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Summary: A practical resource for parents and caregivers
Review: As parents of a toddler, my spouse and I work hard everyday at giving our child the best of ourselves and the world around her. This book is a wonderful guide that reminds us how to give the best, and that the best isn't always more of something. The book is filled with examples that really drive home the main concepts. Additionally, the writing is very straightforward, making it easy to apply to one's own life. I find myself recalling phrases and examples from the book when faced with challenging parenting situations. This is a relevant reference for all parents and caregivers.
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Summary: Should be Required Reading for parents and grandparents!
Review: Excellent book! As a middle school teacher and soon-to-be-parent, this book should be required reading for anyone dealing with children! It has very practical advice throughout. Nearly every problem I encounter as a teacher can be summed up in one word: overindulgence.
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Summary: Ricky Lake type book
Review: I am a social worker, and I find this book to be pathetic. The authors style is written for unintelligent people who know nothing about parenting. It is important to set clear boundaries and limits for your children, while providing the right amount of nurturing. If you feel you need a book on setting limits, this is NOT the book for you...It does talk about effects of "overindulgence" but you can have the same results from any lack of parenting skills, abuse, etc. Find a better book to help you with proper limit setting.
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Summary: Recognizing Overindulgence Without Being A Parent
Review: I enjoyed reading Jean Illsely Clarke's book "How Much Is Enough?" and gained insight into my own behaviors and patterns of overindulgence. Jean's book clearly defines and identifies overindulgence and assists the reader in recognizing and changing unhealthy overindulging behaviors. Even though I am not a parent, I was able to see how I currently overindulge myself, my husband, nieces, nephews, family and friends. I believe overindulgence is a world-wide epidemic. I passed my book onto my brother, so, hopefully, we can start changing the world, one family at a time. Thanks Jean for writing this wonderful book!
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Summary: Grandparents can learn a lot from this book
Review: I gave a copy of How Much Is Enough?, by Jean Illsley Clarke, et al., to a friend who is a grandfather many times over. After reading the section on "The Hazard of being too special, too privileged" my friend said he had figured out why he loved but did not like an overindulged grandson. He also had figured out that he needed to speak more clearly about his expectations when he was with this grandson.
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Summary: Great advice-kids today need it
Review: I think this was an excellent book. IN this day and age, I see too many kids who have so much stuff they don't know what to do with it. And, I see kids so overscheduled with activities that they have no time to be kids. I hardly see kids outside playing anymore. They are either at various scheduled activities or they are inside watching the "boob tube" or playing video games or computers. parents today need to read this book as it tells them when enough is too much. Our society today has gone downhill. Kids today are overindulged. When parents have to pay someone to teach their kids manners? We have a problem. kids should be learning these things from parents not strangers. Parents need to realize that kids don't need more stuff, what they need is us!
Nancy Farkas
Richland, Washington
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Summary: How Much Is Enough? Everything You Need to Know...
Review: Jean Illsley Clarke's new book is remarkable! Using research from three research projects involving nearly 1,200 participants, she and her co-authors give concrete illustrations of overindulgent parenting and its unintended effects. It's hard to see my own behavior in some of the examples, but it's good to know that its never to late to make positive changes. How Much Is Enough includes excellent tools and practical advice to aid in the raising of "likeable, responsible and respectful children". I particularly like using the "Test of Four". I am so grateful that a book like this has come along. I am certain that using the materials in Clarke's How Much Is Enough will make a significant difference in my family's life now and in the future.
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Summary: Necessary information for effective parenting
Review: My first impulse is to say "yes" to my kids when they ask. I thought that was part of what being a parent was about. I want them to have fun, I want them to be happy, but I also want them to be functional, competent adults. This book gives me the information I need to be able to say "no" and have it stick, to establish boundaries, lay out expectations, and reward appropriate behaviors. Now I know that doing so gives my children what they need, not simply what they want. I think all parents should have a copy of this book. It is so very useful, and written in a way that does not blame, but shares information.
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Summary: Social Work Educator's Perspective
Review: Overindulgence may be the farthest thing from a child welfare social worker's mind when the subject of child maltreatment, child abuse, or child neglect comes under discussion. Overindulgence, while not a statutory category of child maltreatment, may provide a lens and language useful in multi-problem child welfare cases that enhances assessment and effective strengths-based communications with courts, advocates, therapists, and parents. Child welfare prioritizes goals of remaining together as a family with health, safety, and benefit to the children's growth and development, and frequently utilizes parent education as a primary opportunity for communication, assessment, and intervention.
A recently released book by Clarke, Dawson, and Bredehoft (2004) presents research on overindulgence in a manner that adds potentially relevant concepts to child welfare work. Parent education and child welfare share concerns of balancing nurture, structure, and resources to prevent disruptions in children's development, health, and safety. Clarke, Dawson, and Bredehoft (2004) describe overindulgence as parenting that hinders children from accomplishing developmental tasks and prevents them from learning life skills. Whether extremes of abundance or deficits exist, a frame of reference for understanding how to strike a desired balance between excess and insufficiency may provide a vital missing piece in assessment and in empowering the healing process for families of all backgrounds. Using scientific research to identify adverse outcomes affecting children's lives, this new book on overindulgence includes presentation of assessment techniques and the necessary action steps to assist families in rebalancing their parenting.
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Summary: Great Information, but hard to follow
Review: The authors present a wealth of great information on how to avoid overindulging children (and they are very careful to explain how overindulgence is different than spoiling). The central overindulgence theme is explored through various topics such as "too many things", "too much freedom" or "too few rules", just to name a few. These subtopics make it easy to zero in on precise concerns, if necessary, but the text is still an easy and productive read from cover to cover.The problem comes from trying to locate information specific to, say, dealing with toddlers or teens (there are even some strategies presented for dealing with adult children). Because the subtopics are presented as wholes, with information specific to various age groups mixed together, it may be difficult for a parent who needs information on a specific topic for a specific age group to find what he or she needs most. Parents are almost compelled to read through pages and pages of non-applicable information that they don't need, just to stumble across that which they do. Particularly appreciated are the portions of the text dedicated to quoting adults who were overindulged as children. Reading about the difficulties they faced as a result of their upbringings will give extra support to parents struggling with making the transition to supporting parenting from overindulgent parenting. Parents who have the time and willingness to read through the entire text in order to gain the overall picture of overindulgence and its many insidious forms will gain the most from the book. Parents facing an acute challenge requiring quick strategies and specific suggestions may wish to turn elsewhere.
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