Word: gardners
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...views that are anything but conventional. He encourages his young readers to be suspicious when their divorced parents speak only good of each other; when no faults are acknowledged, a child may reasonably ask, "If he's such a great person, why did you divorce him?"' Dr. Gardner also warns youngsters against parents who insist that an absent father or mother loves the child despite evidence to the contrary. The thing to do, he says, is to ask for honesty, since "if you hide from the truth, you can do nothing about your problems...
...visit, and fathers who live far away and hardly ever call or write either do not love their children at all, or they love them very little." There is "something very wrong" with an unloving parent; he deserves pity as,'well as anger, says Gardner, citing a patient who spoke of her uncaring father as "poor damn Dad." The psychiatrist's advice: seek love from those who can give it, and remember that if your father doesn't love you, "it does not mean that you are no good or that no one can love...
...Gardner admits, such ideas are anxiety-provoking-to parents, not children. The same is true of four precepts for youngsters that are outlined in his text: do not believe everything your parents tell you; do not do everything they want you to do; try to help yourself "feel better," but do not try too hard; use your anger to help you get what you want...
...child who is told that divorce came about because he was bad, Gardner has blunt advice: "Do not believe it. If one of your parents says such a thing, it usually means he has problems of his own that make it hard for him to see things the way they really are." Nor is "every bad thing" parents say about each other to be accepted uncritically: "Be very careful to believe only those things you are very sure of, or that you see yourself...
...Gardner, children are not helpless victims. Instead of wasting time "blaming people for things that happened in the past, things that cannot be changed," they can "start doing the things that will make the future happier." They can, for example, "make it their business to find friends so that they'll be less lonely." But they must observe W.C. Fields' rule: If at first you don't succeed, try, try again: if after that, you still don't succeed, forget it. One thing to give up on rather quickly, the author suggests, is trying...