What do you guys think of this?

Raising Real Men by Hal & Melanie Young

 Well, I can't decide if I want to read this book or not, the premise sounds good, but I have to say they have completely turned me off with their tag line which says:

SURVIVING, teaching, and appreciating boys.  That annoys me.  I have to say that it annoyed me more and more as I read reviews of the book and it confirmed my first instinct when I saw that tag line, seems like there is some boy bashing in the book. Maybe I'm being overly sensitive but really, boys are so bad you have to 'survive' raising them??? :\  Or, you need a book to help you appreciate them?  I don't know... something about all this makes me think that this book would make me irritated about boys always having this horrible reputation of being so very difficult.  Now, here is a family with 6 boys, putting boys down in their own tag line.  

 On a positive note, I read a review by a mom of 2 girls and she pointed out that she could easily use the parenting strategies with her two daughters.  Thank goodness someone gets it.  Other moms, mostly 'boy moms' were following right in the authors' footsteps and just jumping right on in with the boy bashing.  

 

Here's one review I saw that kind of distrubed me:

 This book has a specific view-point which I found quite helpful. They talk about the role of men as leaders, heads of households, soldiers, physical laborers, and the like. (Yes, girls can and do follow those roles as well, but we’re just focusing on boys here.) They argue that boys have been given God-given traits to help them in these roles, but in childhood and adolescence (and in adulthood as well if they are not trained otherwise) those traits manifest themselves as arrogant, reckless, noisy, destructive, aggressive, defiant, violent, unbounded energy. It takes training and effort (on both the parents’ and the child’s parts) to turn those into the leadership skills, courage, and strength (both physical and otherwise) that the man will need to fulfill his various responsibilities in life.

 

For one thing, why does this reviewer feel the need to put in parentheses how it is so okay for a girl to do these things as well, but she doesn't feel the need to clarify that it is also perfectly okay if boys don't want to be that way!!!  Hello??? not all boys want to be protectors soldiers or physical laborers! What if my son wants to be a make-up artist?  Not okay, I guess.

I really don't like it when people use the Bible or Christianity in general to justify poor behavior, poor parenting, hatred, etc.  Seems like that might be going on here... 

 

Have any of you read this book?  What did you think?

 FORGOT to add the most distrubing part.  Here is the description of the book:

"Six boys!" folks say in mock horror, "Well, better you than me."
We answer them cheerfully - we love our boys and they're a gift from God...a reward.

Privately, though, we admit to ourselves it's not always rosy. Teenaged boys put away a startling amount of groceries. Young boys can be downright destructive. They're noisy, unconcerned with personal hygiene, and the dog has a longer attention span - or so it seems, some days.

If this is God's chosen gift to us, then why does it seem so hard? How can we prepare these boys to serve God when we can barely make it through the day. Isn't there a better way?

 

**I added the underline.  

hi hun, havn't read the book, but i think i should as i have an 8yr old and in a few yrs he'll be a teenager, that said, i don't think the writer meant any harm, he can't possibly hate his sons, he just knows its not so easy raising them, i think he's just trying to help.

 Havent read it and will not be reading it!!!!!

I do wonder though if there is a girl version out there??? Hmmm! X

Ugh, haven't heard of the book, but from what you write, I certainly won't read it. It's weird tho, but when we announced baby2 was a boy, we got a couple of surprising (nice) reactions. An acquaintance mom of two older girls and a boy said something like "Good for you, boys are easier, they don't whine as much". Sure, they may be more active and "destructive" in some ways, but girls have other down sides. What I hate is when someone paints a picture that's all white or all black, because LIFE in itself is just one big gray zone!

blondhayley:

I do wonder though if there is a girl version out there??? Hmmm! X

 

 

I was wondering the same thing.   I'm going to look around and see what's out there.

 

I hate those kind of stereotypes too and honestly I wouldn't read it much less buy it.

My mom got me one called "The Hair-Raising Joys of Raising Boys" and it still turned me off with the "hair-raising" bit. Still haven't read it. My oldest and youngest boys are anything BUT "hair-raising"- my oldest loves legos, Harry Potter and Star Wars. He's gentle and loving and adores his brothers. My middle DS is my only one I'd consider "challenging" and that's b/c of his autism...but he's an otherwise sweet and loving child.

All of the stereotyping makes me want to vomit...the vast majority of boys and girls are pretty good kids...the "bad eggs" are few and far between.

I was just telling my DH how irritated I get when people act like boys are so terrible. Yes my boys have their moments, but so do ALL kids, no matter their gender. My kids are good kids and they are precious. Why do boys get such a bad rap??

Any book telling anyone how to raise their children turns me off straight away. I'm a teacher as well as a mother. Children, regardless of gender, are individuals and should not be pigeon holed. Boys are different to girls but I don't think different is bad, it's just well different. Try not to let it get to you. They obviously need to sell the book to make the money to feed their 6 boys ;-) (my boys are only little but they sure pack away a lot so I can sympathise with their grocery bill if nothing else)

I'm with Wating for Daisy on this one, I've never bought a book that tells me how to parent children, that's my job, not someone who is out to make money selling their version of the 'best' way to parent.

Your kids are individuals, not robots.  I hate stereotypes.

This book sounds better. I like the author a lot. She wrote an article called How to Talk to Little Girls and a book about raising girls called Think. 

http://lisabloom.com/site/lisas-books/swagger/

 

 

That book sounds downright horrible. I'd definitely skip it.