Your Child and You
- Type:
Book Reviews
- Author:
Cecil Hay-Shaw. John
Murray. 154 pp. 6s.
Too many manuals of child upbringing are apt to leave parents feeling that the wells of kindness and endurance in them are just not deep enough to provide that degree of tolerance and understanding the expert seems to think a necessity, if the major pitfalls of growth are to be avoided. Such approaches fail in their intention because they are not grounded in real experience of family life, and because their excess of idealism marks the author as one with his own axe to grind. Your Child and You is as far removed from this approach as one would expect from an author with the experience of work with parents and children of Cecil Hay-Shaw. This book is a guide to parents of children of all ages from infancy to adolescence. It provides a more detailed account of the needs of young children and a somewhat more general survey of the needs of the child of school age and of the adolescent. While it is for the most part about the normal child, there are chapters on disorders of personality, the sick child, the backward and the brilliant child, as well as a reassuring introduction to the work of the child guidance clinic. The following quotation (p. 98) is a sample of the author’s approach :
” Parents will have the responsibility of setting standards which are not too rigid, and which can be modified to meet the needs of the individual child at different stages of development. Too high a standard will cause a breakdown, but no standard at all will mean that the child will be deprived of an ideal on which to mould his character
Whether they are seeking guidance on problems of early feeding and cleanliness training?to my mind outstandingly valuable chapters in the book? or an introduction to child guidance help for some special deviation, this approach must in itself be a reassurance to parents. It is combined throughout with a particularly wide and sympathetic realization of the kind of worry which is never far away from the responsibility of bringing up children. The author’s aim is not, however, merely to reassure. She explains how and why children feel as they do, often in a way that is not readily understandable to the adult, and though her aim is to supply understanding rather than advice, she makes valuable suggestions as she develops her theme?in the section on ” tempers ” for instance?for practical education.
It is to be very much regretted that the question of children’s sexual interests and enlightenment is only taken up in the chapter on adolescence, and not treated as an integral part of the child’s development and education from early years. R.T.
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