Book Review: The Parking Lot Rules

I’m not really sure what led me to buy Park­ing Lot Rules & 75 Other Ideas for Rais­ing Amaz­ing Chil­dren.  I guess it was the glow­ing Edi­to­r­ial Reviews on Amazon.com, as I bought it a cou­ple months ago and as of today, there are only five cus­tomer reviews (4 of which gave 5 stars).

When it arrived, I eagerly started read­ing, and after only a cou­ple rules, closed it up and placed it on my book­shelf.  I could tell almost imme­di­ately that this book was not for me.  I finally decided to pick it up again and read it all the way through to pro­vide you with a review.

My opin­ion: it is not for par­ents prac­tic­ing attach­ment par­ent­ing.  It may be use­ful to Ferberizer/Baby-Trainer parents.

Here are some of the rules that I most had some­thing to say about:

#7 Almost Always Skip The First Thing That Comes To Mind

As par­ents, when we see our chil­dren fal­ter, so often the first thing that comes to mind is a harsh or judg­men­tal comment.

Oliver is only 17 months, so maybe I’m just too new a par­ent, but harsh and judg­men­tal things don’t jump into my mind when he fal­ters.  They don’t gen­er­ally jump into my mind when peo­ple around me fal­ter unless I’m already in a pretty foul mood.  I think per­haps it would be bet­ter, if this hap­pens to you, to reflect on why crit­i­cism is the first thing that comes to mind.  I sug­gest that the next time it hap­pens to you, try to exam­ine what it is you your­self are feel­ing, and once you rec­og­nize what you are going through, maybe this will help you feel less crit­i­cal in the future.

#10 Every Day Stay Healthy, Tech­niques to Avoid the Com­mon Cold

This is one of many rules obsessed with germs and clean­li­ness.  While I agree that hand wash­ing is impor­tant, I’m not going to have my child gar­gle with mouth­wash every time he brushes his teeth (this does not reduce the chance of get­ting a cold any­ways, and if you are using mouth­wash with alco­hol, could even encour­age the growth of more aggres­sive bac­te­ria in your child’s mouth), I’m not going to turn away another child with a cough or snif­fle by giv­ing them a cookie and send­ing them on their way until they “feel bet­ter,” nor will I instruct him to “blow, cough, spit, snort, tongue-scrap, what­ever,” all extra mucus from his body as it is “a har­bin­ger of ill health and an enemy of your child’s good health.”  If his nose is run­ning, I’ll wipe it, but this other advice just seems a tad extreme.  Nor will I instruct him, as described in rule #12 No Hands To The Face or rule #13 Why Germs Love Money, that he should stay healthy by never touch­ing his face or han­dling money.  Kids need to be exposed to some germs in order to develop healthy immune sys­tems.  I believe that a harsh, anti-germ, phi­los­o­phy of child-rearing is what has led in recent years to the increase in aller­gies, as the immune sys­tem starts attack­ing the aller­gens due to a lack of any­thing real to fight.

#15 The Excel­lent Ques­tion Game

I was dri­ving my son Thomas to base­ball prac­tice a few years ago.  He was dig­ging around the back­seat of the car for change among the cookie crumbs and finally he asked me how much money I thought he had found.

Not intend­ing to be mean or dimin­ish­ing, I responded, “Well, that’s not really an excel­lent ques­tion, is it?”  He asked me, “Why not?”  I said, “Because you already know the answer.  An excel­lent ques­tion would be one where you do not know the answer.”

The author goes on to describe a game played with his extended fam­ily where the chil­dren asked ques­tions and he would rate them as “Okay, Good, Great, or the ulti­mate ‘Excel­lent question!’”

While I think it’s great to encour­age your chil­dren to be curi­ous and ques­tion things, some­thing about this rule rubs me the wrong way.  Maybe it’s that I’d like my child to come to his own con­clu­sion about his ques­tions, in his own time.

#23 Kids Court

Kids Court should be run like a real court.  Be incred­i­bly just with your ques­tions as well as your ver­dicts.  Be for­mal and respectful.

Kids court makes you the judge and jury in your children’s dis­agree­ments.  I don’t like the encour­age­ment of adver­sar­ial roles nor the place­ment of the par­ent as the author­ity over the chil­dren.  This is because I believe in attach­ment par­ent­ing and that chil­dren and par­ents should work for a com­pro­mise together.  Solu­tions should be some­thing all par­ties agree to, rather than there being a judg­ment on a win­ner and a loser.  That’s my phi­los­o­phy and I’m not say­ing it’s right for every­one, but it is for my family.

#25 The Other Side Of The Freeway

This rule tries to teach your child to mea­sure feel­ings.  One exam­ple the author offers is the day that he needed to drop his son off for a sleep­over at a friends and there was a traf­fic jam on the other side of the freeway:

Know­ing that I was now going to be very late for an appoint­ment back at the office, I sighed and leaned over to my Sam.  “You see that mess over there?  I have to drive back in all that–just to get back to the office.”  He looked over at the backed-up free­way and said, “I’m so sorry, Dad.  You don’t have to take me…”  I smiled and said he could mea­sure my love for him by look­ing at all those stoped cars.

After his son threw a Hooked on Phon­ics card at his face:

I did not say the first thing that came to my mind.  I did not say any­thing for ten sec­onds.  I did not raise my voice.  When I dabbed a spot of blood from my face, I looked over at him and whis­pered, “If I was a hit­ting daddy, I would be hit­ting you right now.”

While I like the idea of try­ing to give your chil­dren an idea of the size of your love, I find the free­way exam­ple loaded with guilt.  And the sec­ond exam­ple, I just find down­right threat­en­ing.  I would respond in this sit­u­a­tion by say­ing, “OW! That really hurts!  I don’t like it when things are thrown at me, it really hurts to get hit in the face.”  Instead of focus­ing on what could be hap­pen­ing to them, they are forced to focus on how their actions are mak­ing you feel, which is an impor­tant les­son, I think.

#27 First Bite/Last Bite

In this rule, the child is asked to take one bite of every­thing on offer, in reward for doing this, they get to take the last bite of any­thing on your plate that they wish to.  I dis­agree with reward­ing a child with food.  We just enjoy our meals, escar­got, goose liver pate, and Thai red curry included, and if Oliver wants to try them, he can, if he doesn’t, we don’t make him.  More often than not, he’s happy to eat every­thing we do.

#56 Five Very Effec­tive Non­vi­o­lent Punishments

1. The Silent Treat­ment — child should be for­bid­den to talk or com­mu­ni­cate in any way

2. Do NOT go to your room — make her room off limits

3. The writ­ing pun­ish­ment — have him write [a brief sen­tence] over and over and over

4. Make him apol­o­gize to the whole family

5. Have your child run laps

Social ostracism, drilling, embar­rass­ment and cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment do not fit into my phi­los­o­phy of discipline.

What do you think of these rules?  Do you dis­agree with me?  I’m still a fairly new par­ent, so I’d love to hear your take.

You may also be interested in reading:

• Book Review: Parent Effectiveness Training (2)
• Book Review: The No-Cry Nap Solution (2)
• Book Review: Punished by Rewards (4)
• Book Review - Maybe One (2)
• My Favorite Books for New Moms (2)

Tagged as: advice, attachment parenting, Books, discipline, kids, parking lot rules, reviews, tom sturges