Raising Mature Kids
A parenting book (in progress) by James Lavin.
Chapters
I hope you will download the chapter drafts below and find them useful and interesting.
These chapter drafts are available free for personal use. But they are copyrighted, so please do not modify, reuse, or copy the material in any way without permission.
- Preface
- The Parenting Decision
- Learning and Growing
- Developing Talent
- Raising Emotionally Intelligent Children
- Raising Curious Lifelong Learners
- Helicopter Parenting
- Idle Parenting
- French Parenting
- Tiger Mom Parenting
- Chips All In Parenting
- Authoritative Parents Raise the Best Kids <-- The scientifically optimal parenting style
- Fatherhood
- Friends
- Competition, Exhaustion and Stress
- Communication
- Safety and Health
- Exercise
- Food
- Morality, Ethics and Religion
- Making Better Decisions
- Non-Parental, Non-School Influences on Children
- Bilingualism and Multiculturalism
- Quality Schools
About Raising Mature Kids
Raising Mature Kids offers scientifically proven advice for raising well-adjusted children.
Though written for parents, it should be equally useful to teachers, grandparents, aunts/uncles, camp counselors... anyone who interacts with children and cares about helping kids enjoy childhood while developing into mature, happy, thoughtful, engaged, considerate, creative young adults.
Raising Mature Kids makes accessible (and, hopefully, interesting) the most useful scientific research on parenting and child development. I plan to make this book available as a free PDF because millions of parents who could benefit from quality parenting advice don't buy parenting books. Society would benefit greatly if parents were better informed about quality parenting.
I began writing Raising Mature Kids after reading many wonderful books and scientific articles and deciding to consolidate what I learned into a book that would provide busy parents with the most valuable insights in a single volume. In recent years, I've been a busy stay-at-home dad who works part-time while chauffeuring my 3- and 6-year-olds to school, camp, tennis, skating, swimming, etc., so I also have some hands-on, practical parenting experience.
I originally intended to complete Raising Mature Kids and publish it in dead-tree format. But since I stumbled into a more-than-full-time programming job, the book has languished. (Like many parents of young children, I've been in an odd state of purgatory between the traditional work world and chauffeur/babysitter to my children.) Rather than waste the time and energy I spent researching and writing, I've decided to release chapters as free PDF downloads as I complete them in hopes someone finds them useful.
Since my main goal is to help parents and kids, I expect to leave the entire book online for free and, when it's complete, also offer a very-low-cost paper-and-ink alternative.
I encourage you to send me comments, criticisms, corrections, ideas and personal parenting stories at the email address below.
(The photo is my son two days before his 6th birthday! His dad could never do that!)
--James