How did I come
to be so interested in working with parents- equaling, even, perhaps,
outdistancing, my pleasure in working with children?
It didn't take
me long as a practicing child therapist to realize that parents are
central to their children's development. We know that babies are incomplete
at birth, requiring a partnership from the beginning of their lives
with parents who offer the important sustenance, protection and love
which children need to grow.
It was the parent
groups I met with for many years that taught me something else- the
commonality of the normal problems parents face in daily life with their
young children.
And finally, having
three children of my own in three-and-a-half years educated me in yet
another way, because this was hard work not just in the physical sense,
but in the emotional one as well. A lot was going on I'd never understood
in quite this way before!
It was this understanding
that has enabled me to write books that address the joys and pitfalls
of child rearing.
-
Eleanor B. Weisberger
