Parenting Beyond Power: How to Use Connection and Collaboration to Transform Your Family--and the World

by Jen Lumanlan MS M.Ed.

“I’m in love with this book! It illuminates the forces that make parenting so difficult, and helps us develop better relationships with our kids—and ourselves.”
—Hunter Clarke-Fields, MSAE, author of Raising Good Humans

Parenting is hard. But when we replace conventional parent-child power dynamics with collaboration, family life gets easier today—and we create a better world for all of us in the future.

When we see our children stalling, resisting, having tantrums, using mean words, and hitting, we want to just make it stop . But conventional discipline methods like time-outs, countdowns, and “consequences” teach children that it’s OK for more powerful people to control others—a lesson they take out into the world. This is how we learned White supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism from our parents—and we will replicate this with our children unless we make a different choice.

Research-based parenting educator Jen Lumanlan offers a simple yet revolutionary framework for rethinking our relationships with children. This new approach helps us to look beneath challenging behaviors to find and meet children’s needs, and ours too—perhaps for the first time in our lives. It involves empathetic listening, understanding feelings and underlying needs, and problem-solving with our children to find solutions to conflicts that work for everyone.

Family life becomes radically easier in the short term because behavior problems tend to melt away. In the long term, we’ll raise children who confidently advocate for themselves and treat others with profound respect.

Includes sample scripts, flowcharts, and resources to help parents learn and implement this new approach.


—"The compassionate guidance will be a boon to parents eager to move away from punitive child-rearing strategies." —Publisher's Weekly

Genres: Parenting, Nonfiction, Relationships, Childrens

272 pages, Paperback

Published September 5, 2023

Reviews

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book took two separate book ideas and shoved them violently together so that the effect is both confusing and doesn’t do justice to either topic.

The first “book” I’ll call “How modern Parenting is influenced by white supremacy, patriarchy and capitalism” was not mentioned on the front cover, and it was in the bottom paragraph of the synopsis section. So when it turned out to be the main theme of the book, it startled me a bit. The tone of the preface through the first chapter makes me think she’s on a soapbox more than anything - the author does not present a persuasive argument on the topic and it’s done so in a way I find it hard to believe that anyone who doesn’t already agree with her on her views about white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism will read beyond the first chapter. Which would be a shame, because she has some very interesting points on all three. It’s just not presented in a manner that will be digestible for the population she says this book was written for - this book, as stated in the letter from the author is primarily intended for White people though she hopes more BIPOC will benefit also. Unfortunately, her presentation style limits this population to just the ones who already agree with her about each. She starts opens with the nefarious effects of white supremacy. Many do not wish to see it, and this book doesn’t take the time to fully define and leave space for the cognitive dissonance recognition leaves in its wake. It just moves fluidly from topic to topic - moving over into capitalism. The country this book was written in was primarily built on the fundamentals of capitalism, and I’m not defending it, but dismantling ideas that “capitalism is good” cannot happen in the short time given to the topic within the chapter. Then the patriarchy had a similar treatment. The purpose of that first chapter was to set the foundation for the rest of the ideas in the book. But the first chapter could have been a book. It needed to be a book to fully go into all the nuances those topics require.

The second chapter is where we see the secondary book theme begin to show up “parenting beyond power.” Unfortunately, the primary theme spends more time trying to usurp the book and the ideas and topics and helpful scripts for connection based parenting are fighting for the spotlight. And please, don’t hear me wrong, I’m not saying the primary theme is in and of itself bad, but the presentation of it will absolutely not draw people who do not agree with conscious parenting to want to parent more respectfully to their children. Because that message is buried between other themes and arguments the book promotes in such a way that you’d only want to read if you agreed with her assessment of the first and primary theme. So my prediction is that her community and people who feel the same way she does will love this book, but I’m afraid it will not compel others to critical thinking on these topics. Which again, is disappointing because I do believe that parenting consciously and respectfully can and will absolutely change the world. But this book has too much going on with it to make a person who does not already practice conscious parenting to want to give it a try. This book does have good discussions on consequences vs punishments and it has some great scripts designed to really find the underlying need when your child is having a hard time. I do feel like she could have spent more time with the mindset shift required to parent more consciously. Which makes me think she’s talking to people who already *want* and believe they can parent more respectfully and not so much the parents who are trying to figure out how they might parent beyond the power struggles. I am such a parent, so I did agree with many of her ideas about treating children respectfully— but when I was new to conscious parenting, this book would have left me behind. I would have tried the scripts and held onto them like a lifeline, but conscious parenting has never been about the scripts. It’s about how we view and see our children and scripts without a change of mindset will leave you floundering. Ultimately- this book wasn’t for me.

I’d like to thank the publisher Sasquatch Books and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a big fan of the Your Parenting Mojo approach to relationships with your kids. It's essentially applying Non-Violent Communication practices but specifically for family life. The framework feels very flexible for all sorts of relationships and family situations, and investing in improving my skills at the components of NVC-based collaborative problem solving has been a huge help for me as a parent and spouse while participating in the paid membership community. This book could be a really helpful reference point for distilling the oodles of content and ideas from the podcast and the parenting membership into a book that is pretty straightforward overall.

That said, the asterisk I typically put on YPM content is if you have a hard time tolerating discussion that brings individual problems back to racism, capitalism (as a bad system), and patriarchy, this may not be the right fit. You can avoid most of it in the book if you skip the first chapter and the afterword. The rest of the chapters have great content and advice, with the usual amount of baseline assumption of common Bay Area political values. I know plenty of folks for whom the tie-ins to systemic problems would be a big pro, and also a few who might be tempted to throw the baby out with the bathwater in their distaste for the politics. I personally wish the content could be more politically agnostic, because I believe in how much it can help everyone who wants to have a good relationship with their kids, but that's just not Lumanlan's worldview.

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This “expectations gap” creates a huge potential for difficulties between parents and children, as the parent asks the child to do a task they aren’t yet developmentally capable of doing.

Problem solving how to change a child’s behavior doesn’t work, because nobody likes being told to change their behavior.

Resistance is the struggle against our needs not being met.
The denial of needs leads to pain.

Because many of us were raised in families where we weren’t allowed to say “no,” when our child says “no” to us, we experience an almost unbearable rejection. Instead of hearing the “no” as a rejection, we can learn to translate its meaning to: “That suggestion/idea/request doesn’t meet my needs right now.” Our children most often say “no” because resistance is the only tool they have to say that their need isn’t being met. They don’t yet have the vocabulary to explain it in a logical way (and we would out-argue them anyway), so they use their best available option.

Most children are expressing one of a very few needs most of the time:
* Connection (often with us)
* Empathy (to know that we are trying to see things from their perspective)
* Safety (mostly emotional safety)
* Comfort (mostly physical, including heat/cold, softness/smoothness, and physical location of the body) Respect (to know that we consider their needs with the same care as our own)
* Play (including joy and fun)
* Integrity (to be able to act in alignment with their needs, rather than prioritizing our needs)
* Autonomy (to be able to make decisions about things that impact their life)

The consequences of having had our needs ignored or overridden for so long are profound. We might see this on a regular basis when we snap at our child for doing something age appropriate and can’t figure out why this tiny thing sends us over the edge—it’s because we don’t know how to identify our needs on a regular basis, and by the end of the day, we’ve had our needs ignored or overridden so many times that even one more request to meet someone else’s needs feels utterly overwhelming.

...learning two very important skills. The first of these is understanding what she needs in the already difficult moments.
The second important skill is knowing what to do with the information you find in your body on a regular basis, which very often signals our needs much earlier than when we’re in full-on red-flag territory.

It’s often easiest to start understanding this after a need hasn’t been met. Your child does something that makes you snap. As soon as possible after the event, after you’re reregulated, try to remember what happened in the minutes and hours leading up to it. What sensations did you feel in your body? What did you notice right before you snapped? And what had been building throughout the day? Very often our bodies will try to send us lots of little signals, and we ignore them. Your child wants the blue cup instead of the red one, and you’ve already sat down to breakfast. You get the blue cup, but you feel a little something—perhaps a knot in your shoulders, a lump in your throat, or clenching in your stomach. Your child refuses to get dressed, and your temperature rises, but you manage to keep a lid on it. Ten more events like this happen throughout the day, and you keep disregarding your needs and try to give your child what they want. What was your body telling you each time?

Parents often report that they have a need for control (which is ultimately what Kelly was trying to do: control all aspects of an interaction), but this tends to mask other underlying needs. When it seems like you have a “need” for control, consider what other feelings and needs might be underneath that—very often, we feel a fear of some kind: that our child will never learn a critical skill, that someone will judge us, that we won’t look like we have it all together. Or perhaps we feel a sense of shame. And we all have needs for safety and security.

WE NEED FEWER LIMITS…AND A LOT MORE BOUNDARIES On the occasions when it isn’t possible to meet both people’s needs in a difficult situation, most of us set limits on our child’s behavior as a first tool when actually we should use boundaries. We often talk as if limits and boundaries are interchangeable, but they are quite different. We tend to set a lot of limits, because we assume that we’re in the right and if the other person would change their behavior, then things would be better. But setting limits on other people’s behavior tends to create more trouble for us, because nobody likes it when other people try to change them. The fewer limits we can set on other people’s behavior (especially our children’s), the easier our lives will be. Once again, that does not mean that we’re letting the child run the show. Instead of setting limits, we’re going to understand our needs and set boundaries so those needs get met.

An example of a boundary: “I’m not willing to get up and play with you until I’ve finished eating dinner.” We’re saying what we aren’t willing to do, and the other person is free to respond in whatever way feels appropriate for them. Big feelings may result when you start setting boundaries, but if the boundary is grounded in your needs, you will communicate this both verbally and nonverbally to your child, which will convey that you mean it. They will probably push back much less as a result.

It’s also important that we’re never looking to a child as the only person who can meet our needs as an adult. We have many avenues of support available to us, perhaps including a partner, friends, parents, mentors, and therapy. We’re looking for ways that we can each get our needs met within the context of age-appropriate requests of our child, rather than for our child to be a major source of support for us.

HOW TO SET A BOUNDARY When you’re thinking about a challenge you’re having with another person at a time when you’re relaxed and regulated, you remove the pressure of having to fix the issue right now. When you decide what you are and aren’t willing to do in advance of it happening again, you’re going to be more consistent too—you aren’t making a decision on the fly based on how you’re feeling in that particular moment.
Sometimes no matter how hard you try and how many solutions you bring to problem-solving, your child won’t accept any of them and you can’t find a strategy that meets everyone’s needs. That’s when boundaries become most useful, because it allows you to say what you are and aren’t willing to do. We can then mourn our inability to find a solution that works for both of us.

As long as your boundaries are grounded in your true feelings and needs, there’s very little danger you’ll set arbitrary boundaries that you’ll end up regretting. (It’s much more likely that you’ll set arbitrary limits, which is why we use these as a last-resort tool.) Your child may cry after you set a boundary—which is OK. We aren’t trying to completely stop your child from feeling upset; we’re trying to move toward living in alignment with your values.

We’re so afraid of that “no”! We’ve been trained to associate “no” with rejection—rejection of our idea as well as rejection of us as people. But when we hear a “no” in this context, it isn’t a rejection of us; it’s just a way of expressing: “That suggestion didn’t meet my need.” Instead of thinking of a “no” as a door closing, think of it as another door opening: it’s an opportunity to try again.

...many children clam up when we start asking them about their feelings, and if we just come out and ask them about their needs, then they likely won’t know what to say. The parents I work with have found that questions like “What was going on for you when that happened?” is an effective way to uncover feelings, while “What were you trying to do?” can get us to an understanding of their needs in a way that most children are usually able to answer.

When a parent says: “I don’t know what the need is,” this often seems to be code for: “It’s scary to understand the need because I might not be willing to meet it since I’ve been conditioned to think that it’s my job to make my child comply with my wishes.” Solution: Use what you know about the child’s behavior and personality, as well as what they’re telling you, to make a hypothesis about what their need is. Look to their needs cupcake to see if you think it might be any of the top three to five needs, and then the next three to five; then look at the rest of the cupcake. Don’t forget to identify your need—which, again, is not “to make the child do what I want” or any other specific strategy. Now, is there a way that both people’s needs can be met?

Common pitfalls in problem solving:
* We decide what the “correct” solution is in advance. Pretty often, we feel that we already know the answer to a problem, and we think that if we can just get our child to see it our way, things will be better. But by focusing on meeting needs, we find we can generate all kinds of solutions that didn’t seem relevant or useful before. Solution: With a very young child, we may be the one who provides suggestions for ways to solve the problem, but as soon as the child is able to suggest their own solution, we should grab hold of it with both hands and make it work if it’s even vaguely possible. This will help the child to see that we really do value their input and will use it if we can.
* We expect a solution to work forever. We had a successful Problem-Solving Conversation. We arrived at a solution that our child mostly generated and then agreed to. It works…for three days. Then our child refuses again, and we feel like problem-solving “doesn’t work” for us. Solution: If we can let go of the idea that a solution is forever, this one fixes itself. When the solution we jointly determine ends up not working out for one of us, that’s an opportunity to have another Problem-Solving Conversation.

Keeping a child healthy and safe overrides meeting their needs where we can’t do both; we just have to be clear whether an issue is really health and safety related rather than telling ourselves that all of the limits we set are related to health and safety.

The more the hitting seems to occur randomly, unrelated to a specific type of incident, the more you should consider macro-scale causes of dysregulation like chronic lack of sleep, need for more connection a big life event (e.g., birth of a sibling, house move, job change), unhappiness in day care/school, etc.

[Miranda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read many parenting books and for the most part I'm happy to take what I like from them and leave what I don't like. I was happy that this book had stuff that I really liked, even if it's not all easy to implement. Since I follow this authors podcast I knew going into it her opinion and views on things that are bigger picture things like societal issues. I admire Jen to push us to think of these things.

Parenting through collaboration is something that resonates with me as it is not how I was parented and I can see the benefits of creating a relationship with my small child now that'll be the foundation for how we interact with each other for the rest of our lives. My plan is not to hope for the best through the teenage years, my plan is to enjoy every stage of parenting.

I enjoyed the format this book was written in and when I finished I did wish for more so I do hope more books come from her.

[Macho · Rating 3 out of 5]

his book flows out of the author's parenting podcast, which aims to formulate a parenting philosophy and practice informed by progressive and anti-oppressive politics. The first couple of chapters are kind of an anti-oppression 101, and then the rest of the book gets into the parenting advice, which seems to follow the collaborative-problem-solving version of respectful parenting found in Ross Greene's work. I found the politics unsatisfying, though I'm not sure I can put my finger on exactly why. It does strike me as incoherent to identify, as the author does, as both a liberal and an anti-capitalist, and to cite as inspiration both Dean Spade and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but maybe I'm being too small-minded. The problem solving part of the book, which forms the bulk of it, I found more helpful, though even there I took it as supplementary ideas to extend those found in Ross Greene's work a bit further.

[Samantha · Rating 3 out of 5]

In her book, parenting educator Jen Lumanlan dives into a fresh approach to parenting, emphasizing collaboration over traditional power dynamics. While I appreciated her efforts to provide a research-based framework, I couldn't help but notice the heavy promotion of her personal business (ie: coaching, workshops, etc) throughout the book. While it's understandable for authors to mention their services, it felt a bit overwhelming at times and detracted from the core content. That being said, Lumanlan does offer some valuable insights and practical tools. Despite my reservations about the heavy self-promotion, there are still nuggets of wisdom to be found within these pages for parents seeking alternative parenting strategies.

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Jennifer R · Rating 5 out of 5]

Parenting Beyond Power shines a powerful light on the cultural reasons (rarely addressed and often subconscious) parenting is often _so much harder_ than we expected it to be.

More than just your typical parenting book extolling structured routines, child-led attachment or something in-between, it’s the tying together of the bigger picture with the day-to-day challenges of family life - while offering accessible solutions to those challenges - that makes the approach in Jen Lumenlan’s debut book so profound.

While lots of parenting advice and approaches focus exclusively on how parents should, well, approach needs, behaviors and challenges with their child(ren), Parenting Beyond Power invites readers to consider their OWN needs as part of the equation, which can feel pretty darn revolutionary, especially for parents who are feeling burned out and at the end of their rope.

The cultural context provided for WHY it’s so easy and typical for parents (especially mothers) to deprioritize or completely ignore their own needs offers a much-needed balm. Instead of yet another “should” that a parent might fail to do "properly", we are invited to shift our thinking that parenting isn’t hard because we’re not good enough or trying hard enough - parenting is hard because of the cultural soup we’re parenting within. For readers already concerned with the impacts of capitalism, racism, and patriarchy, some lightbulbs will definitely go off while reading this book.

Lumenlan packs a lot into a small space. The chapters feel very succinct and make for quick reading, but there’s a lot going on conceptually in each.

Parents eager to start applying new techniques will find overviews, illustrative examples, flowcharts and sample scripts throughout the book. I could see readers skimming through to get straight to these tools to help jump-start things.

The perspectives on culture may feel pretty novel depending on where you’re coming from, and it might take a re-read or two for them to start to sink in. The techniques outlined in Parenting Beyond Power can improve family life no matter how deeply you read the rest of the book; the book can offer even more to readers with capacity to spend more time with the overarching concepts and values underpinning those techniques.

[Andrea Mastromatteo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my, what to say about this book? Except that if you read it and read it again you will begin to embody the bold, radical task of caring for small humans and imparting the values of dignity, emotional literacy, curiosity and accountability for others. Sound scary? It is. Turns out there's a spectrum of parenting styles and ways and this one is on the opposite end of those that maintain the status quo and/or are peppered with phrases like " I turned out fine" and "nobody wrote a book about parenting".

As parents who choose to make this journey with intention and humility know-- there are so many books on parenting you could read them for a lifetime and never be done.
And also... no, we didn't "turn out fine".

If you are looking for a script, you're better off with the How To Talk.. diptych. Sometimes they work and then when they aren't working for you, come back to this one because they really are complimentary.

If you're looking for a way to parent better without considering the larger social and political implications of parenting (Yes, parenting is personal and therefore political whether we want it to be or not) then this is not the book for you yet.

But if you're curious about another way and you know that somehow you need to change, and the way you interact with yourself and your family needs to change and you're not sure why or how... then this book will guide the way.

Other reviews have criticized the book for being topical, but the resources in the back and suggested further reading makes up for any way this might be true. Of course it's not exhaustive, but it is comprehensive. I only hope that her next book will bring the planet, climate and more discussion on consent into the fold.

Good companions are The Drama of The Gifted Child and Robyn Gobbels Big Baffling behaviors.

This book has the power to be as transformative as Free Range Kids was in the early aughts.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're not familiar with Jen Lumanlan's work, this book is a great introduction to this parenting philosophy. If you are familiar with it, like I was, it's still a great summary of the mindset and tools to become a better parent. I personally don't find the tone to be condescending or preachy, but more "we're all in this together," and truly motivating to do the best you can to consider your children's needs and emotions in a different way than usual.

It helps to reframe your understanding of yourself as a parent and the societal issues that have led us to being so stressed and disconnected and unhappy, and how that affects our parenting, which, yes, may resonate more with a population already more to the left of the political spectrum and make others uncomfortable to question, but are still important questions to raise and issues to point out.

Even though I'm not (yet!) implementing everything perfectly (nor does this book expect anyone to or promise unrealistic overnight miracles), I can already see that when I DO my household is calmer, and I can see surprising levels of insight from my children (especially the older one, who is almost 5).
I really appreciate that it helps me address small, everyday parenting issues in ways where I connect better to my children, but is also helping me to consider bigger picture ways that I want to parent my future adults to feel safe, confident, and supported enough to express vulnerability, their emotions, and question the status quo of injustices and inequalities in society. 

[Tasha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jen Lumanlan has written a compelling book with a fresh take on parenting that weaves in thoughts about how a racist, capitalist, and patriarchal world filters down into our person-to-person interactions with our children. I found the last few chapters to have especially helpful reminders of how to confront one's own ignorance and set on a path of ongoing learning and growth - and, I almost didn't get to that point in the book because so found it difficult to read the first few chapters.

Lumanlan launches into "Parenting Beyond Power" with a tone of authority without establishing a solid rapport with the reader first. I felt like I was being lectured to about how the world works. I've found it easier to connect with parenting books when there is a combination of humility along with inquiry. That said, there's some great wisdom in this book and I especially appreciate how Lumanlan troubleshoots potential pitfalls while bringing the problem solving approach to situations with our children. How we do one thing can be how we do anything, so I like the link between parenting approaches and our approach to relationships in general.

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Dana Schmidt · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are a lot of parenting books out there that offer advice on what is best for your child based on the latest available evidence. There are far fewer parenting books that also delve into what parents really need, too. And this is the first parenting book that I have read that puts into context the broader systems that make parenting so hard -- *and* so critical for shifting the way we relate within our families and beyond.

Parenting Beyond Power offers three things: (1) practical strategies to deal with parenting challenges, alongside concrete examples and "cheat sheets" for implementing these strategies; (2) an analysis and acknowledgement of why parenting is so hard in the current systems in which we live; and (3) motivation for how the ideas in this book can be not only transformative within your own family, but in the broader community as well.

It strikes me that even someone who is turned off by the broader social justice lens of this book would have an awful lot to take away from the practical strategies it offers. That said, readers who are motivated by these larger goals will gain the most as they see how the strategies in the book will enable them to live their values more fully.

[Raylene Barton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this to be a great book. I came across the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast about a year ago and loved it so reading this book was an easy choice. As a parent/teacher and psychology undergrad this parenting technique was something I was already trying to use and truly believe in. I read this as a way to learn more about the problem solving strategy outside of the podcast episodes. What I really liked about this book was that it was a basic starting point for parents to learn more about this framework. It is a creating starting point, and provides a lot of great resources to be used throughout your journey. If you are looking for specific topics and how to use this framework then the podcast is where to look but if you are just looking to dip your toes into the world of respectful connection and collaboration based parenting then this is a great place to start.

[Laurie Hunt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A courageous book.
In order to overcome inequity, oppression, power over dynamics and create a world where everyone belongs, we have to raise our kids outside of patriarchy, white supremacy and the competitive winner takes all of capitalism. In so doing, we learn and change too.
I admire the courageous leadership that Jen is modelling in writing this book. Practical and wise parenting guidance within the context of raising awareness of our actions and what they signify to our children and any children within the circle of our lives.
THIS is the type of parenting book we need. Criticizing Jen's style and/or the inclusion of the social issues is a white supremacist and patriarchal response.
Bravo Jen! Much needed and much appreciated!

[Dlayoyo Peace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Parenting Beyond Power is awesome! If you are looking for ways to ‘be the change you want to see in the world’ and ‘treat others the way you would like to be treated’ here is an great parenting manual for finding ways to do just that, starting in your home.

I will be recommending this book to every parent.

I found the content that spoke directly to healing damaging patriarchal, capitalist and racist systems (insidious in W.E.I.R.D. societies) super beneficial. I have pre-ordered my own copy of the book and will refer back to it often I expect, to assist in aligning my parenting with my values.

I can’t wait for book number 2!

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I listened to the audiobook and it was a joy to listen to. The author makes connections between today’s political systems and the way we parent. She then offers an alternative in the way of NVC. She outlines a different more collaborative approach to our kids and while these are a difficult pill to swallow at first (don’t we all just want power over our kids and for them to just do what we ask for an easy life?!) she makes a quite persuasive argument for why this isn’t such a good idea. The descriptions of the new approach is very easily laid out and accessible. I intend to buy this in paperback so I can go through the tools one by one and write notes in the margins!

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great parenting book for busy, but mindful and socially aware parents. It's a rough, but excellent mashup of topics and ideas for parents who want to dismantle unjust systems (i.e., white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism) and parent their children with respect, connection and collaboration.
Hit home for me, in all the right places, Lumanlan speaks to acknowledging how you were parented, bringing awareness to your own triggers and unmet needs and then, with practical, but realistic scripts gives actionable guidance for doing things differently and intentionally with your own children.
Yes, there's a liberal, feminist, anti-racist vibe permeating this book, and I am 100% here for it. This was an excellent parenting book for parents who want to do it better and give their children the tools to do it better too.

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book so helpful! It offers strategies that you can implement right away to improve your relationships with not only your children but with your family and friends too. I’m very familiar with Jen’s work through her podcast, but I deeply appreciated what she shared about herself in this book and how she connected the dots between how we’re all struggling and the systems of oppression around us. Those connections help alleviate the shame I’ve felt about not being able to do some of this stuff well in the past.

[Erin Adwell Teague · Rating 5 out of 5]

💯 my new favorite parenting book!

Author tackles the complicated relationship connecting social issues and parenting issues: power dynamics. She makes the argument that people can change our ways of interacting to create relationships where everyone’s needs are met most of the time.

Though I was familiar with nonviolent communication upon starting this book, the writing drew insightful and novel connections I have failed to make on my own.

Loving this, and I’m already seeing differences in my family as a result of the practices!

[Nikki · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book comes out hard with the controversial topics! It is evidence based and factual, though I feel that those who need the message most won't even rage read it. The information provided is needed, and provides more information behind social justice in parenting.
I also know that while I would love to use this book in practice with my clients, based on my location I would lose credibility. Fantastic book, comes on a little strong, but my preference is for more subtle information.

[Bernardo Ercoli · Rating 3 out of 5]

PRO
+interesting different POV on parenting (book for white people, with bias of white privilege, capitalism and patriarchy)

CONS
-very american
-if a child screams, you cannot say "listen darling I know we are having a difficult moment here, why don't we sit and discuss about our emotions?"
-"to fight patriarchy, we shouldn't force our children to do chores they don't want to do only because we say so" and yet I'll continue to do it

[Lindy Avila · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has changed the way I see parenting and the profound impact it could have on the world. I hadn’t realized how entrenched patriarchal & colonial ideas were in our modern day parenting. It’s left me with a lot of work to do internally to learn to name my own needs & feelings, encourage my children to become aware of theirs and to learn to problem solve together. Putting it into practice has already reduced the power struggles and tantrums. So thankful for her profound work!

[Analisa Carrillo · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very different parenting book. As I began to read it I almost got turned off by the constant white privileges brought.

The author gives some pretty good tips, but I just wish she didn't have to bring race or color into it.

Yes, I understand it's all around us, but when I go for a parenting book, I'm not looking for anything more.

[Henrike · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed the first chapters on the how patriarchy, capitalism and racism show up in our everyday parenting.
The second part is more practical and is primarily about how to have problem solving conversations with your children. Now I have read the book and made notes everywhere I will listen to the audio book to help me put it into practice!

[Jordan]

DNF @ 21%

While capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy are clearly bad, I don’t agree that they are responsible for everything. There are too many good books out there to spend any more time with this one.

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to try this out before I give it 5 stars, but it was an excellent read and I can't wait to use what I have learned with my own kids and see the effects.

[Dini · Rating 3 out of 5]

Her podcast Your Parenting Mojo is way better as this book felt like any other trending parenting book.