by MAUREEN VINCENT
Understanding Your Child (Oblate Education Centre, St Paul Publications, £2) Books telling you how to bring up your children should always he approached with a great deal of caution. M with every other enterprise in life, the advice of experts can be of great assistance when it comes to raising a family.
Children are individuals, however, each one unique as a person. To try to handle every detail of parenthood "by the bookis to court disaster.
All this having been said, Understanding Vuur Child is one of the best books I have come across on the parent-child relationship, not least because the authors stress that their work is not intended to provide a set of rules to cover any possible situation which may arise in the ramily.
Their purpose is simply to "reinforce the parents' own common sense."
1•er parents who take care to bear this purpose firmly in mind. the book is a mine of helpful and informative comment on parents, children, and the dirt-talkies which all too frequently beset even the most us.:11intentioned of both.
‘'s hile dealing with serious rnaiters without taking them lightly. the authors still manage to retain a sense of humour, and the illustrations are amusing and to the point.
There is an excellent approach to the problems whish may come up at the adolescent stage, so that parents who have passed the sttlge of nappies and teething troubles will find the book just as useful as those who are just embarking on parenthood.
After each chapter there is a SCI of revision questions, so that readers can ask themselves how well they have understood the points made. There are also points for discussion, for parents who belong to a group studying the hook together.
An index would have been a help to readers, but the chapters and individual paissgraph headings make it reasonably easy to look up any pemt to which reference is to be