Description Preface to the 4th Edition: Children Are Amazing Beings Preface to the 3rd Edition: Love Your Child Just As They Are Preface to the 2nd Edition: You'll Understand Once You've Raised Them Prologue: When Did Mom Actually Raise Us? Part 1 "Elephant Feet" and the "Park Family" Mothers Who Make History Being a Little Slow Makes Life Easier A Home Is for People Is There Really a Special Way to Talk? Part 2 Not "My Way" But "Your Way" Your Child Might Be a Genius Truly Helping Them Find What They Want to Do If They're Going to Be Discouraged Anyway, Better Sooner Than Later You Think You Know Your Child Best? They Take After You Who Is a Father to His Children? Part 3 Being a Good Child Is Hard Too Walking Alone Through a Rough Wilderness If You Don't Know, Just Say So Studying Just Keeps Getting More Fun You Went to College and You Don't Know That? Being a High School Senior Isn't Some Special Title Our One and Only Third Child Part 4 The Best Thing I've Ever Done Mom, I'm Pooping Right Now How Are We Doing Financially? We Are Children of the Dark Why I Don't Mind Not Having a Daughter Is a Cousin Really Worse Than a Neighbor? Part 5 A Mother Grows as Much as Her Child Does Because You Got Stuck With Me as Your Mom They Do Just Fine Without Me, the Little Rascals Dancing With Natural Enemies It's Not Just the Children Who Waver The Luckiest Mom in the World Epilogue: Have You Finally Discovered the Ocean? Inside the Book When unmarried young women ask me to sign their copy, I often find myself asking them in return whether this book, written by their mother's generation, isn't too old-fashioned for them. They answer that nothing has really changed since then — that raising children still feels frightening and uncertain. They say they find comfort in a story of raising children according to one's own convictions, without being swayed by the world, and that they receive great comfort and encouragement from it. They say that whenever they feel shaken, they open the book to any page at all, and it puts their heart at ease. — From the Preface to the 4th Edition Whether or not a mother works outside the home, in order to give her child emotional stability, the parents themselves must first be stable. The fact that my husband and I were both born with somewhat easygoing, unflappable temperaments is something we owe entirely to our own parents. But being naturally easygoing isn't something to boast about. It's far more admirable and valuable to work at becoming that way through effort — in other words, to deliberately cultivate an emotionally stable character. — From "Being a Little Slow Makes Life Easier" His theory was simple: children of mothers who keep an overly tidy house lack imagination, and so they aren't creative, and in the end, they can't do well in their studies either. Human imagination, he said, blooms freely in a bit of clutter. Coming to Korea, he said, he found it frustrating that all his friends wished for their children to excel academically, yet in practice were blocking their children's growth. And then he said something to me that I could only have dreamed of hearing: "You are a mother who knows how to inspire her children." It was like the old saying about a cow stepping backward and catching a mouse by accident — he was talking about me. — From "A Home Is for People" One night, past midnight, while sitting in the living room studying, I became so upset with myself that I collapsed over the table and cried alone, lamenting, "How can I be so thickheaded? How can I possibly be so..." As I lay there crying for a while, I felt a small body climb onto my back. It was my second child. She must have woken up needing to use the bathroom and been startled to find her mother like that. She said, "Mom, you're the one who always tells us to let go of the idea that we have to be number one — but right now you're upset because things aren't going the way you want, aren't you? Mom, you don't have to be number one either. You just have to try your best." — From "The Luckiest Mom in the World"