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This sympathetic and unsentimental account of child development and the challenge of parenthood is agreeable to read and supportive in its effect. It describes the inevitable problems of growth but reassures parents that if they can be dependable and “understanding but not over-involved or fussed when difficulties arise, children have a good chance of solving the problems of development, but each child will find his own personal solution”.
The value of this book lies in its relating of all stages of life to each other, never losing sight of the way in which later pains are “full of stress and the conflict of feelings first experienced in early childhood and then forgotten because they are too painful to remember.”
It will help parents by its descriptions of the strength of the loves and hates of childhood, of the normality of these passions, and of the need to temper them in growing up. “Ultimately love and aggression, the two great forces in human life, have to find a balance between them for peace of mind and efficiency in later life”.
In showing how this balance is gradually achieved, the Author captures the flavour of each period of childhood and helps the parent to see what real needs underlie the child's behaviour at each stage. The four-year-old in a tantrum may need not only acceptance of the violence in himself, but also help in checking his anger; not the angry response he seems determined to evoke. When he continually has excuses for getting into bed at night with his parents the reassurance he really needs may be that they will not allow their relationship to be divided by him. The adolescent who flaunts rebellion as part of his dependent tie to his parents needs to be helped to a genuine independence and not allowed the false support of working through this new identity still in relation to them.
One regret is in the shortness of this book. There is not space enough to work out fully the problems of each stage. Particular topics such as fostering