Come. Walk with me through parenting. Our walk through parenting will be much like a walk through a magnificent garden accompanied by a friend who is a master gardener. As the two of you follow the various paths that pass through an array of plant, she will explain why some plants are growing and becoming objects of beauty while others are withering and dying. She will help you avoid the rose thorns that try to snag you. As you walk along the path you gather the flowers that are most appealing to you. As you exit the garden, you leave with a bouquet uniquely yours and the confidence that future walks through this garden and other gardens will be more enjoyable. Think of me as your personal guide through parenting and this book as a series of paths through parenting. Together we will go down paths that will sharpen your understanding of parenting your child from birth through the elementary grades. I will help you avoid the thorns of parenting. I will give you a variety of parenting techniques and explain when and how to use them. You will learn that no one technique solves all parenting challenges. Therefore you will select, from an array of parenting techniques, the ones that meld with your values and are appropriate for your child to create your personal parenting plan. Your new knowledge and your parenting plan will give you the confidence that future parenting will be more enjoyable.
About the Author: The intertwining of Dr. Brinkmann's life experiences - education, parenting, teaching, and working with parents - provide a unique and strong basis for writing a book on parenting. A Walk through Parenting is rooted in psychological principles and has evolved over her twenty-four years teaching child psychology and education to college students, seven years teaching parenting to groups of future and current parents, and the direct experience of raising three biologically unrelated adopted children. Dr. Brinkmann's education provides a strong foundation for this book. She received her BA and MA in education from the University of Michigan and her PhD. in Educational Psychology from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where she concentrated on learning theory and child psychology. As a professor at St Louis Community College, she not only taught psychological principles in the classroom but also observed students applying them as they interacted with children ages one through twelve. This enabled her to fine-tune her presentations on psychological principles in ways that resulted in their appropriate application. Her nine years as a stay-at-home mom followed by twelve years as a working mom provided practical parenting experience. She parented three unique children - two boys and one girl - who were all adopted and share no genetics with each other or their parents. As she and her husband, Dr. Erwin Brinkmann (PhD in Psychology from the University of Michigan and professor of Psychology at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, Illinois), discussed how to meet parenting challenges, their understanding of the parenting process increased. Their children taught them how different children respond to various parenting techniques. Their children have all become highly competent adults, each pursuing goals commensurate with their personalities. Her interest in applied psychology culminated in a commitment to helping parents. As a volunteer, she developed and taught parenting classes for Southern Illinois Lutheran Child and Family Services of Illinois. During this time she also served as a mentor mom for her church's Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS) group. These experiences with parents convinced her that the temperament and personalities of the parents played an important role in determining their comfort level, and therefore their success, using various parenting techniques.