The Good Enough Parent

The pressure to excel has permeated most areas of our modern life, including how we try to parent our children.  But this can cause unintended consequences of worry and doubt when those expectations come up against the messy reality of family.  Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist Dr Andrew Wake has been working with parents for 15 years, and by using a mix of theory and practical experience has come up with the antidote for this doubt: the “good enough” parent.  In these pages you will find simple ideas clearly explained such as: -  attachment theory that explains secure and insecure behaviours and emotions, -  the importance of your child missing out and the inevitable grief and disappointment that they have to learn to deal with, and -  neuroscience and the reptile-mammal-human brain interactions that explains so much of what happens when our kids (and ourselves) flip their lids and go into control-combat-avoid mode.  Connected to these useful ideas are numerous practical clinical examples to scaffold for you how to respond helpfully in ways that work to both calmly solve the problem, and also help them to grow up strong so they end up parenting themselves.  By the end of this book you will have the confidence that you know how to be good enough for your child, and that you know how to provide the six things they need from you.   Their strong emotions and tricky behaviours are your business, but their problem.

He has worked in a mix of settings from urban hospitals, to rural outpatients, through to remote aboriginal communities in the Kimberley.  He has presented at national and international conferences, run small parenting groups, and spoken to hundreds in lecture halls.  With his colleague Amanda Baker he runs seminars for teacher groups to better understand the strong emotions and tricky behaviours of students and how to manage them.  Together they are in the process of writing “The ‘Good Enough’ Teacher”, due out in 2019.  He is a visiting lecturer at Melbourne and Monash University, and is involved in the training of future psychiatrists through “mindful”.  “The ‘Good Enough’ Parent” is his first book.

The pressure to excel has permeated most areas of our modern life, including how we try to parent our children. But this can cause unintended consequences of worry and doubt when those expectations come up against the messy reality of family. Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist Dr Andrew Wake has been working with parents for 15 years, and by using a mix of theory and practical experience has come up with the antidote for this doubt: the good enough parent. In these pages you will find simple ideas clearly explained such as: - attachment theory that explains secure and insecure behaviours and emotions, - the importance of your child missing out and the inevitable grief and disappointment that they have to learn to deal with, and - neuroscience and the reptile-mammal-human brain interactions that explains so much of what happens when our kids (and ourselves) flip their lids and go into control-combat-avoid mode. Connected to these useful ideas are numerous practical clinical examples to scaffold for you how to respond helpfully in ways that work to both calmly solve the problem, and also help them to grow up strong so they end up parenting themselves. By the end of this book you will have the confidence that you know how to be good enough for your child, and that you know how to provide the six things they need from you. Their strong emotions and tricky behaviours are your business, but their problem.

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