It's OK to Go Up the Slide
Renegade Rules for Raising Confident and Creative Kids
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
When it comes to parenting, sometimes you have to trust your gut.
With her first book, It’s OK Not to Share, Heather Shumaker overturned all the conventional rules of parenting with her “renegade rules” for raising competent and compassionate kids. In It’s Ok To Go Up the Slide, Shumaker takes on new hot-button issues with renegade rules such as:
- Recess Is A Right
- It’s Ok Not To Kiss Grandma
- Ban Homework in Elementary School
- Safety Second
- Don’t Force Participation
Shumaker also offers broader guidance on how parents can control their own fears and move from an overscheduled life to one of more free play. Parenting can too often be reduced to shuttling kids between enrichment classes, but Shumaker challenges parents to reevaluate how they’re spending their precious family time. This book helps parents help their kids develop important life skills in an age-appropriate way. Most important, parents must model these skills, whether it’s technology use, confronting conflict, or coping emotionally with setbacks. Sometimes being a good parent means breaking all the rules.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Shumaker takes up where she left off with It's OK Not to Share, this time addressing "tricky topics" relating to school-age kids. Shumaker advocates taking a close look at the expectations attached to such practices as kindergarten (it's not mandatory under U.S. law), recess (it should never be used as punishment), and homework, urging parents to bend (and possibly break) the rules according to what works best for their particular family. Shumaker, for instance, has banned homework for her two elementary-aged sons, based on research showing it doesn't benefit children. She also weighs in on parents "signing off" on school papers, asserting that this practice degrades trust and places parents in the role of cop. Should teachers prove resistant to her suggestions, she suggests modeling "respectful disagreement" and provides a collection of sample letters and scripts parents can use. Interspersing her own experiences with advice from experts, Shumaker also presents a convincing case for letting kids take reasonable risks in order to build confidence and independence. Though "going up the slide" (i.e., bucking the system) may be more difficult in some school districts than others, Shumaker does a thorough job of arming parents with the facts they'll need to begin their ascent.
