Review of the book Raising Cain by Kindlon and Thompson. Is the book worth reading and does it help you with raising boys?
Brayden can be hard to get to talk. If you spend several hours with him one-on-one, he will start to jabber on and on, which is great, but with four kids, it is hard to find several hours where he and I can be alone on a consistent basis.
I wanted some strategies for getting boys to open up, so I turned to Amazon and looked at reviews on books about boys.
One of the most popular books I found is Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys by Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson. The authors are both child psychologists and share what they have learned in their years working with boys.
Thoughts on Raising Cain
There are definitely some great points in this book and some great ideas for how to help boys grow up to be emotionally stable.
I do think the authors have been in this world of working with troubled boys so long that they seem to over-generalize and think more boys are in dire trouble than really are.
In other words, I think some things in the book were a little overdramatic for the average boy.
That probably should have been expected based on the title of the book (Cain slew his brother Abel in the Bible, so he isn’t really an “easy son”).
>>>Read: Why I Hate the Phrase “Boys Will Be Boys”
There are some things they talk about that I think can send you into an over-reaction mode of parenting.
However, there are great tips and they have great insight into how boys are, which is helpful for me being a female.
I think it has been helpful in giving me some tools to help be a better mom to my son. And yes, I will blog on those things in the future.
This book has a 4.5/5 rating on Amazon with 700 reviews, so definitely a well-liked book. I think it was worth my time to read it.
