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Education Home Schooling

The Natural Child

Parenting from the Heart

by (author) Jan Hunt

foreword by Peggy O'Mara

Publisher
New Society Publishers
Initial publish date
Dec 2001
Category
Home Schooling, General, Infants & Toddlers
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780865714403
    Publish Date
    Dec 2001
    List Price
    $19.99

Classroom Resources

Where to buy it

Out of print

This edition is not currently available in bookstores. Check your local library or search for used copies at Abebooks.

Description

The Natural Child makes a compelling case for a return to attachment parenting, a child-rearing approach that has come naturally for parents throughout most of human history. In this insightful guide, parenting specialist Jan Hunt links together attachment parenting principles with child advocacy and homeschooling philosophies, offering a consistent approach to raising a loving, trusting, and confident child.

The Natural Child dispels the myths of "tough love," building baby's self-reliance by ignoring its cries, and the necessity of spanking to enforce discipline. Instead, the book explains the value of extended breast-feeding, family co-sleeping, and minimal child-parent separation.

Homeschooling, like attachment parenting, nurtures feelings of self-worth, confidence, and trust. The author draws on respected leaders of the homeschool movement such as John Taylor Gatto and John Holt, guiding the reader through homeschool approaches that support attachment parenting principles.

Being an ally to children is spontaneous for caring adults, but intervening on behalf of a child can be awkward and surrounded by social taboo. The Natural Child shows how to stand up for a child's rights effectively and sensitively in many difficult situations. The role of caring adults, points out Hunt, is not to give children "lessons in life"-but to employ a variation of The Golden Rule, and treat children as we would like to have been treated in childhhood.

About the authors

Jan Hunt is the Director of The Natural Child Project, Coordinator of the Canadian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in British Columbia, and on the Board of Directors for Attachment Parenting International. She has been featured on CNN Headline News and Yahoo.com and contributes to Mothering, Growing Without Schooling, and Readers Digest. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

Jan Hunt's profile page

Peggy O'Mara's profile page