To Change a Mind: Parenting to Promote Maturity in Teenagers

by John A. McKinnon M.D.

Words they mold and mirror our values and our reality. And so it is with the language we use to think and talk about species other than our own. In Tongue-Tied, Hanh Nguyen unpacks the many metaphors, meanings, and grammatical formulations that speak to and echo our physical exploitation of other-than-human animals, and shows how they constrain our abilities to relate to our animal kin fairly and honestly. Full of subtle insights and richly suggestive observations, and drawing from Nguyen’s own cross-cultural experiences, Tongue-Tied offers a glimpse of a language that is freed from euphemistic self-deception, one that accepts definition without limitation and difference without hierarchy.

Genres: Psychology, Parenting

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Dilly Dalley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book at the Rudolf Steiner bookshop and thus assumed it would be a thoughtful and respectful approach to parenting. And it was for me. I found it enormously helpful. It is mainly written for extreme cases of teenagers going off the rails. However, the basic approach is that parents need to do two things and to do those two things with some attention to detail. Parents need to 'recognize' their children which is where the understanding, support, love, kindness comes in as well as 'set limits' which is where the firmness, limit setting, and guidance comes in. One without the other doesn't work and being too extreme in one or the other is also likely to upset the process. The process being to parent in such a way as to promote maturity in teenagers. The book provides examples, stories, theoretical understanding and suggested behaviours.