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Cracking the Parenting Code: 6 Clues to Solving the Mystery of Meeting Your Child's Needs
Why do some children grow up and then abandon their parents’ Christian values and convictions? How can parents prevent this? Laura Lee Heinsohn’s search led to startling conclusions. Through interviews with more than 1,000 individuals about their childhood and parenting experiences, she discovered common themes―nearly every person who abandoned their parents’ Christian values and convictions “I needed something from my parents that they couldn’t or didn’t give me.” In Cracking the Parenting Code, Heinsohn identifies six critical needs of children and six corresponding clues to meeting those needs.
- GenresSelf Help
192 pages, Paperback
First published December 15, 2008
3 people want to read
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October 14, 2013
Cracking the Parenting Code: 6 Clues to Solving the Mystery of Meeting Your Child’s Needs by Laura Lee Heinsohn addresses the question, “Why do children walk away from their parents’ value systems, and what can we as parents do to make sure our children don’t reject us?”
In her research, Heinsohn interviewed thousands of individuals to seek out the factors which enabled a child to grow up embracing his parents’ value system. Her conclusion, while far from astonishing, seems to be something our culture currently lacks: children adopt the value system of the people who meet their needs. If their parents don’t meet those needs, the children turn to their peers or another outside influence, and they adopt those individuals’ values.
Heinsohn cites six specific needs universal to children:
The need to trust
The need to be heard
The need to be valued and to understand true value
The need to have purpose and not pampering
The need for support
The need for specific boundaries
I agree with all this. I’d like to gripe for a moment, however. On page 31, Heinsohn writes the most interesting sentence in the book and then never follows up on it:
"An overwhelming majority — 196 of the first 200 — of the people I interviewed said they left their parents’ values and beliefs because their parents didn’t respect each other and conveyed hostility to them about the other parent."
That’s the last we hear about marital respect and the effect of the parents’ relationship on the children, and in my opinion, we needed a lot more about that. The remainder of the book is about meeting the six needs I listed, but not what she cites as the most important, the child’s need to feel his parents are a unit that act to keep the family safe and functional. Especially in a culture where half of new marriages end in divorce, this should not have been brushed aside. Particularly since this was the entirety of another book I reviewed, “The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce,” where the author studied in depth how children of divorce reject their parents’ worldview and strike out to forge their own.
The chapters each contain a discussion of the need under scrutiny, questions about how that need was met or unmet in our own childhood, and questions about how we’re meeting our children’s needs. These questions are tough, and no punches are pulled. Answering all of them would dig up painful memories as well as pleasant ones, and I don’t think any parent would walk away from this book unscathed. It seems like a good therapy session would be in order after reading much of this, particularly if a parent had unresolved childhood issues that were spilling over into how she parents her children.
My criticism of her method would be that Heinsohn expects every child to respond rationally to parental instruction (as if) and she expects parents to have limitless amounts of time. For example, she recommends a half-hour bedtime ritual for each child. I have four children. In order for me to get to bed by 9:30, I’d have to start putting them to bed at 7:30. For parents with more than two children, expectations would need to be adjusted.
Very young children and those who are neurologically atypical (such as my son with Asperger’s) will not necessarily respond to her suggestions as well as older children who are neurotypical.
Similarly, she tells the story of herself as a girl with an unmet need. She wanted her mother to sit beside her scratching her back as she fell asleep. Her mother worked two jobs and functioned as a single parent in a household with an alcoholic father and three other small children; Heinsohn doesn’t give her age at the time but she sounds at least six years old. I can tell you right here, the God’s honest truth is that in her mother’s position, I wouldn’t have been as nice as her mother was in telling her NO, that’s a “want” and not a “need.” I’m sorry she’s carried that burden through her life, but her mother’s needs rightly supplanted her wants in that situation. Unmet needs are different from unmet desires.
So while her premise and her explanations were spot-on, I had difficulties with some of the examples given in the book because of those two presuppositions, that wants equate to needs in children older than two, and that parental needs count for nothing at all.
Overall, Cracking the Parenting Code is excellent and I do recommend it. It also has a guide for working through it as a series of scheduled sessions, and would be a good fit for a church parenting group.
In her research, Heinsohn interviewed thousands of individuals to seek out the factors which enabled a child to grow up embracing his parents’ value system. Her conclusion, while far from astonishing, seems to be something our culture currently lacks: children adopt the value system of the people who meet their needs. If their parents don’t meet those needs, the children turn to their peers or another outside influence, and they adopt those individuals’ values.
Heinsohn cites six specific needs universal to children:
The need to trust
The need to be heard
The need to be valued and to understand true value
The need to have purpose and not pampering
The need for support
The need for specific boundaries
I agree with all this. I’d like to gripe for a moment, however. On page 31, Heinsohn writes the most interesting sentence in the book and then never follows up on it:
"An overwhelming majority — 196 of the first 200 — of the people I interviewed said they left their parents’ values and beliefs because their parents didn’t respect each other and conveyed hostility to them about the other parent."
That’s the last we hear about marital respect and the effect of the parents’ relationship on the children, and in my opinion, we needed a lot more about that. The remainder of the book is about meeting the six needs I listed, but not what she cites as the most important, the child’s need to feel his parents are a unit that act to keep the family safe and functional. Especially in a culture where half of new marriages end in divorce, this should not have been brushed aside. Particularly since this was the entirety of another book I reviewed, “The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce,” where the author studied in depth how children of divorce reject their parents’ worldview and strike out to forge their own.
The chapters each contain a discussion of the need under scrutiny, questions about how that need was met or unmet in our own childhood, and questions about how we’re meeting our children’s needs. These questions are tough, and no punches are pulled. Answering all of them would dig up painful memories as well as pleasant ones, and I don’t think any parent would walk away from this book unscathed. It seems like a good therapy session would be in order after reading much of this, particularly if a parent had unresolved childhood issues that were spilling over into how she parents her children.
My criticism of her method would be that Heinsohn expects every child to respond rationally to parental instruction (as if) and she expects parents to have limitless amounts of time. For example, she recommends a half-hour bedtime ritual for each child. I have four children. In order for me to get to bed by 9:30, I’d have to start putting them to bed at 7:30. For parents with more than two children, expectations would need to be adjusted.
Very young children and those who are neurologically atypical (such as my son with Asperger’s) will not necessarily respond to her suggestions as well as older children who are neurotypical.
Similarly, she tells the story of herself as a girl with an unmet need. She wanted her mother to sit beside her scratching her back as she fell asleep. Her mother worked two jobs and functioned as a single parent in a household with an alcoholic father and three other small children; Heinsohn doesn’t give her age at the time but she sounds at least six years old. I can tell you right here, the God’s honest truth is that in her mother’s position, I wouldn’t have been as nice as her mother was in telling her NO, that’s a “want” and not a “need.” I’m sorry she’s carried that burden through her life, but her mother’s needs rightly supplanted her wants in that situation. Unmet needs are different from unmet desires.
So while her premise and her explanations were spot-on, I had difficulties with some of the examples given in the book because of those two presuppositions, that wants equate to needs in children older than two, and that parental needs count for nothing at all.
Overall, Cracking the Parenting Code is excellent and I do recommend it. It also has a guide for working through it as a series of scheduled sessions, and would be a good fit for a church parenting group.
March 5, 2009
Digging Deeper
Many of us wish we could figure out what makes our kids tick. Why they react the way they do. Why they say the things they do. But, what many of us fail to realize—or, more likely, fail to remember—is that our children, their actions, their behavior and their words are all a product of us. Just like we, our actions, words, and behavior are a product of the relationship we had with our parents/guardians.
Laura Lee Heinsohn founder of the Family Bureau of Investigation Relationship Workshop has written the ultimate parenting guide, Cracking the Parenting Code: 6 Clues to Solving the Mystery of Meeting Your Child’s Needs.
With practical questions, applications and challenges (with a few well-chosen portions of Scripture to add a biblical perspective), Laura will help you delve into your past and your relationships with your parents or guardians and so you the behavior you learned that you have passed along to your children. And, most importantly, Laura points out how your children react to your behavior, and helps you find a way to change those learned behaviors.
At no time does Laura profess to have all the answers. In fact, the book came out of her experience with her own children. But, Laura very successfully lays the groundwork for introspection and learning, and reconnecting or maintaining the connection with your children.
I learned so much from this book, that I plan on using the included 13-week small group guide, trying to arrange an FBI Workshop for our church, and have purchased a copy for our church library.
This is the one book you don’t want to be without.
The solution to connecting and/or reconnecting with your children lies with you in six simple and revealing clues.
So, get digging!
Many of us wish we could figure out what makes our kids tick. Why they react the way they do. Why they say the things they do. But, what many of us fail to realize—or, more likely, fail to remember—is that our children, their actions, their behavior and their words are all a product of us. Just like we, our actions, words, and behavior are a product of the relationship we had with our parents/guardians.
Laura Lee Heinsohn founder of the Family Bureau of Investigation Relationship Workshop has written the ultimate parenting guide, Cracking the Parenting Code: 6 Clues to Solving the Mystery of Meeting Your Child’s Needs.
With practical questions, applications and challenges (with a few well-chosen portions of Scripture to add a biblical perspective), Laura will help you delve into your past and your relationships with your parents or guardians and so you the behavior you learned that you have passed along to your children. And, most importantly, Laura points out how your children react to your behavior, and helps you find a way to change those learned behaviors.
At no time does Laura profess to have all the answers. In fact, the book came out of her experience with her own children. But, Laura very successfully lays the groundwork for introspection and learning, and reconnecting or maintaining the connection with your children.
I learned so much from this book, that I plan on using the included 13-week small group guide, trying to arrange an FBI Workshop for our church, and have purchased a copy for our church library.
This is the one book you don’t want to be without.
The solution to connecting and/or reconnecting with your children lies with you in six simple and revealing clues.
So, get digging!
November 12, 2012
Reviewed by Jaglvr for TeensReadToo.com
CRACKING THE PARENTING CODE is a guidebook to assist parents in ensuring that they are providing their children, whether young or old, everything they need to be successful and healthy as they go through life.
Written by someone who has had years of experience as a parent as well as a leader in parenting workshops, Ms. Heinsohn never preaches, and shares personal experiences for growth and reflection by the reader. When her own daughter announced she wanted to cut contact with Ms. Heinsohn and her husband, it led her on a journey of discovery. Ms. Heinsohn in turn conducted many interviews and found, much to her surprise, that keys to good parenting were far from what she expected to hear.
She has taken her research, and shared with parents the principles to achieve connection and skills to ensuring their children reach their full potential. What Ms. Heinsohn shares are the six clues that work no matter the issue. Each child has the following needs: to trust and feel safe; to be heard; to be valued; to have purpose; support; and specific boundaries. If parent and child can work to accomplish all six of these goals, both will feel rewarded in the end.
Using quotes from both acclaimed therapists and the Bible, the author shares the hope that all parents can achieve a purposeful bond with their children and always maintain that connection. Definitely written for the parent striving to be the best they can be, older teens can gain insight into the struggles that parents deal with every day. Teens will realize that parents DON'T always have the right answer, and need guidance just as much as they do.
CRACKING THE PARENTING CODE is a guidebook to assist parents in ensuring that they are providing their children, whether young or old, everything they need to be successful and healthy as they go through life.
Written by someone who has had years of experience as a parent as well as a leader in parenting workshops, Ms. Heinsohn never preaches, and shares personal experiences for growth and reflection by the reader. When her own daughter announced she wanted to cut contact with Ms. Heinsohn and her husband, it led her on a journey of discovery. Ms. Heinsohn in turn conducted many interviews and found, much to her surprise, that keys to good parenting were far from what she expected to hear.
She has taken her research, and shared with parents the principles to achieve connection and skills to ensuring their children reach their full potential. What Ms. Heinsohn shares are the six clues that work no matter the issue. Each child has the following needs: to trust and feel safe; to be heard; to be valued; to have purpose; support; and specific boundaries. If parent and child can work to accomplish all six of these goals, both will feel rewarded in the end.
Using quotes from both acclaimed therapists and the Bible, the author shares the hope that all parents can achieve a purposeful bond with their children and always maintain that connection. Definitely written for the parent striving to be the best they can be, older teens can gain insight into the struggles that parents deal with every day. Teens will realize that parents DON'T always have the right answer, and need guidance just as much as they do.
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