After many years of trying to set personal goals in various ways and then failing to stick to them, I’m finally having some success. I can’t claim all the credit for this. To get from someone who has never been able to be consistent at anything, to someone who appears to be making the [...]
I’m always trying to cut through advertising, to work out if something is really going to be useful to me. I wanted to present an insight into how I do that based on a recent book release. I know a lot of parents think that the answer to their problems is in something that they need to pay for , I don’t believe that’s true (unless it’s medical in nature) but the advertisers want us to believe it.
Whale Done Parenting: How to Make Parenting a Positive Experience for You and Your Kids
It was written by the team behind Whale Done! : The Power of Positive Relationships
I’ve always been aware of the fact that many self help books have something in common: they can be designed to generate lots of money for very little author effort. That’s particularly true for management books and parenting books. There are nearly 120,000 parenting books on Amazon and almost a million on management. The sheer volume tells you how easy it is to pump out the content and you can expect that a certain amount of recycling is needed to keep those topics alive.
As well as the probable recycling of content this looks to also be recycling the concept. The Whale in the title is supposed to indicate the fact that if positive reinforcement (amongst other related techniques) can get killer whales kissing their trainers they can be used to get (insert anyone here) doing what you want. In Whale Done it was staff, in Whale Done Parenting it’s kids.
So if we add that up, we have a book which appears to be recycling both content and concept, describing the fact that positive reinforcement, with an analogy to animal training, works well as a training tool for children.
Strike one for me is that I personally find the idea that animal training is analogous to parenting pretty offensive. That might not be the idea behind the book but it’s the idea behind the title and that puts me off.
Strike two is that this feels designed to sell, as opposed to designed to help. Catchy title, low price point, lots of mention about how the authors are previous best sellers. They’re using authority, legitimacy, value and reputation to influence my buying habits. I don’t blame them but I can see right through it. Although that would be the publishers not the authors.
Strike three is that even though it’s cheap it feels like a cheaper book to write. I have to question the value of it. Take away the analogy and how many original ideas are presented in the book? Am I getting much for my 11USD? I’m not convinced.
And they’re out. For me at least.
That’s basically how I try to cut through the endless parenting noise on the book shelves: do I like the concept? is there spin involved or is it of genuine value? how much effort went into creating it?
To be fair to the authors, and I do want to be fair because this is a review of the marketing and the concept, not the writing, parents who lack an understanding of the value of positive reinforcement would probably find this to be as good a book as any. For managers who need the same check out the other two books I mentioned. But for me it’s a no thanks.
Obviously I decided not to buy Whale Done Parenting, but if I ever get given it I promise to write a review as a balance to this article, it would be interesting to see if I’m right.
This weekend our daughter tumbled down some stairs, not a disaster but it was very dramatic. It wasn’t the first time and it certainly won’t be the last. She’s now sporting a nasty graze and a very blue lump on her head. It got me thinking about what that accident would make other parents think, and if I let myself be influenced by them what kind of a parent it might make me.
There’s an entire marketplace of products to help parents protect their children, from clips that eliminate sharp corners in your home to video cameras that watch them while they sleep. Some are more extreme than others, but all are sold to do essentially the same thing: make you feel less afraid. Here are just five of them that I found interesting for reasons explained below.
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1. The baby monitor I’m deliberately including this alongside some of the more extreme products out there. Some parents laugh at those who go out and buy the more extreme safety equipment, but everyone I know has one of these, so aren’t we all giving into our fear just a little bit, and by mocking the more extreme products aren’t we being just a little bit hypocritical? This is the one we have by the way and I love it, at some point I’ll post a review, in the meantime feel free to email me for my opinion. |
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2. Baby knee pads I can’t honestly know if these are useful or not. Certainly some of the baby suits we had came with padded knees and they made us feel better about her crawling on wooden floors. If you’re worried about sore knees maybe they’re worth considering. I wear padded knees when doing DIY so could they be a good thing for crawling babies too? |
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3. The child locator Who hasn’t worried about their kid being lost, stolen or missplaced by idiot grandparents? I don’t have one of these but it’s a real temptation every day. All that stops me is that if I buy one how far down the path of paranoia am I going? But if I don’t buy one and regret it, that would be the worst thing in the world. I’ll stop this train of thought right now because the credit card is coming out of the wallet . . . |
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4. The Thudguard This is a helmet for toddlers who are learning to walk. If my child had been wearing one she wouldn’t have the bruise right now, and of course the fall could have been much worse than it was. So maybe it’s a good thing? I’m not convinced though, I’m sure some parents have one and are greatful for it but I’m worried this is just a little bit too far for me. This seems to be best on the market though. Tell me if you think I am wrong. |
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5. Baby Wipe Warmer I have honestly never worried about those wipes being cold, but now that I know this exists I’ll be constantly concerned that the wipes are uncomfortable for her. A classic example of a fear I didn’t know I could have being influenced by a product that’s available. |
That’s it. Five products for sale that can make me feel instantly better as a parent. Just five products out of the hundreds available. Ultimatley you have to decide where to draw the line before paranoia based parenting and balanced healthy parenting. It’s totally up to you.
I only need 3 iPhone apps to help me with my health and fitness and they cost me nothing. If you’ve got more then you may be focussing on the tools and not the outcome; you may be thinking of the apps as a shortcut. As I have said: there are no shortcuts.
Google “best free fitness apps” and you can wade through 150 million pages. Mostly you’ll be looking at lists of apps pulled in by the sites straight from the Apple store, these are just attempts to generate traffic, a simple and easy story to get a high Google ranking, covered in ads to claw in a little revenue. The apps I’m about to recommend I use daily. They came to me through suggestion, trial and error. I’m an actual user of these apps, not a paid reviewer.
Firstly: what you don’t need
You do not need any form of workout routine or phone based personal trainer. An app cannot manage your fitness any better than a book could. Only you can do that. If you think you need an app to work out then you are unlikely to succeed because you are relying on a tool to achieve what you feel unable to do yourself.
You do not need a calorie database or calorie counter. If you’re on a diet or think you need a diet then you already know what you should eat, right? A calorie app is not going to tell you anything new, or make you thin. Buying one implies that you think information equals success. It does not, so focus on the right thing, your own motivation.
App 1: The camera
The iphone comes with one of the best tools straight out of the box. The camera. Keep a food journal by photographing everything you eat. The best advice you can get from any dietician is to keep a food journal. It forces you to see what you eat and from that you are able to take control. The iPhone camera has a camera roll, time stamping and so it can be used as the perfect food journal. If you need more information on how just email me or leave a comment.
App2: A weight tracker
You need a way of tracking your weight in a way that lets you see the trend over time. This is because the trend is more important than the daily fluctuations. Adjusting what you eat based on daily changes is not sensible. Your weight creeps up and down constantly so if you see an increase one day you may be tempted to panic and starve yourself the next day. That is one reason why diets fail. A trend line allows you to adjust your diet based on the trend over a number of weeks and so there is less of a temptation to panic. I recommend the free (lite) version of True Weight because it shows a 3 week trend line which is all I find that I need.
App3: An activity tracker
So far I’ve described a way of recording what I eat and recording what I weigh, so the final app is one that records what I do; tracking activity. Nothing beats trail guru for this as a free app in my opinion. You need to set up an account at Trail Guru and once done the app will track your movement when it’s on. The site will record that over time, and will give you reports on such things as distance covered, method, and calories burned. I would link to a review of this app but mostly those reviews are based on simple short trials, to really understand how to get the most from this tool you need to use it. You can contact me for more information or just go the Trail Guru site and explore the forums and FAQ’s.
And that’s it. Just 3 simple applications. As these are free apps it means that the developers don’t get paid for their efforts directly by you so you should consider donations and clicking through on any adverts presented to you as a way of showing your support.