4 June 2022

June book recommendation

Michaeleen Doucleff: Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans

The oldest cultures in the world have mastered the art of raising happy, well-adjusted children. What can we learn from them?

When Dr. Michaeleen Doucleff becomes a mother, she examines the studies behind modern parenting guidance and finds the evidence frustratingly limited and often ineffective. Curious to learn about more effective parenting approaches, she visits a Maya village in the Yucatán Peninsula. There she encounters moms and dads who parent in a totally different way than we do—and raise extraordinarily kind, generous, and helpful children without yelling, nagging, or issuing timeouts. What else, Doucleff wonders, are Western parents missing out on?

In Hunt, Gather, Parent, Doucleff sets out with her three-year-old daughter in tow to learn and practice parenting strategies from families in three of the world’s most venerable communities: Maya families in Mexico, Inuit families above the Arctic Circle, and Hadzabe families in Tanzania. She sees that these cultures don’t have the same problems with children that Western parents do. Most strikingly, parents build a relationship with young children that is vastly different from the one many Western parents develop—it’s built on cooperation instead of control, trust instead of fear, and personalized needs instead of standardized development milestones.

Maya parents are masters at raising cooperative children. Without resorting to bribes, threats, or chore charts, Maya parents rear loyal helpers by including kids in household tasks from the time they can walk. Inuit parents have developed a remarkably effective approach for teaching children emotional intelligence. When kids cry, hit, or act out, Inuit parents respond with a calm, gentle demeanor that teaches children how to settle themselves down and think before acting. Hadzabe parents are experts on raising confident, self-driven kids with a simple tool that protects children from stress and anxiety, so common now among American kids.

Not only does Doucleff live with families and observe their methods firsthand, she also applies them with her own daughter, with striking results. She learns to discipline without yelling. She talks to psychologists, neuroscientists, anthropologists, and sociologists and explains how these strategies can impact children’s mental health and development. Filled with practical takeaways that parents can implement immediately, Hunt, Gather, Parent helps us rethink the ways we relate to our children, and reveals a universal parenting paradigm adapted for American families.

https://www.amazon.com/Hunt-Gather-Parent-Ancient-Cultures/dp/1982149671

James Owen, Times Books: The Times Queen Elizabeth II: A Portrait of Her 70-Year Reign

The ideal gift for royal fans.

This is the story of a life dedicated to public service, reported by The Times as it unfolded. From her time as a young princess to that as an internationally admired head of state, Queen Elizabeth has always fascinated and intrigued.

Discover insights and memories, and see a changing society reflected in reporting from throughout the 70-year reign of Britain's longest serving monarch.

Published to commemorate the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, this detailed profile features essays, articles and full-colour images drawn from The Times archives.

Writers from The Times and leading royal historians - among them Ben Macintyre, Kate Williams and Hugo Vickers - salute her achievements and offer insights into what lies behind the public facade of the Crown.

https://www.bookdepository.com/Times-Queen-Elizabeth-II-James-Owen/9780008485207

Albert Moukheiber: Your Brain Is Playing Tricks On You: How the Brain Shapes Opinions and Perceptions

Why are we often convinced that we’re right even when we’re wrong?

Why are we jealous, or paranoid, even when we have absolutely no
reason to be?

Why is it so easy for fake news to spread around the globe and fool us?

It’s because we don’t see the world as it is, rather we reconstruct it in our mind. Reality is way too complex and multiple to be apprehended by our capacities of attention, which are quite limited, as well as our brain abilities. That is why our perception of the world is subjective and various elements influence the way we acquire knowledge and form opinions. Our brain is recreating the world in its own way – most of the time for our own good: how hard would it be if, before making a choice, we had to know about all the options available in a given situation? It would take us forever to choose an item of clothing in a store, or a meal in a restaurant! Luckily, our brain can estimate: even if it makes us imperfect and subject to illusion, delusion and error, it allows us to reconstruct the world as we know it, and live in it.

However, these very useful mechanisms can sometimes mislead us and have a rather negative impact on our actions, beliefs and opinions: when our brain behaves that way, we say it is biased. Albert Moukheiber gives us tips and tricks to fight against these cognitive biases – the first one being not to trust ourselves too much and to always doubt our thinking processes, especially in this era where social networks spread information like an epidemic. In this book, filled with multiple examples from our daily lives and psychosocial experiments, Moukheiber explores the building blocks of our perception, cognition and behaviour, which are involved in acquiring knowledge or forming opinions.

https://www.bookdepository.com/Your-Brain-Is-Playing-Tricks-On-You-ALBERT-MOUKHEIBER/9781915054708?redirected=true&utm_medium=Google&utm_campaign=Base4&utm_source=HU&utm_content=Your-Brain-Is-Playing-Tricks-On-You&selectCurrency=HUF&w=AFFQAU96Z34HQ7A8VT58&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI7JeN4-2f-AIVmbh3Ch0JnQ61EAQYAiABEgIrQfD_BwE

Náray Tamás: Anyám szerint

Who is Tamás Náray? A well-known fashion designer, a painter, a writer, a cosmopolitan living in Spain or a local patriot of Debrecen? Maybe all in one person? The question is answered in the author's latest and perhaps most personal, most expressive volume, in which he publishes the personality-shaping events of his life, the stories of the family legends. At the same time the description of a period outlines with the typical characters of the age of socialism and the regime change, which reflects the fate of the author's close and extended family. The reader is holding a diverse book, however, in each story there is a person who condenses the life experiences of several generations into wisdom, to whom Tamás Náray owes the most: his mother. A confession of boyish love - not just for parents.

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