There is still time to enter our drawing for a free copy of Honest Toddler: A Child’s Guide to Parenting.
Just today HT posted some great reviews of children’s books.
In the meantime, I’ve reviewed HT’s new book here.
And the link for the HT book giveaway is here. Happy entering!
Being a parent is very simple. There is no reason for you to constantly go to other adults who do not know your toddler for advice or conspiring. What happens at home stays at home. …When it comes to being a good parent, the most important resources are the words that come out of your child’s amazing mouth. If your child is too young to speak, guess accurately on the first try.
–Honest Toddler
Honest Toddler, under the supervision of mom Bunmi Laditan, has now added a full-length book to a popular and cathartic Twitter feed, Facebook page, and blog/Website. I’ve posted quite a bit about HT at Words on the Word already.
Real-life Honest Toddler is a girl, but HT is “asexual,” which makes the whole thing more universal.
And now, s/he has written a parenting guide. The chapter titles alone produce enough laughs to make the book worth the price:
Bunmi has tapped into the psyches of Every Parent because HT, in all the quirky specifics of his/her behavior, is Every Toddler. (“Give a toddler a rag and a spray bottle, and your house will be sparkling before you know it. First it will be soaking, and your mobile phone may have water damage, but after a thorough wipe-down, the results will please you.”)
This Child’s Guide to Parenting is thorough–HT includes everything from media recommendations (music, books, TV) to hygiene (“leave well enough alone”), from restaurant behavior to grandmas and grandpas (“you should learn as much as possible from your child’s grandparents”). Interspersed between chapters are letters from parents to HT and homework assignments (sample: “Visit the toy store and get all the things. Next, go to a field. Run until nightfall”).
The Honest Toddler is hilarious, brilliantly written, and often pointed in its humor (see: HT’s disdain for Pinterest). I was impressed by how much this little toddler had to say. Although, now that I think about it, my toddlers have always had a lot to say.
The open parent who reads this book will be perhaps re-conditioned: temper tantrums are just “loud responses,” toddler ignoring is simply “selective acknowledgement,” and whining is “a legitimate form of speech.”
Honest Toddler, for all his/her impossible demands (duh), has some great advice. Facebook, for example: “Toddlers are tired of hearing Facebook notifications during story time. We’re sick of having to sit in parked cars, fully strapped in, while you make sure you get the last word on a virtual dispute with an acquaintance. This website is a distraction. Log off. Permanently.”
Communication: “Did you know that there are more than four hundred different meanings for ‘no’ in Toddler English?” (with a sample chart). Packing for vacation: “There’s no such thing as minimalism when it comes to packing for a trip with small children.”
Readers of HT’s blog, FB, and Twitter feed will recognize some material here (the “toddler-approved recipes” and physics breakdown of car napping), but not much. This is 256 pages of sheer, highly original, creative genius.
There are occasional moments of dark-ish humor (“There’s nothing special about a child [i.e., infant] who can’t go anywhere without a blanket over her legs”), but, then again, this was written by a toddler.
And, HT, if you’re reading: make sure your mom lets you watch Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. You’ll like it way better than Caillou.
If you’re a parent of a toddler or know one, The Honest Toddler is essential reading, if only to relax and laugh enough to keep one’s head in the game of toddler parenting. (If you’re interested in the possibility of a free copy, I’m giving one away here.)
I have to stop now; my own two-year-old just woke up to join us in watching the late-night basketball game and blogging, and now is requesting–you guessed it–Daniel Tiger and some water.
Many thanks to Scribner (imprint of Simon & Schuster) for the review copy, given to me for the purposes of an honest review. Find the book’s product page here. It’s on Amazon here.
And thanks especially to Bunmi/HT for making me a better parent. Or at least a parent who is able to laugh a little bit more and cry a little bit less as I raise my little ones.
Honest Toddler, under the supervision of mom Bunmi Laditan, has now added a full-length book to a popular and cathartic Twitter feed, Facebook page, and blog/Website. HT’s mom blogs here.
Thanks to Scribner (imprint of Simon & Schuster), Words on the Word has a copy of Honest Toddler: A Child’s Guide to Parenting to give away.
To enter, simply comment on this blog post with the best (brief) parenting tip you can come up with. Or just say hi. For a second entry, share the link to this post on FB, Twitter, via mind meld, etc., and let me know in the comments section that you did.
I’ll announce the winner right here some time next Monday.
And tomorrow I’ll post my review of the book on the book’s official release date. UPDATE: Review is here.
Her name is Bunmi Laditan. As recently as a week ago, the author of the forthcoming Honest Toddler: A Child’s Guide to Parenting was “anonymous.” But now the book cover (above, from Amazon) shows that HT is “written under the supervision of Bunmi Laditan.” Awesome. I’ve been curious about this since reading HT, as have hundreds of thousands of others. Here is her bio from the HT Google Books page:
BUNMI LADITAN started her first media company at age eighteen. Soon after, she launched and sold a social networking site geared toward moms and began a social media agency, working with Fortune 500 companies. She is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post, Mothering and iVillage.com, where her satirical pieces on parenting and politics have often gone viral. In May 2012, she created The Honest Toddler, a character based on her youngest child. She lives with her family near Montreal.
Love it. It looks like she’s just started her own blog, too, which I plan to read regularly. See, too, if you notice another difference in the cover above compared to what was on Amazon when I posted here.
I’ll be reviewing the book as soon as it comes out. Read much more about it (including the table of contents) here at HT’s blog.
Bunmi, thank you. Thank you for HT and for the laughter that little toddler has brought. You live far away, but if you ever want to bring HT over for a play-date, our 2-year-old will be happy to lead an expedition to the beach… or to the fridge.
UPDATE 5/6/13: Go here for a chance to win a free copy of Honest Toddler.
UPDATE 2: I review Honest Toddler here.
Within minutes of each other I had Facebook connections posting on Google Glass and linking to Luci Shaw’s poem “Knitting in the Wild.”
First I watched the trailer for a new Google-pioneered technology. It’s sort of like having a smartphone on your face, which is perhaps best experienced through this clip rather than described:
The technology is astounding. To be able to see where I’m supposed to drive without having to touch or click on anything? I’d benefit from that. But I got a little sad at 0:36 when I saw a special moment between father and daughter recorded by Glass. Not because I don’t value taking photos and videos of my kids (I do it a lot here and on Facebook), but because there was something about Google Glass–a physical and technological object standing between, recording, mediating–that seemed to interrupt the here-ness of that moment, the now-ness of it.
Having flight info show up in my glasses when I’m at the airport would be cool, but this feels a little too much like the apocalyptic Overbrain my friends David and Tim keep warning us about. (I.e., when all of our thoughts, actions, and moments are connected to and subsumed by one giant Cloud.)
Minutes earlier someone in my news feed had posted a link to Luci Shaw’s “Knitting in the Wild”:
The pale bits—twigs, fibers,
pine needles—sun-struck,
fall through the lazy air
as if yearning to be embodied in
my knitting, like gold flecks woven into
a ceremonial robe.Then surprise—a new marvel!
Like a parachutist, a very small beetle
lands on the greeny stitch I have just
passed from left needle to right;
the creature’s burnished carapace
mirrors precisely the loop of glowing,
silky yarn that he has chosen.When this shawl ends up
warming someone’s shoulders,
will she sense the unexpected—
this glance, this gleam,
this life spark?
I don’t know how to knit. But, amazing as Google’s new technology is, I imagine that I will pick up a pair of single-point needles long before I put on Google Glass.
Yes, that image is the book cover of the upcoming Honest Toddler book, which you can now pre-order on Amazon. So excited to read it.
By the way, if you click on the image or link above, Amazon gives Words on the Word a small commission, so feel free to use that link if you’re going to get it anyway. Speaking of WotW, this blog’s url has dropped the wordpress.com ending and is now just abramkj.com. (Old posts automatically re-direct.)
Who is Honest Toddler? In the bio on the book’s Amazon page, we finally learn a few things about the writer behind HT:
The author was raised in the Bay Area. She started her first media company at age eighteen while attending Long Beach State University. Soon after, she launched and sold a social networking site geared toward moms and began a social media agency, working with Fortune 500 companies. She is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post, Mothering, and iVillage.com, where her satirical pieces on parenting and politics have often gone viral. In May 2012, she created Honest Toddler, a character based on her youngest child. She lives with her family outside of Montreal.
But it’s still by “Anonymous.”
Looking forward to more sage counsel from the most stress-relieving writer on parenting I’ve read.
It went like this:
Me: These Duplos have eyes all over them. It’s like a creature from Revelation.
He: What’s Revelation?
Me: It’s a book in the Bible. There are all sorts of creatures in it. Dragons, too. It will be a great book for you to read sometime, maybe when you are older.
He: Why?
Me: It’s a little bit scary.
He: Is there a movie?
Well, yes, son, there is a movie. Quite a lot of them, in fact. But we’ll start with the book first.
He’s started on chapter books with us, though, so we’ve been able to begin tackling some fun stories, like this. Revelation, perhaps, later.
The first thing I noticed when we got to my parents’ new home in South Carolina was the smell of the pines. The boys spent time outside there almost every day these last two weeks–the “cold” days there were high 40s, low 50s. It was truly good to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s with beloved and loving family. I thought I’d miss “our” beach, but the woods made a fine substitute.
(Of course, as I watch the sun rise over the water and type back at home, I’m grateful for the living room ocean view.)
One cause for prayer before traveling to see family is traveling logistics. How will the kids do on the plane? In the car on the way to the airport? Will they skip naps due to travel, and will this mean utter mayhem later?
But on the way home yesterday, on the plane, this happened:
Great logistics, great trip. I’m thankful for my family, and so glad we K-Js got to be with them these last two weeks.
Honest Toddler has just announced a few details of his/her (?) upcoming book (!):
In other news, I’m writing a book (Scribner USA-Simon & Schuster imprint, HarperCollins Canada, and Orion UK); a parenting guide for those of you disappointing your toddlers on a regular basis.
You probably need it if:
- You’ve ever told someone you love to look with their eyes.
- You think Ferber is a great man. Actually, Dr. Richard Ferber is a recluse who lives in an abandoned barn. He never intended his ramblings to be published.
- You believe in salad even though all the research points to the contrary.
- You’d rather watch Game of Thrones and eat Wheat Thins than take your toddler to an indoor play center.
The book will come out in May and will be available at all the stores (real and online). It’ll cost six or seven quarters, I don’t know. If you don’t have that much money just rip out the pages that apply to you and and take them to the cash register for prorating. Don’t mention my name if you get arrested. Part of being an adult is taking responsibility for your actions.
I’ve posted plenty about HT before. So I’m excited to read this upcoming book, especially since I do believe (strongly) in salad.
Words on the Word 