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Raising Kids: Your Essential Guide to Everyday Parenting
A practical guide for navigating the everyday challenges of raising kids--from managing family routines, screen time, and homework to supporting social development, self-esteem, and resilience
Parenting approaches only work when they're supported by the relationships parents have with their children.
In Raising Kids, family therapist and parenting consultant Sheri Glucoft Wong and Silicon Valley private school head Olaf Jorgenson team up to deliver an easy-to-follow, down-to-earth guide to building relationships by being on your kids' side and getting them on yours.
This isn't a typical parenting book packed with theories or quick fixes. Instead, if offers approaches that work because they take into account who you are, who your child is, and how you relate to one another.
You'll discover how being "on your spot" leads to fewer conflicts and replaces threats, nagging, and punishment with clear, effective messages that make sense to your kids. Learn how to: be involved (but not too involved) in your children's school life, manage transitions and upsets, support their self-esteem, and more.
With its easy-to-grasp language and techniques, Raising Kids will help you build on what you're already doing well to maximize the good times in your family, so you can enjoy your kids even more. After all, isn't that the whole point of being a parent?
Parenting approaches only work when they're supported by the relationships parents have with their children.
In Raising Kids, family therapist and parenting consultant Sheri Glucoft Wong and Silicon Valley private school head Olaf Jorgenson team up to deliver an easy-to-follow, down-to-earth guide to building relationships by being on your kids' side and getting them on yours.
This isn't a typical parenting book packed with theories or quick fixes. Instead, if offers approaches that work because they take into account who you are, who your child is, and how you relate to one another.
You'll discover how being "on your spot" leads to fewer conflicts and replaces threats, nagging, and punishment with clear, effective messages that make sense to your kids. Learn how to: be involved (but not too involved) in your children's school life, manage transitions and upsets, support their self-esteem, and more.
With its easy-to-grasp language and techniques, Raising Kids will help you build on what you're already doing well to maximize the good times in your family, so you can enjoy your kids even more. After all, isn't that the whole point of being a parent?
- GenresParentingNonfiction
207 pages, Paperback
Published October 25, 2022
12 people are currently reading
132 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 23, 2022
Raising Kids forced me to rethink many of my assumptions about why my children react to my words and actions the way they do. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
My thinking about children and adults leans heavily toward egalitarianism, so I found myself challenged right away by the authors’ imperative to stay “on my spot.” Instead of focusing so much on getting my kids to do what I want them to do, shouldn’t I instead be negotiating and compromising so that we all can understand and accommodate each other? On the other hand, my supposed theoretical clarity about parenting often gives way, in practice, to my authoritarian impulses, which emerge in moments of frustration or exhaustion or in order to eliminate inconsistencies with the split-second decisions of my co-parent, who was raised in a decidedly non-egalitarian culture.
So as I got deeper into the book, and I began to apply the very practical approaches the authors discuss, I gained a grateful appreciation for its wisdom. Although the book offers a comprehensive and well-explained theory to justify its suggestions, it also in effect lays out a middle ground between deferring to our kids’ points of view and ignoring them altogether. And this truly is, to borrow one oft-used phrase from the book, “a gift.”
Indeed, the book won me over with its practicality. Each of the many, many real-life examples is accompanied by a discussion of how the good intentions of the parent run up against the reality of child psychology and the precedents the parent is inadvertently setting. One key aspect of the book’s premise is that while each individual, adult and child alike, has equal worth and is deserving of respect, adults and children must play different roles – because a child’s job is to figure out how the world works, and a parent’s job is to facilitate that learning through modeling, asking questions, and setting boundaries… and sometimes by staying out of the way, so that consequences might occur naturally or a child might feel the accomplishment of being their own advocate.
The intended audience appears to be parents who operate with a lot of kindness but who have difficulty being firm. Yet it’s also a compelling guide for parents who, in their constant firmness, can forget to be kind. It’s this hybrid approach, the way that firm and kind support and enhance each other, that is the magic of this book. It’s made me a better parent by helping me decide when I’d like to be on my spot, figure out how to find my spot and stay there, and speak and act from my spot in a way that helps my children grow.
My thinking about children and adults leans heavily toward egalitarianism, so I found myself challenged right away by the authors’ imperative to stay “on my spot.” Instead of focusing so much on getting my kids to do what I want them to do, shouldn’t I instead be negotiating and compromising so that we all can understand and accommodate each other? On the other hand, my supposed theoretical clarity about parenting often gives way, in practice, to my authoritarian impulses, which emerge in moments of frustration or exhaustion or in order to eliminate inconsistencies with the split-second decisions of my co-parent, who was raised in a decidedly non-egalitarian culture.
So as I got deeper into the book, and I began to apply the very practical approaches the authors discuss, I gained a grateful appreciation for its wisdom. Although the book offers a comprehensive and well-explained theory to justify its suggestions, it also in effect lays out a middle ground between deferring to our kids’ points of view and ignoring them altogether. And this truly is, to borrow one oft-used phrase from the book, “a gift.”
Indeed, the book won me over with its practicality. Each of the many, many real-life examples is accompanied by a discussion of how the good intentions of the parent run up against the reality of child psychology and the precedents the parent is inadvertently setting. One key aspect of the book’s premise is that while each individual, adult and child alike, has equal worth and is deserving of respect, adults and children must play different roles – because a child’s job is to figure out how the world works, and a parent’s job is to facilitate that learning through modeling, asking questions, and setting boundaries… and sometimes by staying out of the way, so that consequences might occur naturally or a child might feel the accomplishment of being their own advocate.
The intended audience appears to be parents who operate with a lot of kindness but who have difficulty being firm. Yet it’s also a compelling guide for parents who, in their constant firmness, can forget to be kind. It’s this hybrid approach, the way that firm and kind support and enhance each other, that is the magic of this book. It’s made me a better parent by helping me decide when I’d like to be on my spot, figure out how to find my spot and stay there, and speak and act from my spot in a way that helps my children grow.
January 9, 2024
This is a short but excellent guide for parents. It is especially aimed at parents of elementary or middle school kids (though it has a lot of advice for parents of older kids). It is detailed, specific, thoughtful and well written. It is also very aware of the diversity of families and doesn’t write for any assumptions about your specific family structure. That it is co-written by the director of a school we are considering for my son is no coincidence and it reinforces why we are looking at that school.
Highly recommended. If I have any criticism it is a very slight one that in much of the book it does often use examples of interactions between siblings so parents of only children may take slightly less from the book.
Highly recommended. If I have any criticism it is a very slight one that in much of the book it does often use examples of interactions between siblings so parents of only children may take slightly less from the book.
November 4, 2022
If you want a practical, easy to read and down-to-earth parenting book, look no further than Raising Kids. I have read my share of parenting books and there is always something valuable to learn, a small nugget of wisdom. But Raising Kids is brimming with good advice that you can weave into your every day life. It provides tools that help you be a better parent, whether you have toddlers or teens. It's definitely worth checking out.
April 8, 2025
I found this to be such a refreshing and common sense, practical approach to parenting that leans into your own intuition, defining your values, and then parenting from that deep sense of what actually matters to you. I really liked the emphasis on building the independence of children and aligning with the other adults (especially teachers) in their lives, but largely letting them govern their own lived - with guardrails.
July 22, 2025
I read 1000 books before I had my kid and I think two were useful and/or I remembered anything from. I read this one a few years back when my kiddo was 6 and it actually really helped me. Parenting is not innate. Children can be jerks, as can parents. Sometimes we need a bit of guidance, and this one is worth reading.
November 8, 2022
The authors have managed a feat that seems impossible: to write a parenting book that is pragmatic, sensible, and empathetic...a guide that makes you feel like they're as much on your side as you want to be on your child's. Peppered with witty anecdotes, relatable stories, and advice that actually works, I appreciated that the authors spent time explaining the "why" behind my child's behavior too. Read this book if you want to stop the daily "battles" (bedtime, getting ready for school, screen time, etc), if you want to prepare your child for the world at large while also forging a positive relationship with your children FOR LIFE. Couldn't recommend this book more.
October 22, 2024
The book is short but it has very good tips. I definitely recommend it to every parent. I plan to listen to it once a month, as a reminder. I love that it repeats that it is never too late, it motivates me to keep trying with my teens and younger kids.
March 7, 2023
One of the more practical, less theoretical parenting books I’ve read!
February 4, 2025
Wise, digestible, and valuable parenting book. My future kids are going to be so well adjusted.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews