Susan M. Pollak: Self-Compassion for Parents: Nurture Your Child by Caring for Yourself
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BOOK REVIEW
Susan M. Pollak: Self‑Compassion for Parents: Nurture Your Child by Caring for Yourself The Guilford Press, 2019, 246 pp, $50 (Hardcover), $14.95 (Paperback) Julia M. DiFilippo1
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
In Self-Compassion for Parents: Nurture Your Child by Caring for Yourself, Susan M. Pollak, Ed.D., bestows gentle, empathic words of wisdom to parents, based on her experience as a mother and psychologist. Her book provides a friendly and down-to-earth introduction to the power of mindfulness and self-compassion, practical anecdotes from her clinical work, and both written and audio exercises to transform the challenges of parenthood into opportunities for growth and joy. Although the chapters build on one another sequentially, Dr. Pollak encourages her readers to approach the book with flexibility in order to meet their specific needs in the moment. For example, readers could skip around the text, download short audio exercises for practice-on-the-go to fit their hectic lifestyles, and turn to the “toolbox” at the end of the book for a quick reference in the midst of stressful life events. In contrast to most parenting books that strive to get children to sleep, eat, behave, learn, and achieve as parents desire or expect, Dr. Pollak applies principles of mindfulness and self-compassion to the experience of parenting, which can have rippling positive effects on the entire family. The early chapters of the book are helpful in empathizing with how overwhelming parenting can be and in offering new hope through mindfulness and self-compassion. Dr. Pollak assures her readers that mindfulness (i.e., “awareness of the present moment with kindness and acceptance,” p. 7) can be practiced often and in short moments during the activities of a busy lifestyle. Furthermore, Dr. Pollak offers mindfulness as a way for parents to see more clearly and to engage in a different relationship with their burdens, stressors, and personal history. Mindfulness allows parents to become aware of their emotions and underlying patterns and, thus, serves as the foundation for self-compassion. * Julia M. DiFilippo 1
Strongsville, USA
Through self-compassion, parents can shift their own inner dialogue of self-blame and self-criticism to the acceptance, warmth, kindness, and appreciation they would show a dear friend. Parents may recognize their imperfections, appreciate their shared humanity, and move beyond a state of alarm and reactivity to a place of balance and perspective. In the middle chapters, Dr. Pollak addresses two common parenting challenges – the baggage that adults bring to parenting from their own personal histories and the trap of competition and comparison. First, she asserts that parenting is an opportunity to attend to old psychological wounds and to return to the intimacy of the parent–child relationship with a different role and a fresh perspective. Mindfulness and self-compassion can help parents accept past trauma and unmet needs, identify distortions in their ex
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