Question: When I was young, I read lots. (Still do, in fact.) One of the things that I read when I was growing up. I think they were helpful in enabling me to see things from my parent’s point of view, and I notice that I jumped straight from 14-year-old teen-angst to 15-year-old-mutual-respect-and-acknowledge-each-others’-opinions. I am curious if anyone else read parenting books while young, and if so, if there is a discernable trend common to us.
I read Eric Erikson as a 12-year-old and thought it did a lot to increase my empathy for my parents. I’m now a psychologist, BTW.
I did. But only so I could get a jump on my parents. It was like having the rule books to parenting. (So, if I do A, then they will retaliate with B, and expect me to do C, so I had better go straight to H. Yep, I tried to be a paradox)
It wasn’t until much later that I figured out that these books were there to help, not hinder, our relationship.:smack:
I did. But I did because I resented the notion of being psyched-out by a book and to know my “enemy.”
child birthing books scared the heck out of me when i was a kid.
Yes. I read every one I could get my hands on. I thought they were very exotic and adult. But then again, I was interested more in the childbirth parts. Anything remotely medical was interesting to me.
I read them, especially the ones on childhood diseases, but I can’t say I did much about applying them to my life.
My parents had a book on “Child Behavior”, which I read, at least excerpts, as early as 8 or 9. It was endlessly fascinating to read the descriptions and interpretations of typical behaviors and fears at various ages.
I did. But the first one was a baby care book, not a school-aged child care book, so it’s not like it was of any relevance to me. I think I just liked the pictures of babies in that book since I was pretty little at the time. I read other books once I was older too. One had all these pictures of childhood illnesses that was really interesting.
Never used anything against my parents, though. No point because they never really used anything from the parenting books that I minded.
Oh boy. Yes, I did, mainly because I had such an awful relationship with my father. (Short version: Mom died, 9 mo. pregnant, when I was v. young, leaving Dad a completely unprepared single father.) I remember leaving the book “Between Parent and Child” out, open to certain pages, hoping to god he’d take the hint. I don’t think he ever did.
But, on a cheerier note, he and I are now pretty damn close. Even if he made some pretty horrible mistakes at times, I keep reminding myself that given who he was, he did the best he could. And that’s the most one can expect. Were I he - raised in a small town in the 1950s - I’m not sure I’d have done any better.
I read teaching books, does that count?
Yes. And I’m extremely relieved to find out that I’m not the only weird one.
Heh.
When I was about 11, my mother gave me a book on how to explain sex to your children. That was her version of sexual education.
I remember this intensely frightening “pamphlet” style child-rearing thing that somebody from the church gave my mother…it was obviously a privately published (read: a publisher certainly didn’t buy it!) book and it scared the hell out of me.
What I remember:
Babies can and should be potty-trained by the time they are 15 months old. Any baby who can walk who is still wearing diapers is being “indulged.”
As soon as they learn to crawl, babies should know where they can and cannot go; this woman’s own babies always knew that the kitchen was off-limits and would stop at the doorway. I think she recommended a swift, firm slap on the hand for babies not old enough to spank yet.
Babies should not be allowed to cry indiscriminately; they are throwing “temper tantrums” and should be stopped. If I recall correctly, she cited some supposed Indian method wherein you pinch the baby’s nose when they cry so that they stop, b/c otherwise they can’t breathe. She aso mentioned another “Indian tradition” where the squaws carry babies on their backs, and the babies know better than to piss all over Mom.
Those are just the highlights; I can remember other horrifying bits and pieces of it but most of it had to do with children under three or four. The gist of it was that we don’t take babies nearly seriously enough; they are evil little entities who should be stopped.
I wonder what happened to that horrible little book; I wish I still had it!
My mother had spent time in nursing school, so when I was about 6-7 I found all her old textbooks in the basement. I pored over those for years, especially the ones on obstetrics. She had also stashed a lot of books on sex (think “Joy of Sex”) down there. The end result was that by age 12 I was probably the most well-educated kid on sex around. I could name every part of the female anatomy, in Latin. I understood lactation, and knew what fellatio, cunnilingus, etc. were.
None of this ever helped me talk to girls or get a date though. 
Actually, I didn’t realize until very late in high school that everyone else didn’t have equivalent technical knowledge.
I read parenting books when I was a kid. The first I remember I was 11 and getting ready to babysit for pay and read Dr. Spock. A couple years later I read several in a row during the summer. It’s when I got a clue how out of wack our home life was.
All the ones I read were the ones like “How To Talk So Kids Will Listen (And Listen So Kids Will Talk)” and that sort of thing, because I was prone to ignoring her. Still am, actually. I think it has to do with my size. Once I got a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than my mom, she ceased to be threatening…
I read tons of them too. I think that once I realized (at about 7 years old) how f***ed up my parents were/are, I immediately went about trying to learn how to do better with my own future children. I still read them. Maybe they’ll be useful when I have a child. Maybe they won’t. But at least I’ll have something to begin with!
Yes, I remember endless hours spent in the basement reading stuff like “Challenges of Childhood” and Dr. Spock. The descriptions of various family dynamics and the example anecdotes were fascinating. Not sure I ever did a whole lot of applying them to my life, though.
Still working on the mutual respect thing, though. Not sure if it will ever be acheived… probably not, given my father’s attitudes towards me. (and my mom’s, come to think of it)
F_X
I read Dr. Spock as a kid. Not sure why.