To you, the reader, thanks for picking up this book. I send my heartfelt wishes that you find wonder, pleasure, patience, delight, and courage in your relationships with children.
A bouquet of roses and a thousand thanks to my longtime agent Edite Kroll for reading and rereading the manuscript, encouragement, faith, understanding, and humor. I still remember our phone conversation when you were considering whether or not to take my first book. After asking a lot of questions followed by an intense pause, you said, “Okay, I’ll take it.” Along with my elation and surprise, up popped the thought, you must be hard up for authors. That was twenty-five years and nine books ago.
Thanks to my editor Alexis Washam for dedication and hard work on this book, especially when I changed focus and rewrote the book, making it a year later than expected. Also to my former editor Janet Goldstein—bright spirit and friend—I will always appreciate our literary journey together through six books including your acceptance of my proposal, “Dating by Spiritual Rules,” which morphed into If the Buddha Dated, the first of four If the Buddha books. Your faith in me lives on. Thanks also to Rebecca Hunt who stepped in for Alexis Washam to help the book go into production, and to Amy Hetzler who took over as office assistant when I suddenly needed help. Your competence, friendliness, and goodwill were blessings to me and spared me a lot of stress and chaos.
To all the people I interviewed for this book: children, parents, teachers, and experts in the field. Many of you spoke about your experience of being both a child and a parent. You are the heartbeat and spirit of this book. I loved our interviews, from sitting at a dining room table with a couple or whole family to having dinner at a deli with student teachers to a group of dedicated teachers at the Lolo Middle School to individual interviews on the phone with people near and far to talking with international students at the university. Your generosity with your time, stories, wisdom, and humor will be appreciated by many. I also treasured hearing you talk about what challenged you—the ways you made an effort to be good parents, what you learned, what you’d do differently, and how you handled tough situations.
Here you are: Lizzie Juda, Kesa, Kaia, and Steven Nelson; Jeanine Walker; Nick Salmon; Bob Lucas; Marmot Snetsinger and Nancy Siegel; Margaret, John, Andrew, and Matthew Baldridge; Adair, Kanter, Bruce, and Ariel Barrett; Greg and Dorothy Patent; Ray and Susie Risho; Carla and Steve Smith; Laura, Lizzie, and Eli Davis; Kevin Cashman; Eric Sedlacek; Owen and Walt Javins; Tobin and Cheryl Miller Shearer; Augusta (Gussie) Kappner; Shohina Toureyeva; Max and Sonja Grimmsman; John Whalen; Alissa, Rick, and Larry Davis; Ron Wakimoto; Colleen Windell; Julianna Engh Peters; Jean Belangie-Nye; Judy Lange; John O’Bannon; David Hansen; and Jennifer Christensen. In addition to these interviews, there were many informal conversations that made their way into this book, along with my own reflections on growing up that filled many journals throughout my teenage years.
Special thanks to Daniel A. Hughes, author of Building the Bonds of Attachment and other fine books, for two lengthy interviews; Augusta Kappner, former president of the Bank Street College of Education, for an interview on curriculum and progressive schools; and Alfie Kohn for his in-depth explorations in his books Punished by Rewards and The Brighter Side of Human Nature, which constantly challenge conventional thinking about testing, rewards, gender stereotypes, and our relationships with children—and also for our e-mail exchange. Heartfelt thanks to Debra Wesselman, attachment therapist and author of The Whole Parent: How to Become a Terrific Parent, Even If You Didn’t Have One, for reading and giving feedback on the attachment chapter.
Thanks also to the dedicated clients I’ve known over the years. Your stories often reflect the difficulties and pain that result from unskilled, negative, stressed, negligent, abusive, or narcissistic parenting. Your efforts to learn, grow, take classes, and read books in order to become good parents can shine like a beacon for others from troubled families bringing the assurance that they, too, can become positive parents.
Once again, I thank Ken Keyes, whose Handbook to Higher Consciousness and amazing training program at Cornucopia started my life-changing journey of Buddhism in 1980. Finally, my continuing gratitude to the Quaker community—the Society of Friends—near and far, with its dedication to inclusiveness, simplicity, service, generosity, community, and children’s programs that are dedicated to social awareness and nonviolence. The Quaker philosophy of valuing each individual while maintaining the unity of the whole was reflected repeatedly in the families I interviewed, where each child was seen as an individual, yet embraced within the shelter of a cohesive family. Over the past thirty years I’ve loved watching many children—both Quaker and from other faiths—grow up and take the values of nonviolence and service into the world echoing the Quaker saying, “Walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one.”
My abiding gratitude to special friends and family: Jeanine Walker, Pat Dewees, Rebecca and Jim Sparks, Alexandra Botello, Diane Shope, Starshine, Henny Ravestein, Traci Reynolds, Steve McArthur, Jack Rowan of the Quaker meeting, Traci Reynolds, Barb Dotson, the Healing Hearts Moms’ Group and all those who helped me in many ways through my recent heart surgery and the five years since the loss of my daughter. You were there when I needed you and for the good times as well. Bright blessings and many thanks.