3 Criteria for Choosing a Good Children’s Book→

Our great books for children have been replaced by silly books or books that give children the wrong ideas about what it means to be a civilized human being.

For example, there is a children’s book titled My Dad is a B***head that sells pretty well on Amazon.

While it's important that you read often to your child when he's young, it’s also important to know what kind of books to choose for your children.

3 Criteria for Choosing a Good Book

Below are three criteria for discriminating between a good children’s book and one that should be relegated to the junk pile.

Elevate His Mind

Literature should elevate a child's mind, not debase it. He should encounter heroes and heroines that are worthy of emulation. 

The characters should be kind-hearted, ethical, and well-mannered. Think of Pollyanna, Anne of Green Gables, and Little Lord Fauntleroy. 

Teach Language Skills

Literature should teach children excellent language skills and help to develop your child’s vocabulary.

As he grows older and comes across words such as philanthropist, humiliation, valiant, nautical, or grave, he'll already be familiar with them. 

Test your ten-year-old now. Is your child familiar with these words? If not, you may want to reevaluate the kind of literature you're exposing him to.

Respect

The attitude the characters have towards parents, adults, and authority should be one of reverence, respect, and obedience. 

Any child's book that features ill-mannered, vulgar children as the hero or heroine should not be allowed. 

THE UNDERLYING CONCERN

The bigger problem with the B***head story is that it was written by a father, to his son.

“To raise respectful children, you must be a good leader.”

— John Rosemond

This is the plight many parents find themselves in today; they fail to be effective leaders and role models to their children.

We need to understand what makes a decent person, what makes a happy person, what makes a successful person, and then we need to do our best to provide a suitable environment for our child to become this person.

Supplying children with quality literature is one place to start.

Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

When you join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course for parents, Liz will share her 6-step framework to raise children of higher intelligence, critical thinking, and of better character.

As a homeschooler, you will never have to worry about failing your children, because working with Liz, you will feel confident, calm, and motivated. She also provides you with the tools and support you need to homeschool successfully.

Teach your child to read before sending him to school! Learn more about Elizabeth's unique course, How to Teach Your Child to Read and Raise a Child Who Loves to Read.

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Elizabeth Y. Hanson is a homeschooling thought-leader and the founder of Smart Homeschooler.

As an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach, she has 21+ years of experience working in education.

Developing a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child, based on tradition and modern research, and she devotes her time to helping parents to get it right.

Elizabeth is available for one-on-one consultations as needed.

"I know Elizabeth Y. Hanson as a remarkably intelligent, highly sensitive woman with a moral nature and deep insight into differences between schooling and education. Elizabeth's mastery of current educational difficulties is a testimony to her comprehensive understanding of the competing worlds of schooling and education. She has a good heart and a good head. What more can I say?”

—John Taylor Gatto Distinguished educator, public speaker, and best-selling author of Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

Why You Shouldn't Focus on Your Child's Happiness

I believe it was Isocrates who said that the healthy child wants to become an adult. In raising our children well, we must teach them how to act and think like mature people.

Yet, the phrase we hear most often repeated is this: 

"I just want him to be happy." 

But if you think about it, it isn't what you most want. What you most want is that he grows up to be a decent, hard-working, mature adult. If you raise him to become these things, then happiness will follow.

As the ancients understood and current research now proves, happiness is found in living a virtuous life. The modern pursuit of pleasure and good times, it turns out, is just a myth being thrust upon us by very sophisticated and manipulative marketing techniques.

Contrary to this empty rhetoric, a good life does not come from the pursuit and acquisition of pleasure, in whatever form you desire, but it comes from being a virtuous person. As the concept of "virtue" seems to be an idea that’s gone out of fashion, let me share with you some of the qualities that a virtuous person might possess:

Humility, courage, mercy, patience, tolerance, diligence, and generosity. These are some of the qualities a truly “happy” person might embody.

To inculcate these kind of qualities in your child, you must begin when he is very young.

You must train him in the way of good habits, and then, and only then, will you be able to raise a happy child who later becomes a happy adult. One state naturally follows the other. 

What is the key to raising a child with good habits?

Raise a child who is obedient and does the right thing, not from fear of you, but from a deep love and respect for you. 

We don't need behavioral studies to prove this; we need to pay attention. A child who is always complaining and throwing tantrums and always asking for this and that is not a happy child, is he? Nor is the child who is always doing what he is told not to do. 

However, the kind of training that protects from these unhappy states must start when your child is very young. You should begin training your child in the ways of good behavior as soon as he or she turns two years of age.

If you wait until much later to begin, the training process becomes increasingly more difficult. Waiting too long means you will need to correct bad habits first and then work on instilling the good habits in your child.

It’s a much more tedious and frustrating experience to correct bad habits than it is to avoid them from forming in the first place.

“Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man.”

— Aristotle

If you fail to raise your child well, then he will be destined to spend the rest of his life working to correct deeply ingrained negative traits (a lifetime pursuit and not for the easily discouraged). Even worse, he will perpetuate and suffer the ills in life (as will everyone he encounters) that arise from not being a good person.

You see, the opposite of the virtuous person would be the wretched one who will never know any real happiness. We've all known wretched people, especially as they get older and nature carves their wretched states into their faces. We certainly don't want this for our children!

In a nutshell, if you focus on the happiness factor when your child is young, you will fail to raise a happy child. Focus on raising a decent child first, and his happiness will follow. 

If you don't know where to begin, do this: throw out all of your parenting books and stop asking your friends for advice (the latter is the equivalent of the blind leading the blind).  Moving forward, begin to think about the consequences of your actions as a parent.

Start asking yourself questions such as, "If I do this, then what is the message I am giving my child?" If I let him do this, then what am I teaching him about his behavior and the journey of life?"

For example, this may surprise you to know that many parents look to their children's desires to decide how they should educate them. I know this for a fact (no studies done, yet) because the parents say things to me like, "I thought about homeschooling, but he wanted to go to school with his neighborhood friends," or "I thought about homeschooling, but he's so social, and I think he'd be happier in school."

How you educate your child is a huge decision that will alter the course of his life, but he is too young to make such a life-changing decision. You are the adult; this is your decision to make for your child. 

It doesn't matter if he prefers to go to school with friends or that you think he would be happier in school because he has friends to socialize with every day. What matters is whether or not a school is the best place for your child or whether another option might be such as homeschooling.

You have to weigh the pros and cons accurately and objectively before you make this kind of a decision.

Base your decision upon your values and what you want for your children. If you want to raise decent children, you have to consider the moral environment of the child.

If you're going to raise highly intelligent children, you have to evaluate the level of academic training a school offers. If you want both, then you have to look for an educational model that provides both,

If you only care about your child's immediate happiness, then you can let him make this decision. 

I used the example of educational decisions because I hear about them a lot, but the truth is that there are many decisions we let our children make every day, such as when they can finish playing; when they need to do their chores; when they need to get ready for bed. 

Instead of training them to understand that these are non-negotiable commands we make of our children, we go to the negotiating table with them and let them argue their case for an extension of time for whatever it is they want to do.

We also exhaust ourselves in the process, which is one reason parents find raising children so challenging today. It's always tiring to have to argue with someone and then give in to them when they should have done what you asked them to do in the first place.

Children need most, and what they don't have enough of are adults who guide them on their way to maturity by concerning themselves less with whether or not their children are happy and more with whether or not the parents are training their children well.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

— Aristotle

The point to childhood is to prepare for adulthood; you should be less concerned about making a child happy and more concerned about raising a child who grows up to be a responsible, honorable, and mature adult.

It's not uncommon today to see grown children well into their 30's, or 40's still living at home because they can't make it on their own. The other day, my 30-something chiropractor told me that half of his friends still live at home.

I know of many situations where the parents still have aging children at home. An offspring well into adulthood and living at home out of necessity was unheard of when I was young.

Literally.

Make your priority for your children less about their happiness and more about behaving well and doing the right thing.

If you do, the chances are strong that you'll be able to enjoy your golden years knowing your kids are doing well and on the way to acquiring the kind of happiness that comes from living a good life.

*****

Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

Become a Smart Homeschooler, literally, and give your child a first-rate, screen-free education at home and enjoy doing it. Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course.

For parents of children under age seven, Raise Your Child Well to Live a Triumphant Life, course will be open again sometime in March, 2021.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an educator, veteran homeschooler, a lover of the classics, and a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 19 years of experience working in children’s education.

Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with the unique mentors she was fortunate to have, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.

☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.

Goodbye, Mr. Potato Head

Mr. Potato Head is losing his gender, at least on the box he comes in. Moving forward, he will be known only as Potato Head.

It's a little confusing, so let me explain: he's still a Mister in the box but not on the box.

Apparently there were a lot of articles that emerged Friday morning spreading fast the news that the toy company, Hasbro, who created the character of Mr. Potato Head in the 1950s, was going gender-neutral.

But then, the news article I was reading, by CNN, was updated later when Hasbro tweeted that the brand name had changed but not the characters.

I was relieved to learn that. 

When I was young, we had a funny sitcom about a talking horse called Mister Ed. After reading the Potato Head article, I was trying to imagine what would happen if Mister Ed became just Ed, but then that's a man's name.

And that got me thinking, exactly how would the TV producers handle Mister Ed today? Would they have to change his name? And what would they change it to since names from the beginning of time have always been based on gender? 

And what about adults? When I was young, children still addressed grown-ups with titles such as, Mr. Jones or Mrs. Smith. Since we were not allowed to call an adult by their first name, what would we have done if the gender issue had existed then?

Would we have had to drop the Mr. and Mrs. when we spoke to an adult? As calling an adult by their last name was rude, dropping the titles would have put us in another bind.

My daughter told me at gender-neutral Berkeley, on the first day of her classes, the professors ask each student to state their pronoun preference. Some classes have as many as 300-400 students.

This perplexed me because I wondered how the teacher would then keep all of that straight? If the professor has to know what the pronoun preference for each student is, does that mean that every time they need to use someone's pronoun they have to look at their roster, find the person's name, see their pronoun preference, and then speak? 

As I considered this, I couldn't help but think about the cost of tuition and how much class time this must take up?

Anyhow, I continued reading the article and found that Mattel, the maker of Barbie dolls, also wanted to introduce "a multi-dimensional view of beauty and fashion." To accomplish this, they introduced new dolls with disabilities, hair loss, and “vitigilio.”

I'm not sure what vitigilio is but I know that vitiligo is related to a disease affecting the skin pigmentation. 

Either way, it reminded me of a time when I was waiting to get my primary health care license in Chinese medicine. I worked for a company that sold a product for treating hair loss based on Chinese herbs. One day I was in a salon talking about the product to the owner when one of her customers came in. 

The customer, an attractive young woman, was invited into the back room by the owner.  While I didn't understand why she had been invited to join our conversation, she understood. She asked me if she could show me something. I said that she could.

She pulled her hair off and was completely bald. To clarify, her hair was a wig; she had no hair. She suffered from a disease called alopecia which causes all of a person's hair to fall out.

It was a shock to witness this, and I'm sorry, Mattel, but it was not at all beautiful. So when Mattel says they want to promote “beauty and fashion” by making a doll with thinning hair, again, I'm confused. Women and men spend billions of dollars each year to not have thinning and balding hair. 

Does Mattel not know this?

Potato Head aside, what all this confusion indicates to me is that we are beginning to lose a grip on a reality that we have agreed upon since the beginning of time. 

We are not thinking rationally and logically because we have been dumbed down by an educational system being manipulated by the corporate world since the mid-1800's and which now includes tycoons like Bill Gates. 

Gates has far more global power today than any one man should ever have. Where are the checks and balances for such unrestrained greed and lust for power?

And is it a coincidence that he largely funded the development of a national curriculum, and that most schoolchildren are now at home learning online?

It's pretty amazing if it is. 

If I were a young parent today, I would reflect on your child's exposure to the gender conversation very seriously, and I would do several things to protect them from it and anything related to it. 

Understand that this nefarious social conditioning taking place in school and the media is inevitably destined to alter their understanding of what is beautiful, good, and true.  

I want to share my 8 Steps to Protect Your Child's Heart and Mind with you, but before I do I need to make a request. Please resist the inclination to ignore them because you think they are too extreme.

It is precisely extreme measures we must take to win this battle because we are too far out in left field now. 

Personally, I don't care what people do behind closed doors, and I believe that each human being possesses an inherent dignity that is worthy of respect, but I have to draw a line when aggressive marketing campaigns are launched to literally alter our perception of reality in order to satisfy a very small group of people.

If you want to protect your children and are ready to be proactive, here is a downloadable list of 8 things you can do to make sure what's beautiful, good, and true in life remains beautiful, good, and true in your children's eyes too.

Beauty. Goodness. Truth. Now those are ideals worth pondering; those are ideals worth striving for.

On a final note, you can save your money because Potato Head is a toy not worth buying. He occupies your children's time for about five minutes and then they get bored. My kids played far longer with two sticks that cost me nothing than they ever did with Mr. Potato Head.

Still, I don't like to see the Mr. of Potato Head removed from the box.

Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

Become a Smart Homeschooler, literally, and give your child a first-rate, screen-free education at home and enjoy doing it. Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course.

For parents of children under age seven, Raise Your Child Well to Live a Triumphant Life, is where you want to start.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an educator, veteran homeschooler, a lover of the classics, and a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 19 years of experience working in children’s education.

Utilizing her unusual skill set, coupled with the unique mentors she was fortunate to have, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.

Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.

Cultivating an Independent Mind Begins with a Glass of Water

There is nothing worse than a child clinging to your side while whining for this or that, right? We've all been there. 

We forget that children are capable little beings, and if they want something, they'll get it. When did your three-year-old need help getting the chocolate bar off the kitchen counter or getting a cookie out of the cookie jar?! 

Curiously, children never ask us to help them get things they know we don't want them to have; instead, they get it for themselves because they know that we will not. 

Yet when it comes to something as simple as a glass of water, suddenly, they are helpless as a newborn babe in a mother's arms. 

Being busy and preoccupied, we seldom stop to think about whether or not our child is capable of getting his own glass of water; we automatically get it for him. 

And herein lies the problem: the more we do for our children, the less they do for themselves. Isn't this true in life for adults too?

If someone offers to cook us dinner, we aren't going to refuse, are we? But if they didn't offer, we'd get up and cook it ourselves.

If someone suggested we go out for the day while they come over and clean our entire house, we aren't going to complain, are we?

But if no one cleans our house, unless we have a housecleaner, we will clean it ourselves, won't we? 

Why do we think children will act differently when we offer to assist them or comply to their demands just because they asked?

“A person’s a person, no matter how small.”

— Dr. Seuss

Children are people in little bodies, as Dr. Seuss liked to remind us.  Do more for them, and they'll do less for themselves, that's why you want to teach them as early as possible to get their own glass of water.

And while you're at it, teach them to make their bed, put their clothes away, and get their own snacks too! 

They are perfectly capable of doing these things as long as things are within their reach, and then you show them exactly how to do it.

Raise them to understand that you expect them to attend to their own needs as much as they are able.

Don't entertain the idea that they are not capable or that you are a bad parent by not excessively catering to your children’s whims.

Here's a novel idea for you instead: you don't meet their demands all day long, but you have them meet yours. Teach your children to get you a glass of water and a snack when you are busy! 

It might sound like child labor to some, but the truth is, it's the best thing for the child's character. The more they learn to serve and take care of others, the more polished their characters will become. 

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”

— Helen Keller

This isn't to suggest that you treat your child like a servant, not at all. But if you're lying down reading a book, and your child is playing quietly beside you, you could say something like, "Sweetie, please get me a glass of water." 

When he or she brings you the glass of water, look them in the eyes, smile, and with a real sense of appreciation, say "thank you. How sweet of you to get a glass of water for Mommy (or Daddy)."

And watch your child's face light up. 

You aren't a brute, you are letting your child help relieve your thirst, and we all feel better when we help others. Children love to help, and they take pride in being able to do grown-up things "all by myself." 

Your child just learned that it feels good to do a kind thing for another person, and children who do kind things for other people grow up to be kind adults. That's how character development works.

So why not let them? Why coddle children when it only leads to a sense of entitlement and bad character? 

“He that cockers his child provides for his enemy.”

— English Proverb, c. 1640

Join Elizabeth’s signature parenting course: Raise Your Child Well to Live A Triumphant Life. Enrollment is open through midnight, October 9, 2020.

Get your free copy of How to Raise a More Intelligent Child and an Excellent Reader? It comes with an 80+ book list of carefully chosen books to support your child’s intellectual development.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach, with 17 years experience working in children’s education, and a complimentary background in holistic medicine.

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Focus on Becoming a Better Person and Being a Better Parent Will Naturally Follow

Children see, children do.

There’s a painful component to raising children that we tend to overlook: they turn out just like us. About the time our children hit the teens, for better or for worse, we find ourselves staring at ourselves.

Sure, there’ll be some variations on the theme, but our strengths and our weaknesses, they will inherit. Some of our children will get more of our bad qualities, some more of our good ones, sometimes it’s a mix; but pass them on, we do.

Which is why, if we are to be the best parent we can be, we need to begin by improving our characters.

Character Improvement

To improve our characters, we need to begin by determining our strengths and weaknesses. Then we can begin to tackle our weaknesses. Determining our character flaws requires honesty and self-reflection, which can be difficult for many of us.

Not everyone is willing to take a hard, honest look at themselves. And even when we do, sometimes we think we see what isn’t there. It can be tricky.

A man’s character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation. –Mark Twain

Rather than try to analyze your character and risk the chance of deluding yourself, take a hard look at your behavior instead.

How Do You Behave?

If you’re someone who tends to threaten other drivers on the road, stop; chances are you may raise a raging maniac.

If you’re someone who likes to gossip, stop; chances are you’ll raise a trivial person who creates discord between others.

If you’re someone who likes to sit around watching television and playing on the computer, stop; chances are you’ll raise an unmotivated kid who doesn’t accomplish much.

If you’re someone who tells lies, stop; chances are you’ll raise a liar.

If you’re someone who thinks you’re better than everyone else, stop; chances are you’ll raise a narcissistic tyrant.

The world works better when its citizens are humble, patient, kind, and generous.

To borrow Kennedy’s magnificent line:

Ask not what others can do for you — ask what you can do for others.

Asking what you can do for others is at the heart of good character and at the heart of raising good children.

Homeschool the smart way by joining the Smart Homeschooler Academy to learn how to give your child the best of an elite education at home.

How to Raise a More Intelligent Child and an Excellent Reader—a free guide and book list with over 80+ carefully chosen titles.Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an educator, veteran homeschooler and a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 17 years experience working in children’s education.

Using her unusual skill set, she has developed a comprehensive and unique understanding of how to raise and educate a child, and she devotes her time to help parents get it right.

Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.

My Dad Is a B***head

You may be shocked by this title. Truthfully, it shocks me. The good news is that it isn't mine. The bad news is that it's the title of a book published in 2014. A father wrote the book for his son. 

On the book's dedication page, you find it dedicated to said author's adoring family.

B***head. 

I can think of some lessons I'd like to teach young children, but that their father is a b***head is not one of them. 

“Parent’s should treat their children as neither equals nor fools.”

— John Rosemond

THE MORAL

The moral of this father's story is that no matter how rude your child is to you, no matter how disrespectful he is towards you, he loves you. 

That's the moral as far as I could make out. But truthfully, I'm not even sure there was a moral to the story.

So why am I devoting time to this book?

Unlike some parents, you probably have enough sense not to pick up a copy of such a vulgar book to read to your child. However, you may not be exactly sure about what does constitute a good book. 

It's not your fault, either. Our great books for children have been replaced by silly books that give children the wrong ideas or books that don’t have much substance.

WHAT YOU READ DOES MATTER

While it's vitally important to your child's future education that you read to him when he's young, the quality of the material you read is equally important.

Elevate His Mind

Literature should elevate a child's mind, not debase it. He (she) should encounter heroes and heroines that are worthy of emulation. 

The characters should be intelligent, kind-hearted, brave, and well-mannered. Think of Pollyanna, Anne of Green Gables, and Little Lord Fauntleroy. 

Teach Language Skills

Literature should teach children excellent language skills and develop their vocabulary. As an older child, when he comes across words such as philanthropists, humiliation, valiant, nautical, or grave, he'll already be familiar with them. 

Test your ten-year-old now. Is your child familiar with these words? If not, you may want to reevaluate the kind of literature you're exposing him to.

Respect

Furthermore, of utmost importance is the attitude the story’s characters have towards adults and especially towards their parents. They should possess an attitude of reverence, respect, and obedience. 

Any child's book that features ill-mannered, vulgar children as the hero or heroine should not be allowed. 

(A word of caution though: if your children are reading sub-standard literature, then be clever in how you forbid these sorts of books. Better to let the books secretly disappear as you replace them with quality literature than to make an issue of it.) 

THE UNDERLYING CONCERN

The bigger problem with the B***head story is that it father wrote it for his son. I would guess, from reading the book, that his son is spoiled and ill-mannered.

If the father doesn't have enough common sense to realize that he should not have written this book, he cannot possibly understand what's required of him to raise a decent child. 

“To raise respectful children, you must be a good leader.”

— John Rosemond

This is the plight many parents find themselves in today. We want to raise an exemplary child, but we have no idea how to go about it,  so we write books that are a better fit for the garbage can than our children’s ears.

We need to get a handle on what makes a decent person, of what makes a happy person, of what makes a successful person, and then we need to do our best to provide a suitable environment for our child to become this person.

Reading good literature to your child is a prudent place to start. 

It's simply a matter of choosing the right books to read. 

 Are you wondering what kind of books you should read to your children? Get your free list of Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

Don’t miss Elizabeth Y. Hanson’s signature course, The Smart Homeschooler Academy: How to Give Your Child a Better Education at Home.

A veteran homeschooler, she now has two successfully-homeschooled children in college.