Read The Formula Unlocking the Secrets to Raising Highly Successful Children Ronald F Ferguson Tatsha Robertson 9781946885067 Books

Product details Hardcover 336 pages Publisher BenBella Books (February 5, 2019) Language English ISBN-10 1946885061

The Formula Unlocking the Secrets to Raising Highly Successful Children Ronald F Ferguson Tatsha Robertson 9781946885067 Books Reviews

• So there are some useful things in this book. The "Eight Roles of Parenting" framework is a really clean way of looking at the messy reality of parenting. However, there's a lot of very problematic parts of this book.
  
  First off, their definition of "Master Parent" is someone with one child who attended Harvard. To begin with, this kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Harvard has always struck me as the Louis Vitton bag of bachelor's degrees. It gets the job done at five times the price for a little bit of branding. But yes, you do have to be academically focused to get in so I went with it.
  
  However, I then got to the chapter on siblings. Look, I understand that kids have their own personalities and it's not necessarily a failing of the parents that a kid grows up to get involved with drugs or gets someone pregnant/gets pregnant as a teen or goes to prison. However--this is the majority of the "Master Parents" featured in this book. They have one child that got into Harvard and one or more children that made terrible choices.
  
  I have two children and if I had to choose between one of them becoming a billionaire philanthropist and one of them dying of alcohol poisoning in his thirties or both of them being average, generally happy people--I would definitely go with both of them being average.
  
  That is not to say that the "eight roles" of high-achieving are wrong. They are just incomplete. This book is missing whatever number of roles it takes to foster general morality and value it above academic success.
  
  I think if the authors could have seen past the shininess of the Harvard name, I'm sure they could have found much more masterful parents. Parents who raised multiple morally outstanding children-- empathetic, civically minded, committed to learning, and use their various talents and sharpen their skills whatever those talents and skills may be.
  
  Those would have been the parents that I would like to model my parenting on.
• The book is written with great stories of how families confined to move forward making life a learning process and fun. A great place to reference for new parents.
• This is a fascinating study...the result of 15 years of research. The findings validate what some parents instinctively know. There are things you can do to give your child a strong foundation regardless of family income, race, or socio-economic circumstances. These are universal truths. Reading together from a young age, for example. So many helpful insights. This is an important and ground-breaking book.
• I wish I had this booking while raising my own children. I would recommend anyone raising children today to memorize the formula for raising children with smarts, agency and purpose. Although many parents feel they have the proper intuition, this book gives you the strategic reasoning necessary for raising successful children.
• A great resource for parents! I've read it and highly recommend it! Simple, highly effective things you can do which help your children reach their full potential. You don't need to spend money on gadgets, tutors, etc.
• Great book on parenting. It emphasizes the importance of providing your children with a sense of purpose and agency from a very young age. The book covers successful mindsets, such as growth, resilience, grit, mastery orientation and sense of duty, to name a few. The bulk of the book centers on the formula, eight parenting rules with a positive impact on kids. The advice is sound and insightful based on studies and anecdotal evidence. However, not all kids are “typical” and not everyone’s drives are the same, so I would have liked to have seen a bit more on self-realization as it relates to well-being and life satisfaction, rather than such a heavy emphasis on success. Having said that, I do think this is one of the top parenting books I have read.
• I saw the comment from Plesiosaur before I read the book, but then I read the book anyway, and I’m so glad I did. I’m not sure what the point about Harvard students is all about; some families in the book had kids who went to school there, and others didn’t. And where did the idea that the MAJORITY of kids got into trouble and “made terrible choices” come from? That’s not at all true! It seems to me that the book focuses on helping parents raise kids who are “empathetic, civically minded, committed to learning” but also very high achieving – and this is exactly the kind of guidance parents want. My kids are almost grown, but I found a lot of value in this book to share with friends just starting to raise their kids, and eventually with my own kids when they become parents. I highly recommend reading this book. It will make you a better parent (or grandparent), and It’s also really well written -- just a pleasure to read.