About Paul Elmore
Hi. I'm Paul.
I'm a counselor in Portland, OR, specializing in Sexual Abuse Recovery and Sexual Addiction. You can find out more about my education and experience here.
Books
My Top 5 Parenting Books
It seems that I’ve been talking about parenting lately with many of my clients and giving them recommendations on good books to read. So, naturally, it seems like a good idea to share with you what those books are. Here are my Top Five Parenting Books.
How To Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk—Adele Faber and Elaine Mazish
Yes, this book is plenty old being published in the 80′s but it is still gold. What I appreciate so much is the emphasis on trying to understand how your kids process information so that we, as parents, can adjust ourselves and reduce our kids frustration level.
Siblings Without Rivalry—Adele Faber and Elaine Mazish
Another older book with really bad cartoons but excellent info. If you have multiple kids and you’re tired of watching the fight and bicker then its time to read this book.
Parenting With Love and Logic—Foster Cline and Jim Faye
This book is probably one of the essentials for parenting. They emphasize letting kids learn through consequences instead of parents having to force their children into obedience. Once you understand the philosophy and see it at work, you’ll never want to go back to power struggles or passive parenting. For those with teens, they also have Parenting Teens With Love and Logic.
Trauma-proofing Your Kids—Peter Levine and Maggie Kline
Not really a parenting technique book but more of a “How to” book on helping your children move through the difficult and scary parts of being a kid. It shows you how a child perceives troubling situations and what parents can do to provide valuable comfort and care so that your kids won’t carry on the emotional damage. The second half of the book provides case-specific scenarios like helping kids deal with divorce, medical trauma, death of someone close, or abuse issues.
Parenting From The Inside Out—Daniel Siegel and Mary Hartzell
All of our parenting comes from our stories. The better we understand that story, the better parents we can be. The strongest piece of this book is the information on attachment, both as children and as adults. It also addresses the importance of being present, both physically and emotionally, and how to start developing “Mindsight”. (When I start teaching a parenting series, this is what I’ll be teaching. Its that good.)
The Addictive Personality
I have lots of books in my office. But there are a few books that never seem to make it off my desk and back onto the shelf because I refer to them so often. I mentioned one of those books, No More Mr. Nice Guy, in a posts a few days ago. The other book that seems to have a permanent spot on my desk is The Addictive Personality by Craig Nakken.
I’ve been reading the sections on family systems, shame, abuse, and neglect lately and I’ve trying to put together a post describing each one. I’ve been wanting to put the concepts into my own words but find myself not being able to improve on the clarity and directness of Nakken. So… below are a few important thoughts, in Nakken’s own words.
“Whether to trust or not is a question that gets answered early in our lives, and is learned within our homes. It’s part of the language we learn; it’s part of the worldview we are given. When the time comes to leave our homes, we usually look for people who share the same worldview and who speak the same language.”
“To develop as a child one needs input, interaction, and nurturing. In neglectful families, children don’t get this. They take up space, but they never know if they are important. The self inside such people becomes underdeveloped.”
Manhood Not Working For You?
If you’re a man I want you to read the following list:
- Seeking the approval of others.
- Trying to hide your perceived flaws and mistakes.
- Putting other people’s wants and needs before your own.
- Sacrificing your personal power and playing the role of the victim.
- Distancing yourself from other men.
- Creating relationships that are less than satisfying.
- Failing to live up to your full potential.
Each of these things are common ways men try to get love and acceptance. And yet, they don’t work. If you’re interested in learning how to relate in an entirely different, and more effective way, I suggest picking up a copy of No More Mr. Nice Guy by Robert Glover. Read it and then memorize it.
“Hiding one’s humanity and trying to project an image of perfection makes a person vague, slippery, lifeless, and uninteresting.” Robert Glover.
Motivating Kids
Lately, I’ve been reading (actually audio booking) John Lehrer’s book How We Decide. It is a thought provoking work on the importance of emotions in our decision making skill sets. In the book, he’s been discussing the importance of learning from our mistakes and how failure is necessary to teach us important lessons. He calls it “the building blocks of knowledge.”
One of the things I wish I had done differently with my own children is embrace the trials and errors each one of them made. As children they simply tried things out to see what happened. Usually, this ended up costing me either time, money, or paint. I wish that I held onto the temporal, inconsequential things a little more loosely and embraced the joy of watching my children learn. Those trial and errors they made could have been building self confidence, resilience, and knowledge. They could have learned that they are capable of learning well instead of worrying about having to do everything perfectly.
What will it cost you to let your own children learn by trial and error? How capable are you of encouraging your children instead of scolding them?
