Raising a Child with Heart and Soul: a Grower's Guide by Willow Harth
Forward by Parker Palmer (author of The Courage to Teach, Let Your Life Speak and A Hidden Wholeness and senior advisor to the Fetzer institute)
“Raising a Child with Heart and Soul: a Grower’s Guide is a wise book written by a woman wise in the ways of the heart. Addressing the great but neglected art of parenting with soul, Willow Harth brings together the newest scientific knowledge about parenting with time tested spiritual values. She writes with insight, precision and passion. Her ideas come across as music, the kind of music that can help parents and children do their complex and demanding dance with more grace among the world’s clang and clatter. As a parent, grandparent and educator, I have learned much from what Willow has to say. I hope her book will reach many people who care about the future of our children.”
About the book
Raising a Child with Heart and Soul is an invitation to parents to participate in growing a wise world, not in big grandiose gestures, but in the simple ways they can educate their children’s hearts and their own. It is not a prescription with all that implies—a strong and usually unpleasant tasting does of medicine prescribed from the top down by an expert to be taken in a regulated managed manner—but an invitation. An invitation is an allurement; it speaks in the language of beauty, free will and partnership.
The book integrates the neuroscience and psychology of emotional intelligence, as well as the insights of the great spiritual teachers. It is arranged as a gardening manual. Part One: Growing Your Garden describes family practices that grow parents and children well. It supports parents in developing a family life based on their values, as well as encouraging all the elements of emotional intelligence by helping them envision their family’s story and values, develop rituals and routines that reflect them, model empathy and heartfelt relating and identify, develop and share their children’s’ gifts. Part Two: The “Good Enough” Gardener invites parents to become emotionally intelligent themselves. Each chapter contains scientific data, spiritual insights, personal parenting stories and practical exercises that bring a particular aspect of emotional intelligence into raising a wise child and becoming a wise parent. Each ends with a set of questions that invite readers to make this information actively their own.
Chapter Summaries
An Invitation
- Defines an educated heart (heart and soul) and relates it to emotional intelligence
- Describes the latest breakthroughs in neuroscience and psychology
- Invites parents to participate in growing a better world not in grandiose gestures but in the simple ways they can raise a wise child with heart and soul
Some Gardening preliminaries
Getting ready to garden
- Introduces me to the reader
- Presents a way of parenting that integrates emotional intelligence with spiritual teachings
- Describes the five elements of emotional intelligence (self-awareness, self-soothing, self-motivation, empathy and effective relating) and the research supporting their importance for a successful and happy life
- Shows how they are a scientific way of describing Walking in Beauty, the Navajo spiritual tradition the author grew up with
- Describes how bringing emotional intelligence into parenting grows a child’s character and how I have used this with my granddaughter, Hana
From One Gardener to Another
- Allays parents’ concerns about parenting this way
- Invites them to try these practices in the spirit of the pueblo grandmothers: See “if they grow corn”
- Describes a spiritual basis for parenting using Buber’s I-Thou model of relationship
- Outlines how children’s brains grow and illustrates the important, but not all encompassing, part parenting plays
Part One: Growing Your Garden
- Describes the science, spirituality and practice of raising a child with heart and soul
- Emphasizes these are suggestions, not “shoulds”
- Each chapter shows readers how to bring one or more of the five elements of emotional intelligence into their family by:
Clarifying their family story (who are we, why are we, and who we are together) and implementing their family values through rituals and routines
Modeling empathy and heartfelt relating through responsive and sensitive communication
Using emotion coaching to help children develop self control
Fostering connections to community, nature and a higher power
Encouraging children to identify, develop and share their gifts
Section One: Preparing the Soil
Shows parents how to become aware of their story and values and how to bring them into their daily life as a family.
Chapter One: envisioning Your Garden
- How to clarify your family story (who we are, why we are and who we are together) and define what matters to you and why
Chapter Two: Rituals and Routines
- How to use rituals and routines to allow your values to circulate in and through your family each day
- Describes four: greeting the sun, putting away the day, finding the universe in a chocolate chip cookie, and Sabbath
Chapter three: Making magic with celebrations and Traditions
- How to create family traditions that reflect your story
Section Two: Aerating the Soil
Describes the understandings and skills family members need to communicate in respectful I-thou ways that enable them to become close, talk about real things, deal with difficult emotions, problem solve, set limits and resolve family conflict.
Chapter One: Let Openess Trust and Love be the Air You Breathe
- Describes four skills for creating open communication: take a breath, accentuate the positive, find the positive intention, thinking from your heart
Chapter Two: Create Times and Spaces Where Real talk happens
- Describes real talk, it’s importance for family relationships and practical ways to make it happen in your family
Chapter Three: Emotion coaching
- Describes how to emotion coach ( a five step process) and a scientifically researched way for parents to deal with the difficult emotions that make family life miserable
- Helping your child notice and label emotions
- Empathizing with difficult emotions
- Setting limits that honor your child’s wholeness and help them build character from the inside out
Chapter Four: Heart Smart Communications Skills
- Describes how to use active listening, mirroring, and non-defensive speaking to communicate in ways that help family members become close, set limits, problem solve and resolve conflict
Section Three: Cultivating the Habits of the Heart
Teaches your children the manners and morals that move them from the little world of me to the big world of us by fostering empathy. These habits are more “caught than taught,” but there are things families can do to flourish.
Chapter One: Empathy
- The psychology of empathy
- The scientific research on why parents modeling it promotes it
- The importance of loving touch
- Ways of understanding your child’s misbehavior—a 12 point list
Chapter Two: Fostering Empathy
- Practical exercise for the family that encourage empathy: noticing, sensitivity, doing things for others.
- Using stories and television to help children begin to understand, and empathize with, why people act the way they do
- Learning to see from other points of view
Section Four: Here Comes the Sun
Presents the philosophy and practice for connecting with the larger community and our cultural community of memory
Chapter One: Making Connections to Community and Nature
- Recognizing our interdependence with all beings
- Practical ways to act on that
Chapter Two: Lighten up with Humor and Play
- Dr. Stanley Greenspan’s Floorplay
- Kay Ortman’s Kefuffle busting game
Chapter Three; Feed Your Family the Classics
- Introducing your children to the great cultural resources that help them discover what it means to be a true human being
Section Five: Empowering Your Flowers
Encourages each family member to identify, develop and share their talents and to achieve personal goals. Shows parents how to become talents scouts, foster learned optimism, encourage intrinsic motivation and teach their children how to self-coach.
Chapter One: Becoming a TalentSscout
- Two maps for understanding your children and identifying their gifts: multiple intelligences and temperament
Chapter Two: Fostering Learned Optimism
- Seligman’s learned optimism model
- Challenging negative self talk and being pro-active
Chapter Three: Encouraging Motivation From the Inside-out
- The psychology of intrinsic motivation
- When to be a hands-on parent and when to be a hands-off one
- Using praise effectively
- Getting comfortable with taking risks and making mistakes
Chapter Four: Learning to Self-coach
- Exercises for optimal performance: mind/body tools, visualization
Chapter Five: Growing dreams into Reality: a goals planning process
- Using linear and intuitive models to achieve your goals
Watching your garden grow: recap of Part One
Part Two: The “Good Enough” Gardener
Presents parents with the science, spirituality and practices for educating their own hearts. You parent more by who you are than any techniques you use. Part Two shows you how to asses your own E.Q. and presents practical ways to bring the five elements of emotional intelligence into your own life: understanding what matters to you and why, becoming aware of and managing your own thoughts and emotions, and accessing relaxation, happiness and inspiration.
Section One: Getting to Know the Gardener
Becoming aware of your own emotions and emotional style
Chapter One: Understanding Your Own Emotions
- Thinking about emotions as your inner weather system
- The science of emotions—your neurotransmitter profile
- Ways to understand your emotions by noticing and labeling them with “affectionate awareness”
- Understanding your emotional parenting style
Chapter Two: Unearthing Buried Feelings
- Becoming a “feelings” detective
- Understanding how past emotions and memories filter what you experience now
- Understanding where difficult feelings come from
Section Two: Tending the Gardener
You can’t be the parent you want to be, if you feel impatient, critical and stressed out. Section Two presents strategies for transforming difficult emotions by becoming your own best friend.
Chapter One: Meeting Your Needs With Love
- Taking care of yourself
- Maintaining an upbeat neurotransmitter profile
Chapter Two: Transforming Difficult Emotions
- Shifting your mood from bad to good
- Emotion coaching yourself
- Using the core transformation process
Chapter Three: Unthinking Your Thinking
- Understanding the relationship between emotions and thoughts
- Getting your mind to mind by: relaxing into the here and now, shifting your attention, experiencing gratitude and trust
Section Three: Smelling the Roses
Section Three shows you how to access relaxation, trust, inspiration and happiness by learning how to listen to “the still small voice” within. Listening in that way allows you to receive a guidance different and deeper than information; some call it wisdom.
Chapter One: Hearing Your Own Wisdom
- The science of mindfulness
- Mindfulness practices (Benson and Kabat-Zinn)
- Other ways of accessing your inner wisdom
Chapter two: What to do When going within and Listening are Hard for You
- How to deal with the three major challenges of going within
- Doubts about Its usefulness
- Worry about all the other things you need to do
- Physical and emotional discomfort
Recap of Part Two
Becoming a “good enough” parent by connecting what you’ve learned about yourself with your parenting
Reaping the Harvest
- Brief summary of where we have been
- Navajo Blessingway Chant
Gardening Tools: Where to find practices in your Grower’s Guide for each element of emotional intelligence