How to Have a Happy Toddler: Responding to Your Child's Emotional Needs from 0 - 4 Book

I feel like I have read parenting book after parenting book after parenting book this year, and usually end up 2/3 from the end, slogging away and hating myself, the author, and anyone else who crosses my path. Most of them - the Christian parenting ones included - tend to make me feel woefully inadequate, and introduce a spate of "do this" charges that I must needs implement immediately (!) if I am to have strong, godly, intelligent boys.

Not so here.

For the first time ever, I came out of a parenting book feeling as if I understood my boys better. Immediately, I felt as if I could see them as the brilliant people God created, and love and enjoy them for themselves, rather than exhaust myself trying to sculpt them into some model Christianese citizen. Dr. Meeker applies her many, many years of pediatric experience (as well as parenting experience!) to the problems today's boys face, and gives solutions that aren't surprising: turn off the TV. Send them outside. Spend time with them. Spend MORE time with them. Let them scrape their knees. Let them have adventures. Let them explore and discover the nature of God.

These things sound intuitive, so maybe you're wondering why I had to read a book to make them obvious. The short answer is, because I'm not a boy. I never was a boy, and never will be. I think like a girl, and so I just don't get some of the stuff they do: the rampant destruction, the constant noise, the fighting, the wrestling, the contests, the desperate need to be dirty/wet/muddy (seriously). The real revelations that I found here were in the nuances: that why my son insists on remaking 3D paper airplanes every.single.day isn't because he can't be content (Christianese 101), but because he wants to prove to himself that he can build a better plane tomorrow, that he can grow and improve, that he can master the art of building a paper airplane. Being outdoors is special because a boy needs to feel strong, and because he needs to exert his strength, and nature doesn't have a reset button. Outdoors, he can test his strength and know how it really measures up - how HE really measures up.

I've read books about knowing the minds of boys/men that sounded like they were directed toward healing wounded men. This book is about protecting our boys from being wounded in the first place, and growing them into the strong men God made them to be, and they know they can be.