Kiss Me – How to raise children with love. Carlos Gonzalez, published by Pinter and Martin translated from Spanish.
The first thing to make very clear about this book is that it isn’t a manual. It isn’t a how to guide, despite the subtitle (I do wonder if that was part of the title with the original version, or whether it was added to clarify what a book named Kiss Me was about.) Instead this is a fairly philosophical wander around lots and lots and lots of parenting and psychological literature. The author is a doctor and a parent, and it’s experience of being a parent that influenced him. The book is a scholarly treatise almost, in defence of children. Frequently throughout it, an example from a well known book or parenting expert will be taken and turned about, exchanging the words child for wife or some minority to show that the accepted version of behaviour towards children is actually, at a baseline, unacceptable towards everyone else, and the author suggests, therefore towards children also.
He discusses evolution and how at various stages humans and their ancestors must have raised children, and how children haven’t really changed all that much since those days. Just because some expert decides that babies should be treated in a particular way isn’t going to change the way that babies need to be treated. And the bottom line to this to parent with love and understanding.
There are lots of references to other scholarly works and research, most of the time to debunk the theories espoused there with little more than common sense, and reference to evolutionary development. The author is careful to be clear where statements are his own opinion, based on his own experience and calls frequently for the reader to think through a number of thought or word experiments. There are also several suggestions for further reading around parenting practises that the author considers sound, and I shall be making a list of those to follow up. (I suspect Pinter and Martin will be a good place to start to source them 😉 ) I rather wish I had come across this book earlier – it’s very thought provoking, backs up a lot of where I’ve come to at this stage in parenting, and would possibly have encouraged me to be more confident in some of the less mainstream practises I’ve adopted, such as babywearing, extended breastfeeding and cosleeping.
If you’re looking for backup as to why you want to pick your baby up when it cries, why you want to share a bed with it, carry it during the day and so on, this is an excellent starting point, and you can build a good reading list from recommendations within. If you want strict guidelines and methods as to how to raise your children you aren’t going to find them here. If you want a book that makes you listen to yourself and reevaluate every interaction you have with your children, look no further. I’ve been listening to myself since I finished reading, and I think I need to work some more on letting the love shine through.
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