In her foreword to The Love Connection: How to Establish a Lifelong Bond with Your Child, Neda Mulji states clearly the intention of her book: “It teaches that love is not just an emotion, it is an indelible connection waiting to be established, and the rest of the parenting journey is about celebrating that connection and keeping it strong.” I think she succeeds in her intention.

True to its title, the love connection runs like a motif through every chapter, restating and reinforcing the importance of an emotional bond between parent and child. However, it is not merely repetitive, or a simplistic all-you-need-is-love mantra. Mulji acknowledges the challenges faced at different stages and in various situations and offers sound, detailed advice based not only on her own experiences as a parent, but also on the experiences and reports of a number of parents and children whom she has approached.

Mulji does not present her book as a thesis with an appendix of numbers and statistics. She mentions numbers canvassed on various topics from time to time, as in, “I asked 45 women and men…”, but more often it is just, “Many parents I talked to...”, “Countless teenagers that I have interviewed...”, so her research seems to be rather informal. At the end of the book, she acknowledges the knowledge and insights gained from family, friends and “Hundreds of mums, dads and kids who opened up their lives to me.”

In her foreword, she informs us that her academic training is in Cultural Studies with a focus on how children of the diaspora assimilate into their societies, and that her Postcolonial Literature courses have helped her analyse and understand the voices of these children. All this lends weight to her arguments. Her language is non-technical and her tone conversational, but one gets the impression that her conclusions and advice are not restricted to personal bias.

In fact, there is very little ‘I’ in her writing. From the first sentence of her foreword — “How many of us have come across children rolling on the floor in supermarket aisles throwing tantrums and sighed with relief that it’s not our child this time?” — she reaches out to the reader as one struggling parent to another, and the ‘we’ and ‘us’ continue to the end of the book: “If we as parents can launch our children into the world with this core belief, we would have done our bit in nurturing leaders who can bring a positive change in the world, or, at the very least, happy and successful adults.”

Easy to read and full of wisdom, a book questions some accepted beliefs about raising children

The book’s 13 chapters explore different facets of child rearing, from birth to adulthood. Each is helpfully titled to indicate its focus. Chapter 1, ‘The Transformation from Dependence to Lifelong Bond’, talks about the instinctive love a parent feels for their child at birth, but how this is not enough: “It is how we deliver this love to the child that dictates the strength of our lifelong bond.” Moreover,

children have to be empowered and taught to show love in return: “Love is an instinctive emotion, but the expression of love is an acquired skill.”

Chapter 2 moves on to toddlerhood and appears to me to be the least satisfactory chapter in that it is rather brief and sketchy. It is reassuring to be told that toddlers throw tantrums because “Your love connection is strong enough for your child to understand that they can make these demands on you”, but the advice on how to deal with it through transactions remains theoretical, as Mulji does not give enough examples or experiences to illustrate her point. The one example of a transaction that she does give could only apply to children older than toddlers of two or three.

Chapters 3, 4 and 7 more than make up for this deficiency. They are filled with real-life stories and examples and are so engaging and effective in conveying ideas that one wishes there were more of them in the rest of the book. However, Mulji does offer plenty of strategies for coping with various behaviours and situations, and ideas for encouraging the development of desirable qualities and values. Her discussion of the many benefits of board games and playground activities is particularly enlightening.

The author’s outlook is very balanced. She devotes Chapter 3, ‘Nurturing a Sense of Identity: Celebrating Your Child’s Individualism’, to fostering individuality. Interestingly, she stresses the importance of sharing your own thoughts and experiences with your child instead of simply centring conversations on their activities. Feeling that they are important enough for you to share your stories with assures your children of a place in your world and leads to a sense of identity.

Several other suggestions follow, including understanding how siblings are different from each other, and celebrating personality, not just achievements. Once a child learns to be proud of their identity and value themselves, they are ready to value others, so the next chapter is, appropriately, ‘Inculcating Universal Values: Empathy, Fairness, Truth and Kindness’.

The same balance can be found between the concepts explored in Chapter 5, ‘Cultivating Talent: Skills and Abilities’, and Chapter 7, ‘Fostering Independence: Letting Go of Control’. In the former, she counters the popular criticism of helicopter parenting and over-structuring of children’s time, arguing that the parents’ investment of time and effort in developing a child’s skills and abilities sends a very strong message of love to the child, inculcating a sense of self-worth. All unhappy adults Mulji has spoken to complain of too little attention, not too much. Moreover, being pushed by parents to achieve proficiency in a number of areas ensures that children will have a ‘bank’ of talents with which to face the challenges of a changing world.

How much should one structure and control children’s activities? Chapter 7 answers by reminding parents of the equal importance of allowing space for experimentation and exploration. Yes, children need to be pushed, but being able to make choices is what produces leaders. “Agreement is not essential to a strong relationship — amicability is what defines the way forward even when there are totally contradictory points of view at play.”

A similar balance of approaches can be found in other chapters: sympathise and support, but also empower children to rise above pain and loss; permissive parenting is not the answer, but neither is authoritarianism.

In addition to advising on what to do, Mulji provides a whole chapter — ‘Discipline Tactics that Don’t Work’ — on what not to do. Parents may be surprised to learn that certain accepted practices such as a time-out, ignoring tantrums until they stop and withdrawing privileges are rejected by the author, and very sound arguments against them are presented. Also surprising is her statement that ‘strict’ parents are not necessarily tough disciplinarians, but simply those who set the bar high, which encourages children to regulate their own behaviour. But strict parents are only successful when they have established the requisite emotional connection.

This concept is further developed in the next chapter, with its seemingly contradictory title: ‘Happy Children are Not Necessarily Secure Children’. Mulji defends her position at length, but the most convincing argument is presented through the anecdotal evidence of one mother who was tough and strict, but whose children turned out successful and emotionally secure. “There was little expressive emotion, but the love waters ran deep.” This mother was a rock of stability and devoted to her children’s wellbeing, so they were secure in her love. Happiness, on the other hand, is an elusive and tricky concept.

No book on bringing up children would be complete without addressing the generation gap, which Mulji does in ‘Family Values: Bridging the Generation Gap Through Adaptability’. She touches on this in an earlier chapter as well, in which she talks about letting go of control, but here she approaches it from a different angle — by looking at how children are part of the collective identity of the family and imbibe family values through various means such as food, social experiences, storytelling, etc. She is clear about the uselessness of indoctrination and overt imposition of family culture and values.

My favourite takeaway from this book is the idea that children “raise their parents” (Chapter 7). Parents are fallible, which, of course we all know, but the author comfortingly asks us not to feel guilty about it. Parenting is evolutionary — we learn as we go, and most of us follow “mixed styles of parenting” and develop along with our children. By the time they enter adolescence, children have begun to criticise, analyse and rebel against their parents. This is the most difficult part of parenthood, where parents need to be open to dialogue and differing opinions. It requires a very strong love-connection, but children who can express themselves and be heard and even have some of their views accepted, become empowered. They can actually help their parents to grow. Further encouragement is provided in the final chapter, ‘It is Never Too Late’, because not only are children malleable, they hunger for their parents’ love and approval all their lives.

The final chapter contains a lot of repetition of what has been said in previous chapters, which I found unnecessary, but perhaps Mulji felt the need to sum up her ideas. The only other fault I can find with this book is the poor proofreading, as there were several typographical errors.

As a parent, grandparent and teacher myself, I have no hesitation in recommending this book to other parents and teachers. It is easy to read, full of wisdom, and has some engaging stories and real-life experiences.

The reviewer is an educationist and author of Made in Pakistan: A Memoir

The Love Connection: How to Establish a Lifelong Bond with Your Child
By Neda Mulji
Austin Macauley, UK
ISBN: 978-1528912860
138pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, April 12th, 2020