How To Talk So Kids Can Learn At Home and in School
By Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
The authors of the best-selling How To Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk joined up with teachers Lisa Nyberg and Rosalyn Anstine Templeton to publish this volume geared toward teachers back in 1995, and I must say that it brings up a few interesting points. The book is also partially geared toward parents, within the context of helping them to help their children and their children's teachers with the goal of a quality education. Since I am both parent and teacher, I thought perhaps it would be a good read when I ran across it at the library. While I won't be looking to place it on my permanent bookshelf any time soon, it was good to read through and brought a few things to my mind that I am grateful to have been prodded about.
The book is not too long, and divided into 8 chapters which are easy to read through. The chapters are:
• How to deal with feelings that interfere with learning
• Seven skills that invite kids to cooperate
• The pitfalls of punishment: alternatives that lead to self-discipline
• Solving problems together: six steps that engage children's creativity and commitment
• Praise that doesn't demean, criticism that doesn't wound
• How to free a child who is locked in a role
• The parent-teacher partnership
• The dream-catcher
The last chapter is simply a three-and-a-half page conclusion, but each of the other chapters is divided into four parts. To start off, coverage of the topic at hand, with at least one section of illustrative cartoons depicting parents', teachers' and children's usual responses to certain problems, with alternative cartoons following. A third section in each chapter is titled "A Quick Reminder" and briefly covers the main point by presenting a situation, listing a common response, then proposing several alternatives that should hopefully produce different, more acceptable results. The last section of each chapter features questions and stories about the topic from parents, and from teachers.
Overall, I believe the book has some valid ideas and points to make about how we communicate to children, and what effect that communication has on their ability and willingness to learn, but it seems hopelessly idealistic, in my opinion. While we should take care in how we speak to children, just as we should with anyone, the general idea seems to be that if you follow the magical formula of communicating properly with every single child, they will automatically fall into line and become compliant little learners who will not only straighten up behaviorally but academically.
As a parent and homeschooler, I found the two most useful chapters to be the ones on praise/criticism and freeing children from being locked into roles. A swift kick in the pants to remind me to catch my children being good and praising them (in a proper manner) instead of doing nothing but criticizing the wrong things is something I needed right now. I found the chapter on freeing children from being locked into expected roles very interesting, and also something I need right now — I find it all too easy to let my ideas of who my children are limit them and limit what experiences I might offer for one or both of them, and I need to get out of that habit.
While some of the ideas presented in the book tended to send my eyeballs rolling just a tad at the enthusiastic idealism, the one chapter that threatened to stick them up into my orbital sockets was, not surprisingly, the chapter on punishment and alternatives to punishment. As one might expect from mainstream parenting literature, it's chock full of modern ideas about self-esteem at all costs and the horrible effects that punishment has on children's precious little psyches. I wouldn't say to throw out the baby with the bathwater and skip this book altogether, but most people I know would take this chapter with a couple of spoonfuls of salt, if they read it at all.
I found How To Talk a bit over-generalized and a tad too enthusiastic about its own ideas, but to be a good starting point and something to bring to mind some ideas you might not have thought about in your own homeschool journey. It made a good weekend read, but I won't be buying it to keep. You may just find that you enjoy a look at it yourself, but don't go in with high expectations, as you won't find every answer to your communication problems within the pages of this one.
