10 Things to Consider When Buying Book About Children

When choosing a toy for your child, you naturally want to consider the toy’s staying power, quality, versatility, and educational value. But here are some other questions you might want to ask yourself before bringing home a new toy for your offspring:

1. Exactly how many losable parts does the toy have? Will they fit in the vacuum cleaner?
2. How many pain-induced profanities do you predict you’ll utter when you step on the toy (or its pieces) when your child abandons it in the middle of the floor?
3. How quickly will the sounds the toy makes drive you to poke out your own eardrums?
4. Does it sing a song? Are you okay with that song running through your head as you take a shower, eat your breakfast, do your work, make dinner, read a book, and drift off to sleep?
5. How annoyed will you be when your child takes the toy apart, either to see what’s inside, or to part it out for other use?
6. How disappointed will you be when your child chooses an empty box, a pillowcase, or a pile of dirt to play with instead of the toy?
7. How much physical or emotional damage can your child do to another child with the toy?
8. Is the toy so popular that you run the risk of having to physically harm another parent in order to get one?
9. Can you picture the toy with stick people and one of your children’s names (with half the letters backwards, and not necessarily the owner’s) scrawled on it in permanent marker?
10. Are you prepared to have your child completely ignore the toy until one unpredictable moment when they can’t find it—the moment in which the world will come to a bloodcurdling end because it suddenly became their “favorite toy”?

Happy shopping, everyone. 🙂

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Annie Reneau

Annie writes about life, motherhood, world issues, beautiful places, and anything else that tickles her brain. On good days, she enjoys juggling life with her husband and homeschooling her children. On bad days, she binges on chocolate chips and dreams of traveling the world alone.

This book became an instant classic when it was published in 1980 and has sold millions of copies since. Show it to a bookseller and they might sigh audibly or say, “Oh yeah,” with an undercurrent of resentment over all the times a customer stood before them trying to recite the title. “It’s yellow? With block letters? What we talk about when we are … listening? About … talking?”

In any case, believe the long-running hype. Every time I think about this book I get a rush of tender feelings toward it, feelings that quickly shift into contending with my own urge to be re-parented, preferably by the book’s co-authors, Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. The two have six children between them but for purposes of simplicity, they write in the first person and have little composite children. The resulting voice is charming and funny, full of humility and compassion, like if Anne Lamott were leading a parents’ support group but without the Jesus stuff.

This book really is framed by a weekly support group, with each chapter covering a week of the authors’ real-life parenting workshop. If that sounds too corny for you, well, my god, consider the genre. But corny threshold notwithstanding, consider that this means voyeuristically reading about a bunch of ‘80s adults talk about their feelings and their extremely specific battles with their kids and their expectations and their frustrated powerlessness (all with a blessed lack of hand-wringing about The Dangers of The Internet). I ate it up.

The very first chapter is “Helping Children Deal With Their Feelings,” which made me sure my own boomer parents were not among the 3 million people who have purchased this book. Later comes “Alternatives to Punishment,” “Engaging Cooperation,” and “Encouraging Autonomy.” I must warn you: Sprinkled throughout are cartoons illustrating good and bad parent-child interactions (“INSTEAD OF DENYING THE FEELING, exhibit A, GIVE THE FEELING A NAME, exhibit B“), and they are drawn in a painfully amateurish style that didn’t bother me and in fact seemed to make the book feel more urgent, as if the co-authors’ eagerness overcame their embarrassment. It’s very on-message.

The authors’ little tips don’t necessarily come naturally, but if you do remember to try them, just try not to laugh when you see how well they work. It’s almost annoying, or would be if the book weren’t written in the spirit of generosity and in the interest of children and parents both feeling heard and respected and then forgiving each other when they both mess up more or less constantly. Corny, sure, but true. — M. O.