a happy ending. The girl’s parents continued to be very strict and the girl continued to lie and do many things she wouldn’t have normally done had she just had some permission to explore the world. All parties survived the girls’ adolescence but it could have been so much easier.

Just so you know, Dr. Glasser did raise children of his own and he has a very empowering method for both parents and children that is outlined in this book. Everyone wins. He is not suggesting that parents throw up their hands in dismay and just let their children do whatever they want to do. He is proposing that there is a way for parents to be empowered and to empower their teens at the same time. Read the book, you won’t be sorry.

5 Stars Excellent. I can’t wait to read more from this brilliant psychiatrist, and talented author
Easy to read, provides a practical approach to a very challenging problem. Offers a workable, actually enjoyable way to improve every kind of relationship, not only those with teenagers. Since reading and discussing it with my family, we hear far less shouting in our house.

5 Stars Excellent for new relationship with your kids
Ignore references to his other works and you’re home free. You have everything you need in this one book. Implementing it is the big challenge because it goes against the grain of what we’ve been taught growing up. If one can do it, it will change your relationship with your teen dramatically.

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