In an era where the heating of our planet promises to turn most of the earth into a tropical zone, we would expect, to survive, fundamental changes in our way of life. For example, if the torrid days become uninhabitable, would human activity move into the night? Would we shop and work only after dark? Would our children go to school at sunset and come home at sunrise? Would the oceans swamp neighboring nations? How would creative families of nations like Singapore find the resources to adapt? It may have much to do with today's children and how they are parented.
One day I saw a young man in Singapore wearing a T-Shirt that proclaimed “The future will be better tomorrow”. This book is a substantial next step in that direction. It has the applied potential to uplift a key aspect of our human family's path in a much better direction. More than that, it offers a contemporary window into the gifts and challenges for Singaporean and Southeast Asian culture.
Dr. Foo's distinguished military history in the Singapore Armed Forces shows here. Military leaders must be direct and concise: they tell you what they are going to tell you, then they tell you, then they tell you what they have told you. In this well written book, it clearly sets out what parents will learn, then explains what they need to know fully and concisely, and then summarizes what has been learned. Yet this book is much more than that. It is far too lively and wise for any military manual. It is written specifically for parents in the concise language accomplished only by an author who understands the essence of his ideas and can communicate them effectively, simply, to his specific reading audience.
This undoubtedly flows from the author's subsequent non-military career as an academic scholar and charismatic teacher. To be specific, Dr. Foo Koong Hean lectures on psychology at James Cook University, Singapore Campus. He is also a consultant psychologist at The School of Positive Psychology, Singapore. He holds a BSc in Psychology from Brandon University, Manitoba, Canada, with a double major in Political Science and a minor in Philosophy. He also holds an MA in Psychology from Northern Arizona University, USA; and a Post-graduate Diploma in Cognitive Behavior Therapy and a PhD in Psychology from Massey University, New Zealand. A member of the Singapore Psychological Society and its Public Education Team, he has extensive experience in teaching psychology, and practicing psychotherapy, particularly Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), with individuals and groups. He has run a child care center in Singapore with his wife for nearly 10 years. For over 25 years, he has been a psychologist, including his earlier years of service with the Singapore Armed Forces. He has taught psychology at institutions locally (Nanyang Polytechnic, Raffles Education, The School of Positive Psychology, James Cook University) and overseas (Massey University, New Zealand). He has practiced psychotherapy freelance and online (Clairemire.sg), at local institutions (Mount Elizabeth Hospital, Sunlove Home) and overseas (Asian Health Support Group, North Shore Hospital, New Zealand). An advocate for intercultural psychology, he applies Western psychological theories, principles and concepts to Eastern cultures, publishing on parenting styles and practices, child-parent relationships, Chinese attitudes and behaviors, cognitive behavior therapy, positive psychology and intercultural psychology. His aim is to develop a cultural psychology for Singapore and compile portraits of Singaporeans by ethnicity. In all of this, he has taken another substantial step forward with this book.
In a practical and logical extension of his earlier article on filial parenting (Foo, Reference Foo2014), this next book focuses specifically on enhanced parenting. As such, while very useful to those raising children in Singapore, it can also be a significant contribution to parents of many nationalities, to families, to employers, to government leaders, to thoughtful scholars appreciating this insightful view of Singaporean family culture and, through this window, to provide a better understanding of the impact of parenting on cultures across the globe. What Dr. Foo writes here is another sensible book, complete with wise advice for students, scholars, and parents, full of valuable illustrations and vignettes. Yet it also stands as a metaphor for the hierarchical relationships central to business or other organizations on their governing functions of adults with other adults. He sees clearly that the consequences of parenting is a process also to be found in eventually how we adults treat each other. Reading from this point of view allows many more valuable levels of meaning to another of his already effective books.
Building on prior invention of the term “filial parenting”, we now have a freshly invented term for 21st century application that parents can use effectively, one described here as “Negotiation Parenting”. In the author's own words:
“Children's input is not needed until they are ready or capable of contributing cognitively and emotionally. But children's input is definitely needed as soon as they are able to make choices. Above all, it's the parents’ understanding, reflection and actions that really count. The basic method of negotiation parenting is about parents using all the available knowledge of the world and environment for their children. This seems to be an obvious fact. Which parents are not doing this for their children's sake, you may ask? But with the complexity of modern life, parenting using past understanding and some present knowledge is not enough! Negotiation parenting provides some rudimentary information that parents should arm themselves with if they would like to nurture successful children.”
I will comment here briefly on just five applications of this book.
1. Learning Styles
This book does incorporate modern concepts of learning as perceptual styles: visual, auditory, and tactile. Children generally favor one over the others. Teachers of early childhood education are challenged to teach content to a child's strongest style of learning, while at the same time assisting the child to use the other two methods more effectively. Naturally, learning involving all three modalities is the most powerful. Early Head Start and other such pre-school programs emphasized learning-to-learn and, in more modern times, this approach is relabeled as enhancing critical thinking and is to be found in better educational programs for adolescents and adults. Ann Yabusaki's pioneering work enhanced intelligence testing by molding it to these learning styles (Yabusaki et al, Reference Yabusaki, Morgan, Tong and Word1995). Some truly advanced programs teach skills such as speed reading, mnemonic strategies, practical auto-hypnosis (Cheek Reference Cheek1993), and even martial arts. In this book, Dr. Foo goes beyond the teacher's learning style options and applies these styles to the parent's role and its possibilities. (Hopefully parental readers favor the visual learning style, although maybe an auditory version would aid those who do not.)
2. Developmental Memory
Here I have some concern over the second sentence in this author's passage from page 23: “A loving and secure parent-child relationship indicates a strong attachment, which in turn would help raise compassionate, resilient, happy and healthy children. Children do not have memories of their first two years because their brain memory systems (mainly the hippocampus) are not fully developed. Learning after two years creates accessible meanings and feelings throughout life. Thus, it is important that parents resolve their past issues, then listen to their children, reflect their story back to them, and help them make sense of it.”
While I value the first and last sentence in this paragraph, my caution is that parents may misinterpret the intent of this by reading the middle sentence regarding the first two years of memory. They may feel these years are not important when in fact the research of many decades now suggest that these are crucial years for learning and memory. The author here may only be reporting on a discredited misunderstanding of an aspect of the physiological development of the brain: it in actuality does continue throughout childhood and adolescence, even into young adulthood. It is true that memories from before the age of two are more difficult to retrieve since they are usually pre-verbal and based on strong emotional content. In fact, most people when asked for their earliest conscious memory, begin with their first days away from home in school at age four or above. Yet we know from the research literature across these many years that the very earliest memories may be the most powerful in shaping adult personality.
These memories from the earliest years of life can be retrieved from adults with ideomotor and other techniques (Cheek Reference Cheek1968, Reference Cheek1993, Reference Cheek and Morgan2005). Even the conditions of the birth experience, before-during-after, are significant, formative, and can under special conditions be retrieved (Cheek Reference Cheek1993, LeBoyer Reference Leboyer2002, Rappaport, Reference Rappaport1976). Even prenatal stimulation in the last trimester has measurable effects. We definitely know now that many critical periods of learning occur on or before the age of two.
So parents may well be alerted to the difficulty of later conscious retrieving of early pre-verbal long term memories but they do exist and are essential in healthy development. Once, many years ago, it was believed that the cortex was “nonfunctional” before the age of two. This brought about much neglect of children at their most vulnerable age. Now we know that memory functions immediately, albeit differently from later development. The effectiveness of memory grows as the child grows. Yet parents should know that their infants may not understand what they are experiencing at the time, intense memories can last. These, importantly, should fit the wisdom expressed in that first and last sentences of our author's page 23 paragraph.
3. Freedom, not license
Those of us living long enough (more than fifty years now since my own PhD) can be continually annoying as we point out that new discoveries were already invented long before. Why reinvent the wheel? Well, the best answer is when the newer wheel is better.
In 1960, A.S. Neill published a book entitled “Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing”. Based on his forty years of successful experience operating a British boarding school for ‘challenging’ children, his controversial book made great waves in European and American education. It was conducted on what today we might consider principals of positive psychology. Corporal punishment was abolished and class attendance was optional. Children were shown respect and they soon returned respect to their teachers. In forty years, only one child never wound up going to class and eventually as an adult he studied sufficiently to go on to university. It was a motivational approach that was revolutionary in its day. A follow up book edited by Edward Lamb, one of his former students (Neill Reference Neill and Lamb1995) confirmed the power of this approach, one entirely congruent with the Negotiation Parenting proposed by Dr. Foo in modern times.
Then, eight years after the publication of Neill's book, he had to come out with another to correct a distortion of his approach. In “Freedom, not License” (Reference Neill1968) he addressed the misunderstanding of his motivational approach, largely by many affluent American parents, in which children were “spoiled” by being given complete freedom of choice in their life without any regard for the wellbeing of others, particularly their parents. Neill took an entire book of examples to try to correct this misunderstanding. In his Summerhill School, the development of emotional intelligence and empathy for others was key. Now we also see the wisdom of Dr. Foo's subtitle: “How not to raise a brat in today's complex world”. Dr. Foo here recovers many of the key contributions of Neill from more than half a century ago, presenting them to us in an even more complex modern context. This he does in a particularly insightful manner for parents living in today's cultural context. He did not reinvent the wheel. He reminded us what it was meant for. He made a better one.
4. Applications to enhanced participation
Dr. Foo has written this book for parents, particularly those in Singaporean and Southeast Asian culture. In this specificity he has succeeded. Yet I think the points made here apply equally to determining the best future for our businesses, schools, and organizations in this developing 21st century. In 1964 organizational psychologist Eugene Jacobsen told us graduate students in psychology that democracy was best defined not as ‘majority rules’ but rather as ‘decisions are made by those most directly affected by those decisions’. He went on to apply this to business settings in which employee morale (and productivity) was enhanced to the extent that those working there had control over the conditions in which they worked. I have seen this applied to long term care facilities for the elderly where their mental health and even survival was enhanced by their ability to make the choices that directly affected them. Modern medical practice now gives more respect to patients who in this way can make better informed choices on their health. They are now respected participants in their own process.
5. New directions
A valuable book leads us to fresh applications beyond those in the printed pages. It is like a catalytic conversation with a creative friend. Reading Dr. Foo's book from this perspective suggests his insights may provide an important blueprint for succeeding in facing the likely organizational challenges in our near future.
For example, tropical communities are the first now to face the consequences of the accelerated heating of our planet. Ocean levels are rising, hurricanes and typhoons intensifying, forest fires multiplying. Heat levels continue to rise every year, including dangerously extreme potentially carcinogenic ultraviolet sun levels. And again, what is considered tropical is becoming more and more the majority of the land we all inhabit. The torrid zones are expanding in territory, the days are getting less and less habitable.
How then should leaders of businesses, schools, and organizations apply Dr. Foo's parenting principles to the survival of the human family? Should we just let our children's generation succumb to hardship, eventual demise? Or should leadership include finding participatory solutions? Maybe we will find the will to halt or slow the process of severe climate change, possibly through invention and legislation. Maybe schools and businesses will actually be able to adapt to the toxic days by moving all their activity to the evenings. (Hint: those moving even now to night time after sundown hours will have great advantage.)
Negotiation parenting can also be wise leadership. If it is well applied: when we fall, we will land higher.
So: summing up
Toward the close of the book, we find this key sentence: “embark on educational policies that teach people to be caring, sharing, and more socially minded.”
A final summary tells us what we were to have learned. To quote the author:
“This book has outlined in detail the proposed negotiation parenting style in comparison with existing recognised parenting styles. To reiterate, negotiation parenting means making choice decisions that nurture children through principled negotiation, informed choices and modern parenting strategies. It emphasizes developing an independent life, culture, faith and family. Major parenting styles have been examined and compared to show readers what their parents have done for them, and where they stand today as parents or parents to be. This raises the important question of whether they would want to stick with the existing parenting style or opt for a change for the better. In small-family parenting — a new version of parenting for families of between one and three children — the advantages and disadvantages of this parenting style as well as the mental health of parents and children as a result of small-family parenting is described, discussed and highlighted, together with the implications for people managers. Throughout, filial parenting is referenced to illustrate small family parenting in a culture-specific way. Again, though Chinese parents practise it most, other cultures in Asia are not doing parenting differently.
Here are some final tips on parenting:
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• Children are born to contribute to the world; don't deny them the chance to do this. Start in the home.
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• Children are born with different temperaments; don't compare them. Treat each accordingly.
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• Discipline is a teaching process about being thoughtful, compassionate and responsible. Self-discipline and resilience provide strength and protection.
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• Make a difference in the lives of your children. Be models for them.
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• Focus on your children's strengths, not their problems or weaknesses.
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• Sacrifice short-term pleasure for long-term gain.
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• If you change your approach, children need not follow immediately. They need time to adjust to your new script. Be patient! This may take weeks, months or years!
Have a nice life journey with your children!” PARENTING means making decisions
In his book, Dr. Foo has once again provided us with a new name for an important and accessible application, one that can for the next generation shape the future for all of us. Given the accelerating climate changes humanity faces, that can come none too soon. Reading this book is both a pleasure and a responsibility. The future can be better tomorrow.
