One Minute Mother: Book Review

A couple of days ago, my son picked up a random book from my book rack and asked: Mom! Why did you buy this book?  At that point, without waiting for my answer, he replied... oh! I guess you bought it when Abdullah was born because you didn't know how to be a mother, so you wanted to learn about being a good mother. As I reflected upon his conversation, I asked myself how many of us (mothers or even fathers) ever thought about the idea of being trained in the craft of parenting or motherhood. While we get an education of at least 16 years for the professions that we even won't pursue, we never got trained for the most important role of our life -motherhood. While motherhood is a role. Parenting is a skill that can be learned. Hence I recommend reading books on parenting every now and then. You can not implement the whole idea of a book in your life, but you will get refined step by step on your journey.  The book he was talking about is "One-minute mother" written by Spencer Johnson.

For years I genuinely wanted to present my review on this admirable book "'One Minute Mother" that significantly changed my views on parenting but I constantly got carried away with the vicissitudes of my routine life. I neither declare myself a perfect One Minute Mother nor do I claim that I typically apply all the ideas presented in the book. Despite that, I am contented that at least, I tried to gather practical wisdom and valuable ideas that I can apply whenever I am confronted by some unforeseen challenging situation in parenting.

One Minute Mother is a very comprehensive book, it's to-the-point and consists of three fundamental strategies. These strategies are; One-minute goal setting, One minute praise, and One-minute reprimand. This book is composed in the form of a story where a young mother to be dearly wanted to discover the most effective parenting strategy.

 

The opening of the book is wonderful! ( I will consider this as the wake-up call). It states " The one-minute mother symbol is intended to remind each of us to take a minute out of our day, every now and then and look into the faces of our children." I guess you will agree with me here that how often we are so engaged with our routine chores that we even forget to look into our kids' eyes? We forget asking how they feel? We forget asking what challenges are they facing?  However, the goal of this book is to teach how to be an effective (not perfect) mother? As you know "to error is human."

So what an effective mother does? As the book states "A truly effective mother knows how to teach her children to like themselves and to behave themselves and knows how to enjoy herself in the process". Her job is to "help children to discipline themselves" by setting goals of course for which they are praised and reprimanded.

And what happens when you failed to be an effective mother? The results of bad parenting are " the common defiance or indifference in the children's eyes; the sorrow and frustration in the parents. On the other hand ' the results of good parenting are love and peace and joy in the home- for parents and children alike".

Will I recommend this book to mothers? Yes, certainly I will! Especially to those mothers who want to enhance their parenting skills. This is one of the best, short parenting books, written in an informal style and suitable for the intended audience. And for the fathers another book of Spencer Johnsons "One Minute Father" is recommended because a father's role is marginally different than that of a mother's.

Happy Reading!

(This book is available on Liberty book's online store and is on discount)

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