Becoming a Soulful Parent
A Path to the Wisdom Within
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
This is not a parenting how-to book. It does not offer the usual advice or add to your to-do list, which is already long enough. Instead, Becoming a Soulful Parent asks questions to help you explore the contours of your inner life, developing your internal compass as you lead your family with love and wisdom.
Combining insights from thousands of years of traditional Jewish wisdom with her own utterly relatable first-person storytelling, author Dasee Berkowitz helps you embrace every moment with your family while leaning into the challenges of parenting with renewed perspective and enthusiasm.
Becoming a Soulful Parent will help you ground your floating anxieties about the state of the world outside, while giving you the tools to reflect on the state of your world. It will help strengthen “muscles” that will be essential for you and your children throughout your lives—muscles like love, listening, empathy, and curiosity.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Parents must listen to their own inner voices before they can attend to their children's needs, advises educational consultant Berkowitz in her insightful debut. Many books on parenting are counterproductive, she writes, as parents often end up feeling like failures when they try to apply what they've learned and come up short. To reorient thinking, Berkowitz proposes four questions—"Where am I (given an issue or question)? How do I want to grow? What obstacles get in my way? What's a small step I can take toward moving forward?"—rather than how-tos, personal anecdotes, or workbook exercises. Answering these questions, Berkowitz writes, will bring parents in touch with their own spirituality and inner voice, allowing for better communication and problem-solving. Frank about her own mistakes and struggles, she recounts how she dealt with her children's outbursts at school (by asking herself what she was "called on" to teach in that moment ) and confronted unwelcome distance in her marriage (by checking in with herself and not letting the relationship function "on autopilot"). While references to Jewish philosophies and concepts are plentiful, the issues she confronts are universal, such as limiting screen time, dealing with sibling rivalries, and balancing differing parenting styles. Parents in search of a more spiritual approach to raising their kids will appreciate these useful lessons.
