Playful Parenting

This is a parenting book with great ideas. It pushes play and connecting with your child(ren) as a sort of universal fix for behavior, communication etc. Putting it into practice caused some confusion for me, because sometimes play isn't the answer. But I highly recommend it. Where else will you find a parenting book that criticizes Maria Montessori, who didn't think highly of play, while praising the philosophy of Kurt Vonnegut (“We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anyone tell you any different!”)?

Overall I really liked this book. It gives some incredible tips on becoming more engaged with our children and how play is the language that our children use to express and deal with big and small hurts, disappointments, and trauma. It's definitely an extremely kid-centric theory of parenting.

Cohen stresses over and over again the importance of actually connecting with our children. He stresses that physical engagement in play is not only appropriate, it's absolutely necessary. He recommends that we embrace types of play that we as adults may be uncomfortable with (such as gun play or aggressive play) as a way to allow kids to get it out of their system in a safe and understanding environment.

I'm skeptical about his thoughts on show more discipline. Naturally he's against corporal punishment, which I am in agreement with, but he also forgoes time-outs. He makes a compelling case that 'bad' behavior by children is a result of loneliness, confusion, or anger that they don't have the verbal capacity to express. So by sending a child to time out who is acting out because he is lonely, Cohen argues that the parent is actual compounding the problem. Instead he advocates 'Meeting on the Couch', it's a calm time where the parent reconnects with the child and tries to understand the child. That's all well and good, but where are consequences?

I also felt like Cohen focused disproportionately on boy behavior.

Overall this book has some fantastic ideas, I would recommend taking a look. show less

Really good advice on how to play and be silly with kids. I've found these strategies to be useful and effective - and fun. The book gets a little bit repetitive in the early chapters - I don't recommend reading it in one sitting. But one chapter a day worked really well.

Pleasant refresher on how to find the joy in being a parent and a child in any situation/scenario. Many of the the suggestions and tips you may already know and want to use in your everyday parenting technique, so it may seem a bit redundant. I found that it showed me how little I stick to my guns/my plan when I parent and how more often than not I put myself in "the bad guy" position with my children even when I don't mean to or want to. I wish I could constant have this book held up to me throughout my day with my kids so that I can really be a "playful parent".

I really LOVED this book. Of course, I play with my kids all the time and so it's not hard to love something that advocates what you are already doing!

However, I didn't understand just how powerful play was - I knew it was important, I knew I wanted my kids doing a lot of it, but I didn't know that I could use play in such specific ways to help them develop and grow and learn.

We are now playing even more around here, and I'm trying to incorporate some of what he talks about in the book into our play. It does feel strange at first, and there are things I'm tweaking that I was doing before that the book made me realize we shouldn't do anymore and there are things the kids want to play that I used to try to stop before that I have learned show more to let go of and not worry so much.

Definitely a great read for all parents I think! show less

My favorite parenting book so far.

Interesting. I heard about this book from the Unconditional Parenting Yahoo group.

This gave me another way to look at situations with my children.