Earlier this year, a Spanish pediatrician, Carlos Gonzales, published a book Kiss me! ‘How to Raise Your Children with Love’ (Spanish version was published in 2003). After ten years of writing and publishing his best-selling book, Carlos turned his trends of parenting and rearing to a broader purview. He brought up, in his latest book, issues of how to tackle parenting in new ways; ways that require a few rules to be broken.
Various mothers, after reading his book My Child Won’t Eat, which came out ten years ago, felt calmed when he said that it won’t matter if your child eats vegetables or not, provided that they shouldn’t eat junk food either. Few years later, in an interview, Gonzales discussed about children’s eating habits and how this is related to their parent’s exasperatedness. He also narrated that how children feel about their parent’s frustration that arises over their food. Children ordinarily do not like someone coming at them with a fork. He asked, what we would feel if we have someone running after us for food that we don’t like and never allowed us to eat what we desire.
Talking about his newly published book, Carlos added that his previous book My Child Won’t Eat was more like a Doctor’s recommendation to mothers while this latest book is passed among mothers. Carlos talked about few rules that are supposed to be broken for parents while nurturing their child, for example, sleeping with your baby, picking them up when they cry, feeding your baby and running after them for food.
Carlos Gonzales learned one morning from his clinic when he saw a lady with her baby, crying in a pram, and was not picking her up. He eventually asked that lady to cuddle her baby which she later did. Carlos then realized how much power doctors exert on mothers when it comes to parenting. Carlos further added that we doctors are not trained to look after and nurture a baby, like a mother does; instead we are trained and taught about medicine and treatment. Yet every mother rushes to the doctor to catch advice for how to parent their children. Feeding your baby, sleeping with them, proper food and child rearing, as he averred, is not the part of medicine and science which they study.
In his book, Carlos does not advice parents to make food in to funny shapes, hide vegetables or turn them into something that doesn’t look like a vegetable. He proposes that children should be given healthier food options and then must leave them to choose. They should not be given any punishment for not eating; hence no compulsion. Carlos explained different theories, fashions and suggestions to raise children. It doesn’t tell us what to do, but rather gives suggestions on the upbringing of children. The only fact that corroborates this book is the way Carlos defined his ways of raising children and how parents should look into their attitude towards sleep and food and how that shifts to their children’s interaction.