Reviews for Fatherhood Arrested: Parenting from Within the Juvenile Justice System

The average rating for Fatherhood Arrested: Parenting from Within the Juvenile Justice System based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-02-08 00:00:00 Kenneth Riviere A few of the papers in this book were excellent--well-organized, clear and concise. But most were not. There was a great quote somewhere in the book about how psychologists would rather use each other's toothbrushes than each other's terminology. That is exactly how this book was--which made it cumbersome to read. I give this book three stars because it was okay. Nice to see where current thought is on children's play but... you can only write as clearly as you think and I just wasn't very impressed with the quality of thought in these papers. The failure of most of the writers to understand the different purposes of play or to relate them to time and place, just made their work seem confused and uneducated. I would have been a much tougher editor. I really enjoyed how many memories of my childhood this book brought back to me! I had inferred from other readings that I didn't agree with the current definition of "well-adjusted child" but I had never seen the actual definition so I enjoyed seeing it in this book. A "well-adujusted child" is defined as "socially responsible and competent, friendly, cooperative and prosocial with peers." All programs set forth in schools, training teachers and the research being done set out with this as the goal. Whenever you read about a science experiment in which kids who do x are more "well-adjusted" than kids who don't, remember the definition. Well-adjusted does NOT mean happy, it means friendly; it does not mean authentic or self-realizing, it means cooperative; it does not mean independent and capable of getting your needs met, it means prosocial. I cannot comment on the "competent" aspect of the definition as it was stuck in there with socially responsible in such a way that made me think "competence" has to do with social responsibility and not competence in meeting your own goals. So it seems that "well-adjusted" is code for "ready for socialist world government". Science has shown that children with authoritative yet warm parents are the most "well adjusted." These papers also constantly mention that children benefit from role play with each other so they can "experience being in power" and "explore different roles that teach them about domination, control and exploitation." Very few papers (just the anthropology ones) acknowledge that the power games children play are not played by all children in all cultures, they are a feature of our society. It simultaneously entertains and horrifies me that it was necessary to do not one but several studies establishing that children enjoy playing more when they are allowed to choose with whom they play. Many papers mention that science has shown that play does not meet development needs of the kids when there is force involved (telling the kids what they will play or with whom they will play). In fact, the minute there is force involved, it is no longer defined as "play" for many psychologists. After acknowledging this however, the papers focus not on how to give kids more freedom, but on how teachers can manipulate children and situations so that the children can FEEL more free. It was interesting to read that much of what has been learned about how children learn supports unschooling (modeling, bringing children to life with you) and yet not a single paper mentions this as an option. Similar to what I said above, the focus is not even on how to make school more like unschooling but rather to make it "feel" more like unschooling. Raising slaves to be slaves who will feel free! Yay! Most of the researchers in this book think that how children play today (all the princess and superhero stuff) is a "phenomenon" and has to do with how complicated modern society is and they argue in essay after essay that our brains are even more complex now than they were 100 years ago and that's why kids play the way they do. Nothing to do with them practicing the life they have seen on TV. No. That's what kids in the past have done in all places at all times, is practice the life that they think they are preparing to live. But that is NOT what our kids are doing when they pretend to be superheroes and princesses, no, they are developing extra special complex ideas about the world.... [One paper does acknowledge that exposure to media has made children practice violence as a way of life rather than play it out to understand it. One paper out of forty.] It is insane to me that so many people have spent so many hours studying and trying to figure out what is happening in a toddler's brain when he pretends that a banana is a phone without it occurring to them that if a toddler does not see adults pretend a banana is a phone or see it on TV, he won't do it. Play assessment goals for children include: -Knowledge of social scripts and appropriate behaviors. -appropriate role taking in learning situations i.e. knowing how to play the role of student or teacher -practice in leading and following peers as well as adults -control of excessive emotions, self-regulation skills -ability to use coping skills Play assessment goals I would like to see that are definitely NOT currently listed as goals: -presence so one does not fall into a script or role play their way through life but learns authenticity -awareness of what one is feeling -expression of feelings rather than repression or denial -respect for ones feelings rather than repression or denial -ability to express what one is feeling and link that to a need -ability to treat others with respect -ability to demand respect from others This idea of "coping skills" does not sound respectful to me. It sounds like it is a goal for children to learn to ignore their needs rather than communicate them. It sounds like our children are learning how to not respect themselves. The paper on race was depressing. As it turns out kids will likely grow up and find their most satisfying relationships will be with people of the same race. So the goal is NOT to teach respect and how to communicate with respect so that different races can get along. No, the goal is to teach the "less racially dominant" children to learn how to be more dominant and to make the "more racially dominant" children feel guilty (so they are less dominant). This is what will help people get along. Many of the papers in this book state that children lack self-control and adults have self-control and children need to learn to "develop their self-control" when it comes to their emotions. This bothered me. I would argue that children deal with their feelings by expressing them and adults deal with their feelings by repressing them. Adults use every drug available from sugar to TV to happy pills to not feel what they are feeling. If children feel safe to express their emotions, they express them and feel better and move on. It is a rare adult who is capable of this. Not to mention all the tantrums I see adults throw! Why is it a legitimate display of emotion when an adult does it, but a child needs to learn to "control himself"? Specific Papers: Play as the Language of Children's Feelings: This paper was just stupid. Here is my correction: it is not that children CANT communicate their feelings in any way other than play, it is that adults don't show them any other way. Give the kids the words for their feelings and permission to have all their feelings and voila! Two-year-olds who don't need to act things out on dolls and who grow into adults with communication skills.... The claim that children's play cannot be understood makes NO sense, especially when considered in the context of a book that pretty much explains every aspect and reason behind everything that children play. Play in the Context of Life-Span Human Development: this paper was AWESOME and so dumb. Awesome because of the information it shared--science has shown that external motivators make people unhappy, the minute children enter school they become more and more unhappy as that is when they switch from being intrinsically motivated to extrinsically motivated. Extrinsic motivation continues until they have a "reorientation of motivation" later in their adult years. This is also called a midlife crisis. Some people will have a midlife crisis and learn to return to intrinsic motivations. Others will allow their lives to stagnate and will despair. Fascinating that most people cannot survive on external motivators much past the age of 46. And absolutely insane that the author can simultaneously write that school IS the problem and yet have no ideas for solutions beyond school being "more enjoyable." Social Play in School: This paper was terrifying. Here is my sarcastic summary of this paper: *School socialization is sooooo important for kids because that way they learn all the different coercive ways to get their needs met. It would be a tragedy to keep your kid home from school and only teach them NVC-style communication with adults! Then they wouldn't learn the tools of manipulation and coercion that are so essential for extrinsically motivated success in their first 46 years of life!!!* Wait.... what? Play as a Medium for Literacy Development: This paper claims that children won't learn anything about real life without fictional stories because they are shut up in their houses and at school. So reading to them is really really important. Not taking them out into the real world. Reading to them. Parent-Child and Child-Child Play in Diverse Cultural Contexts: I love learning what is considered "normal" in other places. Moms in Jamaica don't do messy play. Many mothers in cultures around the world would never dream of playing with their children, many fathers around the world never rough house with their kids and research shows this does not actually hurt the kids development as previously believed. So maybe, you can be real with your kids instead of playing the role of parent you have learned! Wait, that last sentence was me, this paper didn't actually suggest that. This paper suggests raising children in the prescribed American manner so they can be well-adjusted. A Sociocultural Perspective of Parent-Child Play: my favorite paper in the book! Did you know that children will not actually benefit from play if their parent is miserable doing it? And that kids can tell when adults are faking it? Sarcasm*I'm shocked truly shocked*end sarcasm. So in conclusion, the Sociocultural paper makes null and void the recommendations in almost every other paper in this book. Clinical Perspectives on Play: wins the award for being the only truly organized essay in this book. However, if the author had studied NVC or any other form of good communication, she would be able to see that of the 14 curative play factors, 11 would are NVC related. Meaning, if you teach the parent and child NVC instead, you will not need to use play to fix the problem because there won't be a problem. But then the therapist wouldn't be able to charge a fortune for "play therapy" for years and years. Conclusions: This book has helped me conclude the following about how I will raise my son-- -I will continue to not worry about what we play, how we play or whether we play, I will only concern myself with us enjoying our relationship and our lives -I will continue to avoid daycare and school settings like the plague -I will continue to seek social experience for my son that include him playing with admirable children of a variety of ages who come from families that use NVC in addition to relationships with adults, this is the kind of "socialization" I am interested in for my son -I will continue to keep almost all media out of our lives -I will continue to not read fantasy fiction to my son, and especially any stories with good guys and bad guys -I will continue to trust my son to direct his own learning

Review # 2 was written on 2013-08-28 00:00:00 Ross Powers Fascinating and tantalizing ! The whole strategy of understanding, acknowledging and adjusting own`s behavior to gain maximum benefit from decisions made has been enlightening. I rarely read through the appendix but this part is a Must for all readers to fully understand the fundamental design and study of impulse factor.