(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best child counseling books

I highly, highly recommend good ABA. Good is the key part because ABA done wrong can be very damaging and abusive to the child. ABA done right can be absolutely amazing. I was afraid to start ABA when it was recommended for my 17 month old, but it's the absolute best form of therapy he's had. When therapy is done with the goal of erasing all symptoms and signs of autism, then that therapy, whether it be Floortime, RDI, ESDM, ABA, or something else, it will always have the potential to be abusive. When therapy is done with the understanding and acceptance of autism, then it will be not be abusive when applied correctly.

When my son was 17 months old, he had numerous severe delays and it helped tremendously with that so that he's now newly 3 with less severe delays. I see ABA as the therapy that's allowed my son to really shine so that autism is more of a benefit than a deficit.

In order to find good ABA, grab a copy of An Early Start For Your Child With Autism. It's the easy to understand parent guidebook for the Early Start Denver Model, which is a form of therapy developed specifically for children under 5 with a focus on under 3. The book teaches you the basics of ABA so that you can do it yourself at home. The whole form of therapy is play-based and child led, so that you both enjoy doing it. It's been amazing for my son.

In addition to that excellent book, the people behind it, from the UC Davis MIND institution, also put out this ADEPT parenting series. Part 1 focuses on how to teach skills. Part 2 focuses on behavior management. In my opinion, they put the modules in the wrong order. If you read the book and watch through the entire modules, they explain how skills can't develop properly if the connections aren't first made. If your child's sensory needs aren't met, then it's very hard for them to learn. They also explain why stimming shouldn't be discouraged, why punishment rarely works for autistic children (and what to do instead), and how to increase communication skills.

The book An Early Start has information on how to find a good ABA therapist, but I wanted to emphasize these key points:

1. Ask autistic adults about their experience and use that to shape what you work on in therapy.

After talking with the autistic adults in my son's life and online, we don't force eye contact. Instead, we do face contact. Many autistic adults have explained their extreme discomfort with eye contact and eye contact isn't necessary for a successful life. Face contact is important for a variety of reasons, but there are non-forceful ways to increase face contact. If you want your child to look at you more, then figure out ways to make your face fun and interesting. Your child should be looking at you because he or she wants to look at you, not out of need.

Similarly, stimming. Stimming used to be discouraged and children were punished for stimming. Now, the experts agree that punishing stimming is a huge mistake. In the ADEPT series, it is compared it to shivering. Punishing a person for shivering doesn't stop them from being cold, it just removes a mechanism of them dealing with the cold.

Recently, my son suddenly started stimming in his preschool classroom. His ABA therapist recognized this as a sign of discomfort. She got out a little emotional chart and asked him if he was upset. When he said he was, she asked what he was upset about. It turned out that he heard them vacuuming in a different room in the school (he hates vacuums and has super hearing). She helped him with his fear of the vacuum (asked them to wait to vacuum and showed him videos he liked on youtube to help him calm down). This had the function of stopping the stimming, but the stimming was not the problem - the vacuum was.

Her goal with stimming is not to stop the stimming, but to remove any discomfort that is cause the stimming. Stimming is the coping mechanism.

Sometimes stimming is just done for fun. My son will sometimes stim things he likes, so I'll join in with him. Sometimes he'll want to do a joint activity with me, other times he prefers to be alone. I try to follow his lead, which brings me to...

2. Follow your child's lead.

ABA should be fun. For children under 5, I recommend the Early Start Denver Model and Joint Attention Mediated Learning. Floortime and RDI are two other models designed for older children that are centered around following your child's interests in order to build connections and teach skills. You can check out Floortime and RDI now for a few suggestions for young children, although I personally found ESDM most useful when my son was under 3.

If your child is not interested in learning a certain skill, figure out how to make that skill fun and interesting for your child.

My son used to be obsessed with vehicles. We took him on trips to the fire station, car shows, and followed garbage trucks around. We taught him the parts of my car and the names of different vehicles. We counted vehicles, we sorted vehicles by colors, we built structures for our vehicles to drive on, etc. Lately he's been obsessed with vacuums, so I bought toy vacuums, got broken down vacuums which we take apart and put back together, we 'read' vacuum manuals together. By showing interest in his world, he's much more interested in doing things I suggest.

3. Play to your child's strengths.

My son is a lot like his uncle when it comes to how his autism presents. It gives him some amazing gifts. We work on his weaknesses, but also play to his strengths a lot. For my son, that's an incredible memory, super hearing and vision, and an innate understanding of complex systems.

If he's struggling with something, I'll often make up a song because he loves music and can remember songs even if I only sing them a few times. Putting on his shoes was a real struggle. Rather than just keep doing it over and over until he got it, I thought about what would make it easier for him to remember the steps in order. A song.

Similarly, I taught him how to count to 10 in Spanish through a song with the numbers. He loves it and will often sing it to himself.
All people have certain areas where they do better compared to others. Focus on these areas and figure out how you can make the skills you want to teach easy to learn.

As the behavior experts say, Hawking can communicate perfectly well despite the fact that he can't speak with his voice. On the other hand, there are adults who can speak with their voice, but are terrible communicators. What communication method allows your child to best be understood? What communication method allows you to best communicate with your child? Use that. My son is now fully verbal, but we still use picture schedules and songs with certain routines.

4. Ask yourself, "Is this important/necessary?"

My son used to elope. After seeing the amount of autistic children who die from eloping, I knew that it was vitally important that we reduce eloping. Similarly, functional communication is important and that's something we still work on.

But tying shoes? My autistic brother still struggles with tying shoes, so his wife bought him those special shoe laces that don't require tying. For my son, we use velcro. It's not important. You can be a functional adult without tying shoes.

Eye contact? The autistic adults in my life focus on lips, noses, eyebrows instead. They do fine without it.

Again, talk to the autistic adults and figure out what is necessary. A cure is not necessary. Being neurotypical is not necessary. I have zero desire to turn my autistic son into his twin.

I wrote a post with more details on how I found good ABA therapists here.

On facebook, I'm in some great evidence-based groups for autism. One is "Evidence-based autism support". Others are "Woo-free spd (and other neurological disorders", "evidence-based autism parenting support group" and I'm in a few nonreligious evidence-based groups as well.

ETA: To use an example of something ABA can help with that an OT, ST, PT, etc might miss is in establishing joint attention with other children her age. My ABA therapists recently discovered that my son is quite social and was making play invitations to his 2 year old/early 3 classmates that were being missed. I hadn't observed this myself because us adults are very good at recognizing when a child is giving a play invite and his twin brother is naturally interested in his play. His ABA therapist had observed him approaching other children with toys, but speaking near them, not to them and not making sure that they could hear when talking to them. His brother will establish joint attention as part of a play invite, even going as far as grabbing your face if he feels you aren't listening to you. My son would just give the invite, then get discouraged and walk away when the other child failed to respond.

With the help of his ABA therapists, we've been working on teaching him joint attention, and how to establish joint attention when making a request of others.

We have a very good understanding of their intelligence. They are probably some of the most well studied species in terms of behaviour and cognitive abilities on this planet. In ELI5/TLDR* most researchers would characterize their intelligence of being equivalent to a 2-3 year old human child. Just a short list of things that characterize these species:

• They form long-term social bonds and remember individuals
  
  
• They are able to recognize self from other
  
  
• They are able to lie
  
  
• They are able to understand fairness
  
  
• They are able to make, modify and use tools
  
  
• They have culture and tradition
  
  
• They are able to demonstrate empathy
  
  
• They feel the same or similar emotions to humans
  
  
• They have morals
  
  
• They mourn the dead
  
  
• They are able to solve multi-step problems
  
  ...
  
  I suppose another way of looking at this is what do we have that they lack. What makes humans unique?
  
  We know of some factors that contributed to our awareness and unique intelligence as compared to other living species. It is important to know that this is a very active area of study in many different disciplines (psychology, biology, animal behaviour, psychiatry, physiology, anthropology, neurology, linguistics, genetics, archeology...).
  
  
• Traits we inherited from our distant ancestors. Obviously all species are a cumulation of inherited traits. Who we are today is largely due to who "we" were in the distant past. We inherited a strong tendency to be a very social species from our mammalian ancestry. Mammals are social beings, humans included. We inherited opposable thumbs from our early primate ancestors. Humans are not the only species with opposable thumbs so it is not a trait that is unique to our species. However, the inheritance of thumbs enabled us and the other primates to develop fine motor skills like precision grip. This enables us to manipulate objects, and make/modify tools. Humans also inherited an upright bipedal posture from our early ancestors. Humans are not the only bipedal species (after all, all birds are bipedal!) but our upright posture has given us many advantages, namely that it frees our hands to do other tasks.
  
  
• Brain/body size ratio & exceptional brain gyrification is a somewhat useful indicator of how intelligence a species is. The correlation is decent among related mammal species, but it breaks down when applied to distantly related animals. It underestimates intelligence in heavy animals like horses and overestimates small animals like mice and birds. You also have to consider what the animal's brain has evolved for. Bird's typically have very large brains for their body but may not be exceptionally smart. A lot of that large bird brain is used for flight calculations and isn't available for higher level processing. Fruit flies have enormous brains compared to their mass, but that brain is simply too small to have any real thought processes. Humans are highly intelligent because they have an extremely large brain for their normal body mass and that brain has evolved specifically to perform complex thought. Size isn't the only factor, scientists also consider the degree of specialization, complexity of neural connections, and degree of brain gyrification. Humans score high on all these physical qualifiers associated with increased intelligence.
  
  
• Two cognitive traits thought to be unique to humans - shared intentionality and cumulative culture. Shared intentionality goes one step further than being able to solve problems as a group, it involves anticipating the needs of others and the situation in order to solve a common goal. This requires incredible foresight, flexibility, and problem solving skills. It requires an almost hyper-sociality group structure. We couldn't stick 100 chimpanzees on a plane and expect it to land in one piece...but you can stick 100 human strangers and all, for the most part, get along just fine. This level of cooperation is rarely seen among other animals (save for the Eusocial insects, naked mole rats, and perhaps Callitrichid monkeys)...my point is we have a shared intentionality that allows us to be hyper-social and cooperative. Cumulative culture goes beyond the cultures exhibited by other animals. Other animals have culture where [non-essential] traditions are passed on from one generation to the next and can be modified slowly over many generations. Humans also have traditions, but these are past on much more easily between individuals. Moreover, these traditions are quickly modified, almost unlimited times within a generation. We are able to rapidly build upon the ideas of others and modify these ideas to suit new problems. Moreover, our adults, as compared to the adults of other species, are much better at learning and retaining new skills or traditions. Generally speaking, the age old adage "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" applies well to the non-human animal kingdom.
  
  These two traits, shared intentionality and cumulative culture, led to the development of other aspects of our being which are unique (e.g language). Everything else that we can do is just a happy by-product of these two traits: being able to go to the moon, or build a super dam, or create art, or think in the abstract, maths, industrial agriculture...Those things are by-products of our level of cognition. Our uniqueness is derived from shared intentionality and cumulative culture plus a couple of random physical traits that we were lucky enough to inherit from our distant ancestors - a big brain, bipedalism, and opposable thumbs. We are not the only species with a large brain-to-body ratio, we are not the only bipedal species, and we are certainly not the only species with opposable thumbs - these are physical characteristics that we inherited from our distant primate ancestors. These traits built the foundation for what was to come.
  
  Whatever the pressure around 40,000-50,000 years ago we notice a significant shift in the archeological record. All of a sudden humans are making cave art, our hunting tools are changing rapidly, we began to engage in long distant trade, we made jewellery and we even had symbolic figures - perhaps the seeds of language. This is known as the period of behavioural modernity. Not only did these humans look like us, they acted like us too. Its hypothesized that an infant from this time could be raised in a modern context with little to no intellectual deficit...we wouldn't be able to pick them out of a crowd. Humans haven't gotten more intelligent over time. It is hypothesized that a human from 50,000 years ago is anatomically and behaviourally modern.
  
  So, if we aren't any smarter - why do we have cell phones and galaxy print jeggings and people didn't way back then? Increasing complexity - we know more than people in the past because we've built upon what they've learned. Humans have always been smart, and our great benefit is that we build on other people's discoveries. Someone figured out how to domesticate plants, someone figured out how to sew cloth, someone figured out how to weave materials, someone figured out synthetic materials and dyes, someone put it all together in those jeggings. We just build on what other people have found out. This is cumulative culture in action. Humans today are not more intelligent than humans living 50,000 years ago - we both have the same potential. The difference between us and them is we have a wealth of shared knowledge to draw upon, and they did not. Humans 5000 years from now could be asking the very same question..."Why didn't they invent warp travel, its so easy!"...well we don't have the wealth of another 5000 years of experience and scientific study to draw upon. We only have what our ancestors gave us. As more and more knowledge is accumulated we should in theory progress faster and faster.
  
  Some interesting books on the subject:
  
  Age of Empathy
  
  Our inner ape
  
  Moral lives of animals
  
  Affective neuroscience
  
  Mothers and others
  
  

This is such a great question! One that we have been trying to answer for as long as people have had thought. For a very long time we had a set of traits and behaviours that we thought were unique to humans, that set us apart and above from all the other animals. This list is getting smaller and contains more caveats as time goes on. It wasn't long ago that we thought humans were the only tool makers, only to be shown that tool making & modification is pretty pervasive throughout the animal kingdom.

There are three things that set us apart from other animals and that are truly unique to our species (in so far as we understand today):

1. Aspects of language
   
2. Shared intentionality
   
3. Cumulative culture
   
   Language isn't completely unique to us. Many aspects of complex language thought once to be only found in humans have been described in animal communication. For example, there are a growing number of species known to us that make specific calls for specific situations. Some monkeys will make a specific call for a land predator like a jaguar vs. a sky predator like a hawk. Some species have even demonstrated rudimentary syntax. Finally, calls are also used to convey complex states or ideas - for example some species are able to use their calls to deceive (which is a very advanced cognitive ability in of itself). They make a warning call to distract the group while they sneak off and get some tasty piece of food that they otherwise would have had to compete for. We are really only beginning to scratch the surface of animal communication and the more we discover the more we realize just how complex their communication systems can be. It can't be denied that other species lack a certain "something" that we seem to have. They aren't able to communicate quite like us, but to say that animals lack language outright is to do a disservice to the complexity of language that they do have.
   
   Cooperation is seen throughout the animal kingdom in abundance. Animals cooperate all the time, especially social animals like primates. In fact there are some species that are so reliant on cooperation that they can't survive or breed without it. These animals are called cooperative breeders. Species like naked mole rats, meerkats, bees, and callitrichid monkeys require the aid of others to help raise their offspring. Other individuals in the group will forgo their own breeding to insure the survival of the dominant pair's offspring. A great novel on this subject is called Mothers and Others. There are many great experiments that require the cooperation of two individuals to solve, these have been successfully completed by many different species of monkeys and apes as well as non-primate species like elephants. In addition many species hunt in groups that requires significant cooperation and coordination. A lone wolf isn't going to take down a great big bison, they need to cooperate in order to take down their next prey. But again, there is something that is unique about the way humans cooperate, and this is more accurately referred to as shared intentionality*.* Humans can visualize a common goal and cooperatively work towards that goal. "Shared intentionality, sometimes called ‘we’ intentionality, refers to collaborative interactions in which participants share psychological states with one another...For example, in problem- solving activities participants may have a shared goal and shared action plans for pursuing that goal, and in communication they may simply share experience with one another linguistically. The big Vygotskian idea is that what makes human cognition different is not more individual brainpower, but rather the ability of humans to learn through other persons and their artifacts, and to collaborate with others in collective activities (Tomasello, 1999; Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne & Moll, 2005a; Tomasello, Kruger & Ratner, 1993)." Its a step up from the classical cooperation we see in animals. Its the reason why 150 human strangers can get on a plane and cooperate and why 150 animals that were strangers could not.
   
   Finally, the last trait that is unique to humans (although newer research may be demonstrating this in some primate species) is cumulative culture*.* Humans have the unique ability to not only share psychological states we have the ability to store intergenerational information and share that information quickly and efficiently with others. This information can be rapidly dispersed through a group (or between groups) and is quickly passed on from one generation to another. Now, we know that animals share all sorts of information and that individuals do learn from each other. For example, a single female Japanese Macaque decide to start washing her potatoes in the sea. Within a vert short period of time nearly everyone, but especially the young individuals, were washing their potatoes too. Over successive generations different washing techniques have been added in, and even different foods are washed. But its a great example of a single individual introducing a new behaviour to a group which suddenly spreads amongst all its individuals. Its a great example of animals having a distinct culture. But humans just take this to the next level. Where it takes years or even decades for a chimpanzee to master the use tools requires to get termites out of a termite mound it would take humans seconds. Moreover, most animals can only learn these complex behaviour if they are taught or observe these behaviours while they are young. Adult humans are much better at picking up new traits, behaviours, and skills as compared to other adult animals. We simply are faster at sharing and absorbing information and this has led to our unique trait of cumulative culture.
   
   The actual physiological mechanisms that allow these things to happen are unknown. We don't know how or why we evolved these traits. No genes have been identified. We don't even have a clear idea when these traits evolved within our own species. All we know is that we seem to have them and they do not, which is why we have gone to the moon, have complex maths, and galaxy print jeggings and they do not.

This 100x. Your child could be just slow to come out of his shell so to speak, but if you think there might be something more, get him assessed. It is too important to put off and cross your fingers. Best case scenario: you go in and the psychiatrist says your son isn't likely to be on the spectrum, worst case: you know what is going on and can start to help asap.

Early intervention is so helpful, the younger you can start a child with autism in some sort of therapy, the better. I looked up some resources in your area A to Z Pediatric Therapy looks to be somewhat near you (maybe?). Autism Speaks is a fantastic site with all sorts of useful information.

This book was recommended to me when we started going through the process with my son, and is helpful even if your child isn't actually diagnosed. It has a lot of good information and tips.

Ultimately, the best advocate for your son is you. You know him best, you know what seems right and what seems wrong. Good luck, and I hope your son blossoms into your world soon.

Agreed. Once upon a time, science and philosophy were much more closely related than they are today. We are polarizing individual aspects of the arts, which has done more to create robotic thinkers than open minded learners. Homeschooling is a great first step to breaking his daughter out of the conveyer belt thinking process, and introducing her to every aspect of the world of education, even religion, and allowing her to pursue those subjects that interest her most. This will feed her curiosity and allow her to become her own person in the long run. Pushing her toward Atheist thinking is as dangerous as pushing her toward religious thinking, if the goal is to allow her to choose her own path and ideas, and truly become an individual thinker. If her religious upbringing by her mom is more restrictive, and you create an open environment that is truly open to all possibilities, she will be a great leader.

But it starts with you, the parent. If all you are doing is teaching her things in direct opposition to the mom, then this is petty and not in your daughter's best interest, nor will it draw her toward your way of thinking, it will repel it. If your goal is to have her think like you do, then, again, you are not really raising a "free thinker" are you? So start with your own education, your own style and teaching philosophy. Here are some great books to give different and honest perspectives. Do what works for you.

• How Children Learn - Holt
  
• How Children Faill - Holt
  
• The Unschooling Unmanual
  
• Dumbing us Down - Gatto
  
• Thomas Jefferson Education (This one is a method of instruction, and though he encourages use of the Bible as classic literature, he aslo emphasizes that, if the Bible isn't your cup of tea, there's plenty out there that will be)
  
  Enjoy the journey!
  
  *Edited for formatting.

I'm a birthmother who placed a boy at birth 11 years ago. Adoption evolves depending on the people involved and from support groups I can tell you that no adoption is the same. There are books I wish I would have read before hand. One recommended recently for adoptive parents in my birth parent circles was Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Thier Adoptive Parents Knew. Available here: http://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Adopted-Adoptive-Parents-ebook/dp/B000SEFDJG/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368277710&sr=1-6&keywords=adoption

I have a semi open adoption where we communicate via email and I get an update with at least one picture once a year. Contact ranges from none to frequent visits so that is another thing to consider. What are you comfortable with? Are you ok with the idea that the child may still want to know the birthfamily? Even if they don't have contact during childhood they may seek them out as an adult. Are you ok with the idea of them having more family? More people to love them? Another mother/father figure? Hard questions for sure.

Just to dispel some myths: Most birthparents don't expect the kids they placed to see them as a parent later. Also, most birthmom's specifically wouldn't dream of changing their decision. We see it as giving the child a family ... not as giving the family a child. For us it is often about what reminds us of something we liked in our childhood. Similar traditions or activities. I really liked that the my AP's profile was scrapbooked and I could tell they were craft and art talented. This is because my mom was like that. I liked knowing they planed to adopt more kids and my son would be a big brother because I have a big brother. I've heard other birthmom's say the same. Hope this helps.

The book itself it a hack-job hit piece on men, and Ben Sixsmith's review – which is what's linked – is a great takedown of Plank's "work."

If anyone is interested in further reading regarding actual masculinity and what men face today, here's a small reading list:

• King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine, by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette [Both of these two gentlemen work is generally worth reading but this is the best breakdown of the positive and negative sides of masculinity that I've found. It also equipped me to start tackling my own masculinity in earnest; especially once I had the "immature masculine" models laid out before me in this book.]
  
• The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It, by Warren Farrell PhD and John Gray PhD. [Don't let the title mislead you; Farrell does an excellent job of identifying the overarching issues facing men today and from where they seem to stem. His use of "you're son" in the place of a proverbial "you" takes some getting used to, but it is every bit an eve-opening, depressing, motivating, and forthright read. This was tied for the top of this list with 'KWML. The importance of a present and engaged father cannot be ignored any longer.']
  
• The Myth of Male Power, by Warren Pharrell PhD. [Another hard-hitting contribution from Farrell, this entry challenges the dogma of the entire concept of a patriarchy an does so well-armed with stats, studies, and facts. Men being indoctrinated into being expendable with the illusion of gaining/having power could be (I believe it's VERY likely) a huge contributor to the increasing plight of men in western societies, despite the deluge of rhetoric claiming men are so powerful they oppress everyone else.]
  
  I may even make a separate post for this because it's very important to me. I am in the middle of researching and writing a book that, I hope, does what Plank's drivel claimed to do. The materials here are just a few selections I've come across in my research. Maybe I can elaborate more on my work if I make a more comprehensive 'recommended reading' post re: masculinity. I'd love to see more discussion around this as I believe it's exactly the kind of thing to tackle in a community like this.

I can't answer the question definitively, but an interesting phenomenon that I've observed as a teacher is how teaching infants sign language allows them to exhibit their cognition and thought process. I teach in a Montessori infant classroom and I've taught babies (under 18 months) signs that I then see them use in different but totally appropriate ways. For example: we use the sign "outside" to mean literally out-of-doors in the fresh air. But we have kids who then use the same sign to mean "out of the classroom", "out of this area", "come to this side of the fence," etc. They are showing that they understand this concept of "i am here and I want to be elsewhere". They don't have the verbal/physical words, but the neural pathways are certainly there, and every time someone uses that sign or says "outside" that pathway is being reinforced. Obviously, I don't know for sure, but I would imagine that since these children are signing in response to heard words, if you could see a brain scan you'd see areas lighting up for thinking of the sound of words, and also motor skills for thinking about the movement of signing.
Now I want to see if anyone's done this kind of study, and if not, why not?! Off I scuttle to do some research....

Edit: a really terrific resource for understanding infant cognition is Alison Gopnik. She's a cogsci researcher out of UC Berkeley and she's written the following:

[The Scientist in the Crib](The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind https://www.amazon.com/dp/0688177883/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_bboSybE1V7Q9G)

[The Philosophical Baby](The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life https://www.amazon.com/dp/0312429843/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_QboSybDSGGJZQ)

I can't speak for [her new book](The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children https://www.amazon.com/dp/0374229708/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_udoSybM1SFBSC) but I can tell you that the first two completely changed the way I view babies. They really are amazing little people with astounding cognitive abilities from birth!

Also, do you like reading books? If so, I highly recommend a couple -

Penelope Leach, Your Baby and Child
or
the AAP's Heading Home with your Newborn

Both are really nice references. I had my 4th baby this year and I take care of newborns and I still found useful and entertaining information in both books. But having both are probably redundant unless you are a book nerd.

For fun things to do with your baby - you might like to read Magda Gerber's, Dear Parent. She emphasizes learning your baby's cues and watching them and talking to them. It is really fun to learn about what they can do.

This book provides information about newborn behavior:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0547242956/?coliid=ISHVW2LKD5FFF&colid=1S3ZE3P5DQ3VD&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

This one goes into more details:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/073820188X/?coliid=I27LJ96R8SEOTC&colid=1S3ZE3P5DQ3VD&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it


I think you would enjoy both. They are short easy reads but provide a lot of information about all the amazing things babies are capable of doing and communicating from the time they are born.



And this is just fun. It's hand rhymes
https://www.amazon.com/Pat-Cake-Time-Annie-Kubler/dp/1904550827/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1542785976&sr=8-11&keywords=pat+a+cake

This too
https://www.amazon.com/Baby-Play-Every-Day-DK/dp/1465429697

Lactation Consultant here! The epidural does affect several things with labor- but decreased bonding time can't be effectively proven.

The most important thing is to spend the first two hours postpartum skin-to-skin with baby (barring any emergency circumstances). Most of the well-baby and newborn checks can be done skin on skin. I work as a doula as well, and have memorized many of the Kangaroo Mother Care protocols as outlined by Dr. Nils Bergman, so as to help hospital staff complete the necessary checks (by explanation only- I can't/won't do medical stuff in a doula capacity) for mom and baby. That being said, you can also attempt baby-led latching after birth. Baby typically will find their way to the breast after an hour or so. These things all go a long, long way in facilitating bonding and latching. And if you have a husband or partner, doing skin on skin with them after the initial two hours is pretty crucial, too. Baby's blood sugar stabilises when skin to skin, and unless medically indicated, a glucose stick shouldn't be necessary (Per Dr. Jack Newman's recommendations).

Check out the book "Breastfeeding Made Simple." And relax- to have a great outcome, I do highly suggest having a private IBCLC attend you in the hospital directly after birth. Many will do this if you pre-contract with them during the later stages of your pregnancy. Nothing against hospital LCs, but they have a huge case load and can't give you undivided attention for a few hours, which you sometimes need to get off to the right start, epidural or no. You can find an IBCLC in your area via Ilca.org under the directories tab.

I have many clients who deliver with epidural anesthesia, and they breastfeed like champs. It's about getting the right start!

It sounds like you are looking for a direction here.

This is a great thing to talk about with your clinical supervisor.

However, if you are willing to take a leap of faith: One thing I have found really helpful for high functioning clients is to take a leaf from positive psychotherapy -- (The book is basically a clinical manual. It's hard to find in libraries, though, unfortunately!) https://www.amazon.com/Positive-Psychotherapy-Clinician-Tayyab-Rashid/dp/0195325389/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=positive+psychotherapy&qid=1568808796&s=gateway&sr=8-1 I actually do a fair number of positive psychotherapy interventions with clients who are struggling a fair bit, as well, and they are usually received quite positively by folks with a pretty significant range of clinical presentations.

I've also found that some clients need to start somewhere more like this and then will move into a more process-oriented place later on.

> There's nothing here to indicate it's biological and not cultural in origin.

So you presume that cultural origin is correct by default? How unscientific of you. That sounds more like faith.

Evolutionary psychology is perfectly legitimate. That some have overstated their cases doesn't invalidate the science, just as physicists talking about potentials of physics (alternate universes, time travel, wormholes, multiverse, string theory) does not invalidate physics as a field of science. Every claim needs to be treated as an individual claim and looked at with respect to its own supporting evidence.

Take twin studies for instance, and important tool in behavioural genetics. Identical twins (monozygotic, MZ) share the same genes. Fraternal twins (dizygotic, DZ) share only half of their genes on average. (This is referring to the four possibilities of getting one of the two sets of genes from each parent.) This is also true of siblings in general, though DZ twins removes any differences in age/time. Adopted siblings of the same age have no common genes from parents. Those raised together share the same environment; those raised apart do not, particularly those raised in completely different cultures. That gives six categories of gene-environment interactions. (The "adopted siblings raised apart" category is, of course, just general same-age cohorts and not siblings at all.)

Measuring their behavioural traits of pairs of people in each of the six categories give a good estimate for the degree of behaviours caused by genes, by home environment (including parenting), and independent causes (random events, peer groups, etc.).

The results show that genetic components are quite significant in behaviours, including between sexes. For example, there is a significant genetic component to the difference between men's and women's reactions to infidelity: men being more jealous of sexual infidelity and women being more jealous of emotional infidelity, and genes having about the same contribution to these behaviours across men and women.

There are lots of interesting results, some of which are well summarized by researcher (and twin) Nancy Segal (an evolutionary psychologist) in her book Born Together, Reared Apart.

The science is real, valid, and quite solid by now. Genes contribute significantly to our behaviours and personalities, including differences between sexes. This also fits exactly what natural selection predicts; Darwin himself described sexual selection.

So ultimately I think those who suggest everything is "cultural" have a huge uphill battle to back up their claims. Clearly many differences are genetically inherited. The problem is that social sciences have tended to think in terms of correlation = causation when in reality there are underlying common causations for both correlated factors. For example, as outlined here, social scientists had concluded that the relationship between first sexual encounter and later delinquency meant that the early sexual activity caused the later delinquency when it turns out both behaviours were the result of a combination of genetic and environmental factors, not one causing the other.

Personally, I always like to point out that "culture" describes nothing because it doesn't indicate where the culture came from or why it is the way it is. When viewed through the lens of natural selection, much of culture itself begins to make sense as a result, and amplification, of evolved traits and differences.

So no. I'd put evolutionary psychology on a much better scientific footing than social sciences or "cultural" explanations. That doesn't mean culture is useless; quite the contrary. But the interaction of genes, evolution, environment, and culture are far more complex than saying "culture did it". Certainly it is not valid to take culture as a default answer.

Not a group, but some helpful reading (a great kid’s book and one for adults though I haven’t finished all of the latter). The kid’s one really helped my son articulate how he felt (sometimes boy, sometimes girl, sometimes boy who loves dresses).

I’ve got a child in the same situation. I’m just 100% supportive of his gender play in public and private. I must be too intimidating to mess with about it, because I’ve never gotten anything to my face. I’d like to see them try. I heard someone snark behind my back to one of my friends about it. She stood up for us too, bless. They want to go after my kid, they’ll have to get through me first.

Good on her for sticking up for her child. She needs a mama bear club! You or she are welcome to PM me anytime.

We still haven't sleep trained my son (who is now almost 18 months old) since cosleeping works for us. Some nights are harder than others, and I'm starting to realize I can expect more from him. I'm finally trying saying "it is bedtime, so you can stay awake, but you have to lie in bed." To get to this point, I've reminded myself that the nights when we want to quit are the same nights that would be hard even if he were sleep-trained

To reply to the prompt, the main challenge has been realizing I was RBN after raising my son. Dealing with processing everything, deciding to go NC with my Ndad, trying to set boundaries with my n?mom, all while trying to raise my son and working part time has been a lot. I haven't gotten as much work done on my PhD this year as I wanted as I've found myself having to use daycare time just to process everything.

What I haven't found hard? Actually being a caring responsive mother. It turns out seeing things from my son's point of view isn't really all that hard when you actually want to do so.

Also, I will write a book review once I finish reading it, but "How Toddlers Thrive" is pretty much the best parenting book ever as an ACON. It's full of examples of how to say things to your child (like validating their feelings), which are a bit painful to realize I never heard growing up. I feel like I'm both learning how to be a better mom, and re-parenting myself when I make the time to read it.

Both my children were born in China and my wife and I are white. From the get go we have been very open about the adoption etc. We got a few ignorant questions about the cost, etc. We are fortunate to live in an area of the Country where they are not the only Chinese children either in their school or their neighborhood so that has made it easier. We have adopted some cultural customs, i.e. we celebrate Lunar new year now, and fortunately my older daughter's High school offers Mandarin as a foreign language option so that has been nice. There is a significant age gap (6 years) between the kids so we were able to bring the older one along with us to China and she got to see China and can talk about the adoption of our youngest so that has been great.

We found this book to be very helpful:

https://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Things-Adopted-Adoptive-Parents/dp/044050838X/ref=pd_sim_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=044050838X&pd_rd_r=A4DBGYCA77BR92A9YS41&pd_rd_w=vaAwt&pd_rd_wg=7AN74&psc=1&refRID=A4DBGYCA77BR92A9YS41

The biggest take away I got from adoption research is to know and accept that even though your adoption of the child is a wonderful thing, it still leaves a hole that needs to be acknowledged.

My two favorites have been:

Brain Rules for Baby by John Medina

How Toddlers Thrive by Tovah P. Klein

​

I listened to both via audiobook, narrated by the authors.

Medina is a neuroscientist and totally geeks out about the long term studies and advice that can be pulled based on observable and repeatable outcomes.

Klein runs a research facility that doubles as a daycare/preschool connected with a university that studies early childhood behaviors.

​

Both are clearly experts in their field, and their advice is rather similar, but both bring a fun perspective. They're both parents as well, and very clearly love their kids as well as put their money where their mouth is!

​

I strongly recommend a book called The Self Driven Child

The TLDR is to become a coach or consultant for kids rather than a micromanager. School is important to you. It's obviously not important to him. And it's his life, nothing you can say or do will make him care and it's just making everybody miserable in the process.

It's way more important for him to learn to make choices and become self motivated, can you imagine what it will be like when he's 18 if he's never come around to motivating himself?

This book has some fantastic techniques, and also has a specific chapter addressing special needs. It made my relationship with my autistic stepson much better.

Whether or not you're going all the way to homeschooling or finding alternatives such as Montessori or Waldorf, here's my two cents as well. Read up on it. I'll probably come off as bit of an ass, but it's your kid, what more relevance do you need to find and buy lots and lots of manuals(so to speak). Kids're pretty complicated, or so I've heard.

I'm not an expert, but I have a few titles I'll promptly lay on whatever friend of mine starts to procreate first. In my opinion these aren't 'crazy' books, and I sincerely hope you'll take them seriously.

How Children Learn

How Children Fail

Punished By Rewards

The Homework Myth

John Taylor Gatto has written some stuff as well, but Google can find that for you. Read and read more. I couldn't begin to describe my time in the famous twelve years without plenty of cussing.

Take an interest, is my advice.

I like to suggest this one:

Thirty Million Words: Building a Child's Brain

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0525954872/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

> The research is in: Academic achievement begins on the first day of life with the first word said by a cooing mother just after delivery. A study by researchers Betty Hart and Todd Risley in 1995 found that some children heard thirty million fewer words by their fourth birthdays than others. The children who heard more words were better prepared when they entered school. These same kids, when followed into third grade, had bigger vocabularies, were stronger readers, and got higher test scores. This disparity in learning is referred to as the achievement gap.

It's something a little different, and super interesting, even if you weren't having kids.


One of the reviews reads as follows:

> As an obstetrician, it has always struck me that while expecting parents spend an inordinate amount of time “preparing” for birth, they spend relatively little time once the baby has arrived learning how they can help their child achieve his or her full potential. So for every parent who has a dog eared copy of What to Expect” I say, forget “What to Expect” (It never goes as planned anyway) and instead focus on “What to do” once the baby arrives. And there is no more important book than Dr. Suskind’s book which is a true “how to” have a child that can reach his or her full potential. Not only is this book brilliant, but also it is simply fascinating to read. The style is academic yet approachable, deep yet conversational, and there is an “Ah ha” moment on virtually every page. This is a book that every parent, every grandparent, every childcare provider, every pediatrician, every educator and yes, every obstetrician should read.

and I very much agree!

I would love some sort of reading discussion or book club on relevant books, articles, research, aimed at helping to parent with the values of inclusion, diversity and equality. There’s a lot of outdated “advice” and “wisdom” that is out there in the form of parenting advice books. I have found it challenging to find resources that align with the kind of post-toxic masculinity, pro-feminism values that speak to me and that I see discussed on r/MensLib. With my kid quickly reaching the end of the toddler age, it almost feels like being a first-time parent again with all the new things to figure out. Just as I finally have mastered everything there was to raising a baby and toddler, and now there’s this kid in the house who is strong, and loving, but has opinions and a fierce will, and I don't know how to nurture that yet.

There's a book called Boy Crisis that I heard a talk about at my UU church, and I’ve been meaning to read it. Might be a good start, although it doesn’t seem like light reading!

Always My Child: A Parent's Guide to Understanding Your Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered, or Questioning Son or Daughter - Kevin Jennings

The GENDER Book - Mel Reiff Hill

The Gender Creative Child: Pathways for Nurturing and Supporting Children Who Live Outside Gender Boxes - Diane Ehrensaft

Gender Diversity and Non-Binary Inclusion in the Workplace: The Essential Guide for Employers - Sarah Gibson, J. Fernandez

Helping Your Transgender Teen: A Guide for Parents - Irwin Krieger

The Transgender Teen: A Handbook for Parents and Professionals Supporting Transgender and Non-Binary Teens - Stephanie Brill

Transitions of the Heart: Stories of Love, Struggle and Acceptance by Mothers of Transgender and Gender Variant Children - Rachel Pepper

"Brain Rules for Babies" by John Medina may be of interest to you. I haven't read "Expecting Better," but based on the blurb it seems the two books have similar goals: providing peer-reviewed information and avoiding the propagation of myths.


At the beginning of my pregnancy, I worried I wasn't doing enough to optimize fetal development. There's so much information to be found on pregnancy and child care, I kept wondering, "Which advice should I follow? What helps and what hinders?" It was overwhelming! I'm a FTM, and I've never been around babies, so I was clueless. The pregnancy chapter in "Brain Rules" really simplified it for me: take care of yourself physically and mentally and let the fetus do it's thing. The book continues to cover relationships, brain development, emotional development, and moral development with similar clarity.


I have a few other books such as "What to Expect the First Year" but I just keep them around for reference, haven't actually read all the way through them. Other books I've considered buying are "Mind in the Making" and "NurtureShock."

The book was called "Dear Mr. Rogers, Does It Ever Rain in Your Neighborhood?: Letters to Mr. Rogers".

Most of the book was questions from kids about the show or life ("why do you toss your shoe when you take it off?"). In all the responses, he was funny, warm and caring. Then he was amazing in Chapter 8 ("Today my dog died"). Great guy...

I will check it out. I'm into child development.

It still may be helpful up to about that age according to Hart and Risley's study. In an attempt to level the academic playing field for children from different socioeconomic levels, they discovered that parents from higher SES talk more, praise more, and have more "conversations" with their children 9 mo-3 years to the point that children on the lower end heard 30,000,000 less words (not different words. Just word utterances) by the age of 3, and are never able to recover academically. Check out Thirty Million Words by Dana Suskind.

My theory is if I say twice as much to her by saying things in German and English, then she hears twice as many words, and I get speaking practice. Win win. If she never speaks it, well, shit happens. She probably won't do a lot of things that would be super cool. I'll keep her anyway. There's a hell of an exchange policy on babies.

And I have family in Germany and I intend to hit up some German meet ups, hopefully make friends. So there's that.

Fair enough, I barely remember anything from my that early in my childhood. But if you're interested in learning more about how he might have affected your childhood mind I still recommend his book.

He was a child psychologist before the show, and everything on it was heavily thought out. For instance he would take off his coat when he came in to try to make the viewer feel more like he had just stopped in for a nice visit. A lot of his lessons and morals of the show focused on helping children to be able to communicate and express their feelings in a safe way with other people.

http://www.amazon.com/Dear-Rogers-Does-Ever-Neighborhood/dp/0140235159/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1394063120&sr=8-1

This is not exactly a question for scientists.

Teaching basic rules and etiquette for society is not indoctrination, it's helping your child develop basic social skills to interact in the way that is acceptable for your society. Neither are public schools exactly indoctrination either. For the most part (at least at the level your kid will be learning) math, geography, economics, English, art, gym, reading and writing, etc are not debatable subjects. Teaching your kid 2+2=4 or the definitions of a verb and noun are not indoctrination. Science is the only area where there is debate (well, among the public, not really among scientists). And in that case you can review local school's materials and see what they will be teaching your children.

You can't "not teach" your children. Children look to their parents to learn- and as far as teaching them ethically, teach by example.

What is it that you are afraid of instilling in your child? Because if it just religion, you can easily avoid that. If it's teaching your children to ask questions and search for their own answers, you can still do that while being an authoritative figure in their lives.

My advice to you is not to read scientific books, but read parenting books. They all have different methods and you find the one that suits what you think the style of parenting will best work for you and your partner. If you want scientific studies, a good one to read is Nutureshock.

You are trying so hard to not indoctrinate that it is almost indoctrination in itself- you asked for opinions of scientists which means you are looking for a single, correct answer. But there is no "this is what you need to do" in parenting. A lot of it is trial and error. The best way I can tell you to teach your children is to always lead by example and then they can interpret which actions cause which type of response.

edit: Philosophy for children

You are right- you are most definitely not alone. Mother's Day is always such a rough time of year. All this celebration of motherhood and here we are, not even able to acknowledge to most people that we are mothers. It sucks. Big time.

This year is even rougher for me because my husband's cousin just had a baby two days ago and my facebook is filled with pictures of the new baby and the happy family. Of course, I am thrilled for them but it hurts, too. I cannot have children (hysterectomy) and so it is even harder on me. I had a really awful pregnancy because my family treated it like a sin instead of the joy of a new life and, because I was so young, strangers looked at me and were judgmental and sometimes rude. I never got to raise my baby girl and now I cannot have another child and experience all the joys of pregnancy and motherhood that everyone else in the damn world gets to have. Normally, I just push it all down and go on with my life but this time of year the emotions tend to bubble up to the surface.

In regard to your situation, I think you should send them a book on adoption from an adopted child's perspective. Perhaps Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish their Adopted Parents Knew. Include a letter stating that, just because your son does not want to talk about adoption with them, it does not mean that he is not curious about his birthfamily. Suggest that your letters probably mean a lot to him but he may be afraid of letting them know that because often adopted children feel they are betraying the APs if they show interest in their biological family. Also let them know that, if your son is adamant that he does not wish to recieve letters and gifts from you, that is fine but you want the decision to be HIS, not theirs. He is old enough to make that decision now. And, even if he does not want things from you right now, I would still send them and have the APs hold them until he is ready because I am sure it will man a lot to him as he gets older.

Also, feel free to PM me if you ever want/need to talk. Hugs! <3

Oh, gosh. They get it from you.

You see... that's just it. You can't treat other people like shit for no GOOD reason. You can't just assume that the guys know how old she is, maybe they think she is 15 or 16 instead of 13. Was she wearing a lot of makeup? Is her body more mature than others her age? Did you even stop to consider that this may be the first time those boys kissed a girl? Having someone cussing at them and treating them like they are worthless the first time they kissed someone can be traumatic. It may be really embarrassing if they unknowingly kissed someone that young. Maybe they were really embarrassed and felt bad that they unknowingly kissed someone that young. Did you ever stop to think about what their feeling or thinking?! You can't just assume, you have to ask.

Yes, you can pull them apart. But to cuss at someone when you don't know the whole situation is extremely unreasonable and pretty barbaric. It shows lack of thought and letting your emotions get in the way. What if you (being 21) made out with a guy that really looked like he was 19, then someone came up and cussing at you accusing you of being a pervert because he was only 17. You wouldn't feel so great to be treated so wrongly and like you knowingly did something perverted when you didn't.

And your sister did this with two guys, not just one. So it's reasonable to assume that both of those two guys weren't both perverts. The odds are unlikely.

Saying that you don't care about some other person is like Andrea not caring about Holly, and it's also like Holly not caring that you and your mom are worried about her. You are all acting unreasonably and selfishly.

You have to stop to look at a situation and question it. Don't jump to conclusion. You should look at things from multiple perspectives and consider multiple scenarios - like what I did with questioning multiple scenarios with those boys.

Saying you don't care about a stranger's feelings is pretty cruel. Just like it's cruel for Andrea to treat Holly so coldly. Just like it's cruel for Holly to have such high disregard for your and your mother's worries about her safety.

If you want them to change, then you need to show them a good example of how to treat others and to care about other people's feelings and thoughts. People aren't trash. You can't just treat other people however you want.

Edit:

I read this book, Mind in the Making, when I was about 19 just for fun. It's a pretty easy read. I think the chapter on critical thinking is really great. It also discusses how to use your executive functions to their highest potential.

Idk if you like Harry Potter, but I always try to follow Dumbledore's example when I am having a discussion with others, especially adolescence. In many ways he is the epitome of reason, understanding, and love. But that guy also makes some mistakes, just like humans make mistakes too. It's OK to make mistakes, you just have to try to learn from them.

Have a look at positive psychotherapy:

Clinicians Manual

Learned Optimism
VIA Character strengths

That should be a good start.

If education interests you, you can't go wrong with How Children Fail, How Children Learn, or any of John Holt's later works. Truly inspiring.

The Lives of Children by George Dennison is also amazing.

While not specifically for pregnancy, I found these books incredibly helpful. They're written by neuroscience researchers at the University of Washington and my daughter and I ended up being selected as participants in some of their student's studies! The second book heavily influenced my parenting style (or reinforced what I was doing instinctively) and either I got lucky with a good kid or they're quite effective.

What's Going on In There: How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First 5 Years of Life

and

The Scientist in the Crib

I wrote this exact paper probably half a dozen times throughout my school years. There's plenty of ACTUAL research out there. Please do the topic justice and don't base it off of reddit comments..

Also, go read this as part of your research:
http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Monsters-Children-Make-Believe-Violence/dp/0465036961/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1458586774&sr=8-1&keywords=killing+monsters

EDIT:: 1 more thing; I don't know what level of education you plan on submitting this for, but unless this is an opinion piece, no self respecting professor will accept a paper with references that include social media, wikipedia, or message boards. I wouldn't recommend using anything you get here if you're hoping for a passing grade.

I love this show but am always bothered by one thing, is in real life twins don't only look-alike, they act alike too. It turns out even separated at birth and raised in very different circumstances, twins have strikingly similar personalities.

But it makes for a better show that they are so different, so I can get over it.

A great book on twins raised apart.

http://www.amazon.com/Born-Together-Reared-Landmark-Minnesota/dp/0674055462

Babies are wired to seek touch, comfort, attention. When they cry something discomforts them and they need their parent's care. When that lacks brain starts working differently, so to speak. Not to mention stress hormone cortisol that affects heart beat, and again, brain development.

Much better explained on next sources:
This article: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/moral-landscapes/201112/dangers-crying-it-out

This one, too: http://jennifermargulis.net/blog/2016/11/babies-and-mothers-should-not-be-separated-after-birth-heres-why/

Book recommendation if you want to learn more about brain development: https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Trees-Mind-Intelligence-Adolescence/dp/0452278309

Here's a pretty good book on the subject: https://www.amazon.ca/Nurture-Assumption-Children-Revised-Updated/dp/1439101655

Based on all the literature she reviews, her estimate is that genes determine like 60% of us.

I highly highly highly recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Things-Adopted-Adoptive-Parents/dp/044050838X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=E365238909FC&keywords=20+things+adopted+kids+wish+their+adoptive+parents+knew&qid=1565969719&s=gateway&sprefix=20+thing%2Caps%2C164&sr=8-1

I wish I would have read it earlier, we told our daughter (adopted at birth) that she was adopted at age 7 and that was too late. She is doing fine now but early is better.

Patience is good, but please do remember to carefully take care of your kids. I grew up gay and Mormon and it is just plain emotionally painful, at best, and, at worst, so awful to invoke suicidal ideations. Even at age 49 when I came out just 5 years ago this month, I went through hell. Please don't let your kids take in too much of church. Start helping them think critically even now at a young age. Don't let your spouse raise them too much to be TBM's, I hope.

Here's a good start:

The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072KBWB6G/ref=nav_timeline_asin?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

I agree with a lot of your article, but you're making a huge intuitive leap from "there's danger in not being able to adequately decode another's expression of emotion" to "we're hard-wired to be hostile." There's actually ample evidence that we're hard-wired to be just the opposite: cooperative, accommodating, and generally kind to one another.

Here's an article published recently on the subject. And if you ever have time, pick up a copy of Sarah Hrdy's Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding -- it's the best book I've read in years, and it explores these concepts in incredible depth and breadth.

You guys sound like me and my wife; she wanted to get into it years before I did because I was the worry-wart. She waited on me to come around to the idea before signing us up for the classes. We also wanted to go the foster-to-adopt route (well actually we just wanted to adopt, but you foster-to-adopt anyway in that process.)

My advise to you two is to go ahead and make plans to go through the fostering classes. Doing so doesn't commit you to fostering, you can still decide it isn't for you. The classes are indeed geared towards 'worst case scenario' which likely won't be your experience if you do actually foster, but they might bolster your resolve for committing to fostering after learning how bad these kids have it.

Since you are leaning more towards the foster-to-adopt side, my bet is you'll be exposed more towards older kids and sibling groups since generally they are more available for adoption than the little kids, but it's a conversation you'll need to have with your case worker since it varies by region.

Currently we have a 13 year old girl in our care, who is available for adoption, and it looks probable that we will adopt her. Another thing we weren't told in training is that we aren't necessarily rushed for time. I was thinking we'd have to decide to adopt her within a month or two, but in reality it appears we can take all the time we need.

Some books you guys may want to read:
Three little words

Twenty Things Adopted Kids wish their Adoptive parents knew

It also matters how you read and how you model the interaction of reading, and more importantly, model conversational patterns.

Check out the book "30 Million Words", which has a lot of (imo) really helpful information on the topic.

http://www.amazon.com/NurtureShock-New-Thinking-About-Children/dp/B006LWDWZ6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1346868509&sr=8-1&keywords=nurture+shock

Good book if anyone is interested. Sort of like Freakonomics for parenting (has this topic covered).

This book was helpful An Early Start for Your Child with Autism: Using Everyday Activities to Help Kids Connect, Communicate, and Learn https://www.amazon.ca/dp/160918470X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_tNGUCb7QDSC09

Just read "Killing monsters: why children need fantasy, superheroes and make-believe violence". I was thankful that I wasn't born and I have not grown up in the US after that. Fortunately enough the rest of the non-Anglophone world is not yet polluted by the doctrines exposed in that book and boys are not labeled disruptive, violent or crazy for normal childhood behavior characteristic of both sexes before 8 years old or so.

I'm sorry but I downvoted this.

First, I find it kind of puzzling that one can write about "another child has been lost to science" while in his own explanation completely ignores social science. Yes, social science is more fuzzy than the natural sciences. This is hardly a surprise given how easy natural science is from a research point of view. Just to mention one example, physicists can destroy a few billion atoms and nobody cares. In contrast, people would probably be a bit irritated if we'd dissect just a few hundred humans.

Second, while some researchers have studied child attachment as a cause for religious beliefs, there's also a good chunk of evidence pointing the other direction. For instance, twin and adoption studies indicate that about 40-50% of the variation in religiosity may be due to genetic influences.

Children may – at some point in their lives – be willing to belief nonsense but this is often corrected in later stages of development. The belief in God is nonsense from our point of view, but the wide-spread acceptance of supernatural ideas indicate that this is a by-product of our cognitive equipment. Expressed differently, for many people concepts like gods, ancestors, ghosts, etc. are very intuitive, and this may be why many people continue to believe.

Third, some research suggests that parents may not be such a influential source when it comes to socialization. Concerning personality, it seems the larger influence is a kid's peer group. Parents may only appear to be so influential, because the parents of a peer group share a common culture. Efforts to teach critical thinking may be wasted if one's kid grows up in a neighborhood with lots of religious parents.

I wouldn't worry as much about kids having role models and such. Parential influence is probably overrated. Genetic influence, on the other hand is often underrated. What I am trying to say is that your son might turn out good or bad regardless what you do.

This was a good book:

http://www.amazon.com/Scientist-Crib-Early-Learning-Tells/dp/0688177883

The Nurture Assumption by Judith Harris, in case you want to approach human cognitive development from a developmental psychology perspective, and how parenting and peer presence compete in the development of children into adults

https://www.amazon.in/Nurture-Assumption-Children-Revised-Updated/dp/1439101655

Thank you for the reading recommendation. It's going on my list.

I've developed similar leanings over the years and I partly attribute that to having read this book.

If anyone is interested in more on this topic, I recommend Killing Monsters: Why Children need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence. It takes a good look at child psychology as well as analyzing studies and their findings in regards to negative attribution bias that most use to show the "harmful effects" violent games can have.

edit: Original wording sounded like it supported the claim that violent games make kids violent, it in fact supports the opposite view being that violent games aren't harmful and are arguably healthy for children.

> People have absolutely terrible intuitions ... and if something effective seems to lack face validity, I think people just trust their guts and shun the "weird" method.

I graduated in psych two years ago, and man I totally agree. People have absolutely terrible intuitions about so many things that have been well-researched in Psychology. Sometimes I wonder if Psychology suffers from this more than any other field. This book certainly comes to mind.

I sort of pride myself in being extremely skeptical. Whenever I encounter "common knowledge" — even, perhaps especially, my own assumptions — I try to say to myself "hmm, I bet there's some really fascinating research that proves this wrong." Unfortunately I don't meet many others with that mindset.

There is nothing wrong with play fighting. In fact it is helpful for the development of children. Anybody interested in learning more should read Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence.
http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Monsters-Children-Make-Believe-Violence/dp/0465036961

The Scientist in the Crib. It's not about parenting exactly, but it will give you an informed perspective on child development.

> The idea that people are taking their children to gender clinics to get trans therapy as young as 8 or even 3 really doesn't check out to me.

https://www.amazon.com/Gender-Creative-Child-Nurturing-Supporting/dp/1615193065

This might not quite be your speed, but How Children Fail and How Children Learn by John Holt both have had a profound influence on my career choices and approach as a teacher.

Also, while technically a parenting book, How to Talk so Kids Will Listen, and Listen so Kids Will Talk is the backbone of my classroom management approach.

I think it was probably this one.

Here is the letter: https://i.imgur.com/Qb64qY7.png

From "Dear Mr. Rogers, Does It Ever Rain in Your Neighborhood?: Letters to Fred Rogers".

And here is Mister Rogers feeding the fish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjWNRPq_iqg

Parenting doesn't matter. Genes matter.

https://www.amazon.com/Nurture-Assumption-Children-Revised-Updated/dp/1439101655

This unfortunate NYT bestselling author: http://www.amazon.com/Nurture-Assumption-Children-Revised-Updated/dp/1439101655

Your question is very broad. Most parents don't think about the bulk of how they raise their kids in an especially rigorous way. They do things their parents did that they think were probably good ideas, and (usually) try to avoid doing things they think were probably bad ones. The problem is that most people don't try to use anything beyond anecdotes, preference, "folk wisdom", and convenience to inform their parenting practice.

Other people try to be more deliberate about it and approach parenting sort of like how teachers approach teaching. I fall more into this camp. It's important to me to have a theoretical foundation to inform my parenting choices, and as much as I can, I try to back up that theory with some kind of research-based evidence. Despite this, boolean_sleedgehammer is still right that no one knows exactly what they're doing.

I recommend developmental psychology books like this one.

It's a very sad thing, but a lot of the reason why abused children often themselves become abusers is just that they share half the genes of an abuser. "Nature vs. Nurture" isn't a settled debate, but there's at least something to the Nature side.

That certainly doesn't mean Palpatine was always doomed to be evil, but there's a statistical tendency against him.

Maybe the Jedi, having the supernatural ability to sense emotions and foresee the future consequences of their actions, could raise a troubled child the right way, with far better parenting than any mundane person could manage - but on the other hand, look at Anakin.

I don't think a Palpatine raised by the Jedi would have become a Sith Lord nonetheless, but it's not impossible.

Your focus on detention is arbitrary. It's like saying it's unfair that hostages don't have access to pizza. Maybe, but the whole state of being-a-hostage is unfair. Instead of obsessing about their lack of pepperoni and mushrooms, why not, instead, focus on the actual problem?

• We force children to go to school.
  
• We force children to study specific subjects at school.
  
• We force children to do homework after school.
  
• We stigmatize them if they fail at school.
  
• We use school grades as one metric of mental health.
  
• In most schools, we force children to be subject to archaic. pedagogical methods--once that have been proven to be ineffective.
  
• And, yes, we force children who have (in my view) naturally bucked against this system, to stay in school longer than kids who accept it.
  
• In most schools, children learn very little, especially given the amount of time the spend there.
  
• In many cases (e.g. when forced to read Shakespeare), they often develop a lifelong hatred of the subject.
  
• Many children spend years in school being bullied, mocked, and ostracized.
  
• Throughout this time, they're repeatedly told all this is "good for them," and, in the end, like serial abusers, they inflict in on their own kids, telling them it's good for them.
  
  All of this stuff has been studied for decades. We know that most schools are run horribly, according to unsound educational principals. But that never changes.
  
  When psychologists or neuroscientists discover something about learning or education, it takes years or decades to affect classroom practices, if it ever does.
  
  Schools aren't generally affected by Science. Instead, they are buffeted by politics and held fast by tradition.
  
  See
  
  
• Wounded By School
  
  
• Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes
  
  
• The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing
  
  
• video: The 3 Most Basic Needs of Children & Why Schools Fail
  
  
• Summerhill School: A New View of Childhood
  
  
• [A Mathematician's Lament (PDF)] (https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf); longer book version: A Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form
  
  
• Ken Robinson's TED talk: Do Schools kill creativity?
  
  
• How Children Fail
  
  
• Unschooling
  
  
• Why do we get frustrated when learning something? (written by me)
  
  I am skeptical that I will CYV, even though I believe that this is the best argument against it--not your view that detention is wrong, but that it's not even worth talking about. Sure, detention is a bad thing--but not the worst thing--about a horrible, corrupt, abusive system.
  
  I'm skeptical, because the system is so deeply entrenched in our culture. And the most people can do is argue about small tweaks: whether we should use this textbook or that, the length of Summer break, the size of classrooms, etc.
  
  The debate about Creationism vs Evolution in schools is a good example. If the Evolution folks (or the Creationist folks) win, they will pat themselves on the back and walk away happy, never glancing back and noticing that the same shoddy educational methods are being used now as before--with just one correction.
  
  Yes, Dominoes is bad pizza. It won't suddenly become good pizza if you put it in a less-ugly box. I agree that the box is ugly, but why focus on it? It's not the core problem.