Sorry for the delay, the holidays, you know!
The books were written by Brad Blanton. He is a psychotherapist. The premise appears to be that people lie, every day, for a variety of reasons, ("Your hair looks great!", "No, honey, Í don't mind if you go have a nap.") and that the stress that creates makes us sick and unhappy.
There's a lot more to it, obviously, but I don't know what's ok to quote and what's not.
He has a web site, radicalhonesty.com.
I got the book, "Radical Parenting" because I had a not very good encounter with his child. Without meaning to, I upset him, and I told Brad about it so that if his son needed help with what had happened, he would have some understanding, and wouldn't be left floundering.
Here was the incident:
Maeve is 9. She had long hair, down to the middle of her back. I have given her every tool I could think of to enable her to care for her hair by herself. Combs, brushes, making sure she knew how to comb it, detanglers, good conditioner, braiding it at night, ample time to get it brushed, etc. She was not taking this responsibility on. She would rather let her hair become a rat's nest.
I told her that if she did not take on this responsibility, and kept giving it back to me by default, she would have to have her hair cut. Repeatedly. We had words *daily* about her unwillingness to do this task.
I had mixed feelings about this. Here I am telling her that her body is hers, she has the right to say "no" to anyone, but then I completely abrogated that by telling her I had the right to make her get her hair cut.
Then there is the whole concept of me putting my expectations on her. Who am I to tell her she *has* to comb her hair?
Then there was the knee jerk, "My kid isn't going out looking like an orphan" reaction.
Then there is the whole "Hey, I said I was going to do it, if I do not follow through, she's going to see this as an inconsistency" deal, which is more important than you might think cause Maeve is hitting the smart ass stage pretty early.
So, in the end, after much agonizing and soul searching, we went down and got her hair cut. She cried the whole time. I cried the whole time. By the time we got home she told me she really liked it. (And she did, I could tell, it wasn't just trying to make it ok.)
She was, however, nervous about her friend's reactions, and the next time we saw them as a group, Brad's child said, "Your hair looks terrible." Maeve burst into tears.
I took the child aside and said, "I hope you didn't intend that to be mean. It made Maeve very sad. I would appreciate it if you could go in and try to help her feel better, because even if you don't like it, it still isn't nice to say something that hurts someone's feelings if you can help it."
Well, the kid burst into tears. I felt like doggydoo. I tried to ease the child through it but s/he's the kind of child that seems to process this stuff best if left alone, so I did that.
Anyway, I stopped Brad and told him what had happened so he could do whatever he would to help his child.
Brad focused on the issues involved on my decision to get her hair cut in the first place. In a way, very cool, I'm not the only freak out there that mentally masturbates my parenting to death. In a way, not so cool, I don't know him that well and I'd already done all my mental wankering, thankyouverymuch.
Anyway, the next time we saw them, he handed me this book, the parenting one. I'm glad to have it, who isn't happy to have a chance to better their skills, but slightly peeved that he obviously thinks I handled the whole thing badly, (and more peeved that I know I probably DID.)
I felt it would be beneficial to have other parenting freaks (and I mean this in the nicest possible way) read through it with me, because at this point I feel sorta negative about it and I am afraid I'd be missing good things in it without someone else pointing them out.
Whew.
