I love this book because you can read it again and again from different perspectives.

Identify how you were parented, re-parent yourself, how to parent your children, how were your parents affected, and how was your potential partner raised.

The two charts - Nurture and Structure – show how many ways parenting can go wrong.

Nurture

Nurture 1

Nurture 2

Abuse

Relating to a child with a kind of “I'm annoyed by your existence, and your needs are a burden to me, so knock it off” attitude. Emotional, physical, psychological abuse. Leads to the child concluding they are bad. “Don't bother wanting anything, you won't get it”. Complex PTSD.

Conditional Care

The adult puts their wants over the child's needs. The child learns they must pre-pay their way into a relationship, earn love, earn their keep. "You can't just exist and be loved". Codependence. Fawning.

Assertive Care

Helpful, responsive and appropriate. Comforting, loving and freely given. A proper use of parental power for the best interests of the child. Also seen between adults when one is incapacitated. “Stay there, don't get up, I'll get your hot water bottle”.

Supportive Care

Recognizes the child's needs and asks what they would prefer. Lets them know they have choices and it's ok to ask for help, or decide if they even need help.

Overindulgence

Helicopter or lawnmower parents. Smooth all the obstacles. Make life easier. Has the effect of the child never gaining that vital internal curiosity to explore, learn, grow, make mistakes, or pride in overcoming obstacles and challenges. Severely stunts the child. Often seen on relationship subs regarding men who “try something once then seems to forget it, I show him how to do it and he never does it”. Manipulates to play the victim. M.O. Is 'inexperienced boyfriend, you'll have to show me how” puppy dog woe is me. Misidentified as lazy, selfish or narcissistic. But they're lacking the internal toolbox for learning.

Neglect

Again with the “urgh you're a burden”. Emotional neglect is insidious and often overlooked. You may think you had a great childhood because you had a house, food, clothes, toys and you weren't beaten or yelled at. But your parents frequently ignored you or told you to “stop whining”. Chronic lack of compassion, validation or acknowledgement of your emotional needs. Never talked you through your feelings, said it was ok to be angry or sad, never let you cry until you were done, or soothe yourself when you were angry. Leads to being unable to name your emotions, emotional dysregulation and inability to self-soothe.

Structure

Structure 1

Structure 2

Rigidity

Fear based parenting. Overly Authoritarian. The parent is too lazy to set proper boundaries, so instils fear in order to get the child to suppress, censor and control themselves. Leads to defiance, rebellion, or overly fearful of authorities.

Criticism

Shame based parenting. Again to get the child to suppress themselves. Leads to being really good at problem solving, but never asking for help. More Complex PTSD

Non-Negotiable Rules

Reasonable boundaries for the child's welfare and so that they grow into a competent and law-abiding adult.

Negotiable Rules

Teaches children that there are two perspectives and two people in a negotiation. Compromise and win win. Empathy and thoughtfulness.

Marshmallow

Freedom without responsibility or consequences. Permission to be irresponsible and then "My Dad's a lawyer". No internal guilt or shame is instilled. Turns into a defective person, as seen in the books “Character Defect” and “In Sheep's Clothing”.

Abandonment

Drugs, alcohol, jail, depression, deadbeat dads. No-one cares about you kid. Guess how you turn out with parents like that..

The end of the book has steps for re-parenting yourself, if you've figured out which stage your parents failed you at.

It's not our job to re-parent men. If he's been abused, neglected, overindulged or abandoned, NOT YOUR FUCKING PROBLEM. You're busy doing the work on yourself and your own children. You're not signing up for another one. Once you detect a man is defective or overindulged, block and delete. They cannot be "fixed up with the love of a good woman".

Correct parenting creates healthy adults with strong internal discipline (appropriate levels of guilt, shame and a conscience), motivation, curiosity, routine and habits. Strong external boundaries when relating to others. Strong desire to obey the law, be pro-social and altruistic, without being selfless to their detriment.

Boundaries(1-5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKdHAgO8z90

https://www.amazon.com/Growing-Up-Again-Parenting-Ourselves/dp/1568381905