Time-Out for Parents: A Guide to Compassionate Parenting - Softcover

Huber, Cheri

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0971030936 ISBN 13: 9780971030930

Publisher: Keep It Simple Books, 2004

Synopsis

Employing a method of discipline used for children, this Zen guide encourages parents to look inwardly and reflect on their motivations in order to respond to their child's needs from a clearer, kinder perspective. It contains meditative exercises for stressed or disgruntled parents and provides accounts of parent/child interactions. In each one, the self-aware parent describes how they would have reacted before learning to take time-out to discover their own motivations. Then each parent tells how he or she responded to the situation from a clearer, kinder viewpoint.

About this title

From the Publisher

The theme of Time-Out is: be who you want your children to be. This book suggests that when parent/child conflict arises, instead of sending a child into "time-out," parents can take time-out as a means of getting clear about their own feelings and motivations. From a less stressed-out perspective, parents can more easily model for their children a happy, responsible, fully alive adulthood.

Ms. Huber writes: "Instead of punishing our children by sending them into isolation, let's offer ourselves time-out to discover our own needs, our own true selves. Then we will have everything we need to give our children what they need. Taking care of ourselves is a great kindness. When we are willing to provide ourselves what we need, we are much more willing to provide others what they need. Parenting from self-neglect and deprivation has little chance of succeeding."

The book also contains meditative exercises for stressed or disgruntled parents. Some common parenting problems are discussed, and suggestions made for calmer, kinder responses they often wish they had thought of before they lost their temper and yelled at their kids.

The revised edition is fifty percent longer than the original and includes more in-depth explanations and exercises for parents (e.g. reparenting their own "inner children" by asking themselves what they needed as a child and didn't get and then providing that for themselves). This edition has also been redesigned, while keeping the handwritten look and numerous drawings that have become recognized features of Cheri Huber's books.

About the Author

Cheri Huber is the author of 19 books, including There Is Nothing Wrong with You, When You're Falling, Dive,and Sweet Zen. She founded the Mountain View Zen Center in Mountain View, California, and the Zen Monastery Practice Center in Murphys, California, and teaches in both communities. She travels widely and often, leading workshops and retreats around the United States and abroad, most recently in Costa Rica and Italy. She founded Living Compassion in 2003, a nonprofit group comprised of There Is Nothing Wrong With You Retreats (based on the book); Global Community for Peace: The Assisi Peace Project; The Africa Vulnerable Children Project; and Open Air Talk Radio, her weekly call-in radio show originating from Stanford University. She lives in Murphys, California.

Edition details

• Publisher: Keep It Simple Books
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0971030936
• ISBN 13: 9780971030930
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 168
• Illustrator: Shiver June