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It Takes a Child to Raise a Parent

Stories of Evolving Child and Parent Development

Janis Clark Johnston

While advice abounds from a variety of sources before parents embark on their parenting journeys, the only parent preparation we actually receive comes from our family and peer stories. Yet most adults do not realize that in day-to-day challenges of guiding our children, something interesting happens. As we steer our children through life, we reopen our own childhood roads. Just when our child most needs us, we become needy ourselves: as adults and parents, we find that we have unresolved raising issues, basic needs that were not met in our childhoods. Our needs and memories echo and influence many of the parenting decisions we make, even though we’re unaware of those influences at times.

Fortunately, children help parents reach their needs as much as their parents help them fulfill their own. Our child ends up guiding us, by connecting us to some earlier time in our life when we encountered distress. We dredge up a lesson, and we adapt by adhering to or changing the story that we tell ourselves about who we are. We re-negotiate the five basic needs that surface from our childhood memories as our youngsters pass through each of the developmental phases. The self-aware parent focuses on creative problem solving by focusing on one interaction at a time.

It Takes a Child to Raise a Parent offers an exploration of how our own childhood memories and needs influence and shape our parenting decisions in our adult lives. Offering tips, stories from a variety of families, and step by step exercises, Janis Johnston helps parents better understand and grasp the tools necessary to face parenting challenges head on, and to explore new ways of understanding ourselves, our children, and our family interactions. Expectant parents and current parents interested in understanding their own personality development as well as the many moods of childhood and their own children, will find clear guidelines for understanding their roles in their children’s lives as well as concrete suggestions for how to navigate the choppy waters of raising children.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 348 • Trim: 6½ x 9¼

978-1-4422-2161-1 • Hardback • April 2013 • $77.00 • (£59.00)

978-1-5381-2604-2 • Paperback • January 2019 • $29.00 • (£19.99)

978-1-4422-2162-8 • eBook • April 2013 • $27.50 • (£19.99)

Subjects: Psychology / Personality, Family & Relationships / General, Psychology / Creative Ability, Psychology / Developmental / Child

It Takes a Child to Raise a Parent

Stories of Evolving Child and Parent Development

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

While advice abounds from a variety of sources before parents embark on their parenting journeys, the only parent preparation we actually receive comes from our family and peer stories. Yet most adults do not realize that in day-to-day challenges of guiding our children, something interesting happens. As we steer our children through life, we reopen our own childhood roads. Just when our child most needs us, we become needy ourselves: as adults and parents, we find that we have unresolved raising issues, basic needs that were not met in our childhoods. Our needs and memories echo and influence many of the parenting decisions we make, even though we’re unaware of those influences at times.

Fortunately, children help parents reach their needs as much as their parents help them fulfill their own. Our child ends up guiding us, by connecting us to some earlier time in our life when we encountered distress. We dredge up a lesson, and we adapt by adhering to or changing the story that we tell ourselves about who we are. We re-negotiate the five basic needs that surface from our childhood memories as our youngsters pass through each of the developmental phases. The self-aware parent focuses on creative problem solving by focusing on one interaction at a time.

It Takes a Child to Raise a Parent offers an exploration of how our own childhood memories and needs influence and shape our parenting decisions in our adult lives. Offering tips, stories from a variety of families, and step by step exercises, Janis Johnston helps parents better understand and grasp the tools necessary to face parenting challenges head on, and to explore new ways of understanding ourselves, our children, and our family interactions. Expectant parents and current parents interested in understanding their own personality development as well as the many moods of childhood and their own children, will find clear guidelines for understanding their roles in their children’s lives as well as concrete suggestions for how to navigate the choppy waters of raising children.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 348 • Trim: 6½ x 9¼

978-1-4422-2161-1 • Hardback • April 2013 • $77.00 • (£59.00)

978-1-5381-2604-2 • Paperback • January 2019 • $29.00 • (£19.99)

978-1-4422-2162-8 • eBook • April 2013 • $27.50 • (£19.99)

Subjects: Psychology / Personality, Family & Relationships / General, Psychology / Creative Ability, Psychology / Developmental / Child

Author

Janis Clark Johnston, EdD, has worked as a school psychologist in public schools, a supervising psychologist at a mental health center, an employee assistance therapist, and a private practice family psychologist. She received the 2011 Founder’s Award in appreciation for her dedication to the mission of Parenthesis Family Center, Oak Park, IL. Sarah’s Inn, a domestic violence shelter and education center in Oak Park, IL, honored Johnston in 2002 with a Community Spirit Award for her support of teen dating violence prevention/intervention programming for local high school students. Johnston has published journal articles in a variety of journals and co-authored two book chapters. Currently, Johnston is a family psychology consultant in Oak Park, Illinois. The author's website is www.ittakesachild.net

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Author’s Note

Introduction: Children Raise Parents, and Parents Raise Children

Part I. What’s the Story?
1. Let’s Understand Five Basic Needs
2. Discover What a Personality Story-house Says about Us
Part II. Meeting Needs, Our Child’s and Our Own
3. Energy Needs: Are You an Engineer, or Are You Enslaved to Ennui?
1. Discipline Needs: Are You a Disciple, or Are You Disorganized in Disorder?
2. Creativity Needs: Are You a Composer, or Are a Clone to Conformity?
3. Belonging Needs: Are You a Buddy, or Are You Belittled by “Belonging Blues?”
1. Ability Needs: Are You an Archer, or Are You Alienated with Apathy?
Part III. Modeling Self Territory
8. You Can Map Your Personality
9. Learn to Connect the Dots in Self Territory

Chapter Notes
References
Index

Reviews

This is the first book I have read that explores deeply how raising a child changes and impacts a parent. It gives parents the lens to see themselves and therefore grow, change, and be better deliberate parents. Two adjectives to describe this book: unique and needed. Two verbs: buy and read!

— JoAnn Deak, Ph. D, author of How Girls Thrive, Girls Will be Girls, Your Fantastic Elastic Brain and The Owner's Manual for Driving Your Adolescent Brain

There is no more important job for which we are given fewer directions than parenting. Drawing on her decades of work with children and families and her voluminous reading, Janis Johnston has produced a valuable and practical map for parents to learn about themselves and from their children. Sprinkled with sage quotes and bits of wisdom, the book covers all the pitfalls at each stage of parenting and offers parents the chance to enhance their flexibility and creativity through this daunting journey.

— Richard C. Schwartz, Ph.D., developer of the Internal Family Systems model of psychotherapy, President of the Center for Self Leadership

With an unusually creative writing style, Janis Clark Johnston gives us a new perspective on parenting. Illustrated with a wide variety of case studies, and validated by experts, we come to understand the reciprocal impact parents and their children have on each other. When I finished reading this book, I also had a new, insightful understanding of myself.

— Myrna B. Shure, Ph.D. Professor, Drexel University and author, Thinking Parent, Thinking Child

Throughout the book, Johnston strategically placed quotations; highlighted key statements; shared stories about her clients, and included parenting tips to accomplish tasks. Mapping activities help guide parental self-reflection on important times in your life that impact raising children. . . .Each topic helps the reader reflect on why we raise out children the way we do and connect the dots between out own childhood and adulthood to become a better 'parent in training.' I came away with several key points, ideas and tactics that will help me with my own child rearing choices.
— Atlanta Parent

It Takes a Child to Raise a Parent

Stories of Evolving Child and Parent Development

Janis Clark Johnston

It Takes a Child to Raise a Parent

Stories of Evolving Child and Parent Development

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