Raising a Happy Child

CRTICAL ACCLAIM:
"A must read for all parents.   As a clinician, I will be recommending this book to all my parents. "  Lynn Casella, MSW
 
"This book will help many people.  A common sense approach to compassion and self-care that all of us need to hear. ... A precious book, well-written and very clear."  Joseph Mauricio, Senior Teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition. 
 
All parents want their children to be happy, secure, and successful in life.  Then why is it that so many children, regardless whether rich or poor, grow up unhappy, filled with doubts about themselves and their relations with others? 
 
Raising a Happy Child offers a disarmingly simple answer ... we are raising insecure children who become insecure adults. And insecurity is the root cause of all our personal unhappiness. 
 
This is not a book about the use of pacifiers, toilet training, or how to get your child to sleep through the night.   This book is about how to raise your child so that he or she is happy and secure regardless what he faces in life as a child or an adult.   
 
Raising a Happy Child  seeks nothing less than to fundamentally alter the quality of the relationship between parents and children, and thus change the way children relate to themselves and the world around them.  It seeks to enable them to be good human beings.

Having of course been a child himself, Ron Hirsch's perspective on raising children has been formed by his own experiences as a child, as well as a lifetime of observing other children and their parents, a decade of tutoring at-risk children, and his understanding of the ego, happiness, and our culture that has developed while walking the path of Zen Buddhism for more than 15 years. Hirsch has had a varied career as a teacher, legal aid lawyer, survey researcher, nonprofit executive, composer, writer, and volunteer. He is the author of We Still Hold These Truths, acclaimed by James Fallows, National Correspondent, The Atlantic, as "a systematic and serious effort to make the [presidential] debate as clear and valuable as it can be. Agree of disagree with his specific conclusions, the questions he is asking are the right ones for the public this year."  The author's website, thepracticalbuddhist.com, has been selected as one of the top 50 Buddhist blogs on the web.  (see blog.feedspot.com/buddhist_blog/)  He grew up in Reading, Pennsylvania and resides in upstate New York.