by Robert J. MacKenzie. I have to admit, after reading other books on parenting techniques, and knowing the way my family seems to view things from an outsider's point of view, I had a feeling this book and I would clash. I'm very much an easy-going kind of parent, and I didn't want a book that would tell me that I had to train my children to be obedient and that was the end of it. I wanted my children to have the freedom to question the rules so they could understand them. This goes back to that whole Charlotte Mason habit training thing, you know, the subject I just won't let drop! I'm sure you're sick of hearing about it by now!Anyhow, I'd read this book, well, at least part way through it when I got it in the first place. I put it down and failed to pick it up again when my children's father got home from Iraq. I suggested he and I sit down and read it together, that it would help us both out with the children. He swore we didn't need a book to tell us how to raise our children and he would get the children in line, so the book got dropped aside and I let him try things his way.
To be honest, I'd forgotten all about the book for quite some time. He and I decided to get divorced, in part because of how he was with the children. I had been trying to employ techniques from another book I'd gotten and was having resistance because the children didn't have any kind of consistency in their lives. I felt like I was fighting them all the time. I felt like I was fighting their father all the time. Unfortunately, unless both parents are on board, no technique will ever last for long.
Some time after their father and I separated and I was already with my current partner, I'd found both this book and the other sitting on my bookshelf. I decided to pull them out again. It could be an interesting read, right? It might give us something to work on together. My children were still fighting me because of their habit of having such inconsistency between Mom and Dad. My partner wasn't exactly on the same page as I was, so I thought reading a couple books together might help us find a balance point between us, some middle ground that the whole family could benefit from. Of course, much is the trend in my life, things got chaotic and the book was put down before I could finish it. Not only that, but my partner was so against reading it that he would look for any excuse to get out of it! I think it's got to be a man thing.
Just recently with this whole Charlotte Mason habit training thing, I was reminded of the techniques I had been so striving to use with my children. How had I gotten so off track? I had taken all of the beliefs and practices I swore I'd use with my children and thrown them out the window! This simply couldn't be happening. As a result, I decided to come back to this book and a couple other books. I decided I'd read through them and this time I was going to finish every single one of them. As this was the first book I'd found, this would be the first book I started with.
I've decided to do two things with this book that I haven't done with any other book review I've done in the past. I'm going to go through this book chapter by chapter and express how I feel about it. I'm not going to re-write the book out in the blog. If I were going to do that, I might as well just read you the whole book! However, I'm going to share what I learn about myself, what I discover about my family, and the changes this book makes in our home life, if any. If you're reading this blog, you're already following my journey through homeschooling, a struggle towards green living and sustainability, home and family life, and so much more. Isn't this just one more layer? More importantly, I'll have a way to check in and make sure I'm staying on track. After all, if I start writing about doing things that are totally contrary to what I believe, or for my friends who see me regularly, I'm sure I'll get a whole slew of people reminding me to get back on track!
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