Parents Listen [antikvár]

Introduction Five children of my own has provided me with endless pleasure, some problems and plenty of practice in parenthood. Fifteen years of counselling and a lifetime working with young people has enlarged my experience and given me many opportunities to pass it on to others. No two people have the same life-experience, of course. There is no single blueprint for successful parenthood, just as there is no guaranteed trouble-free path of development from birth to adulthood. Nevertheless, Parents Listen has offered me the chance to distil some of what I have listened to and learned - I offer it in the hope that you, as parents or parents-to-be, may find something of yourself somewhere in these pages. Working with young couples on pre-marriage courses has taught me never to assume that young people today are well informed on the subject of sex. They have vast resources in magazines, television and other media for learning about the how but very little about the why. The facts they acquire are often gathered like wild flowers wherever they can find them. In schools there is still confusion. A well-organised science department arranges to give the biological information, but who helps the young people with the all-important matter of relationship? Quite rightly, they may look to families and especially parents to fill this in. In good schools the pastoral teachers pick up what comes their way in the nature of relationships and reinforce what they optimistically