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There is a lot of good advice in this book, or at least a lot of advice that has worked well for my family. Since hearing about this book this summer (before I read a page), I was reflecting on how the physical environment of our home could be more serene and also how fewer choices might make toys more navigable. We worked to achieve this vision, and sure enough, my daughter has played more independently, seems happier in her space, and the rest of us also benefit from this renewed sense of organization, light, and calm. Similarly, my daughter's mind is constantly brimming over with images and scenes from the media she consumes; we are finding that if we limit that television watching more, that she enjoys what she watches more, has time to process it, and has fewer problems at bedtime. There are many concrete suggestions in this book that work for me and for my kid whose brain and body are absolutely always on the go.

That being said...Payne's purpose is simply to provide advice for parents, not to contextualize his advice. So while the aspects of parenthood and childhood that he is criticizing here are all related to capitalism--unchecked consumerism, media intensity, parental stress, extracurricular competitiveness--he barely alludes to the structural pressures that they reflect, instead insisting on the power of parental willpower. Once the parent decides THROUGH THE POWER OF THEIR LOVE to do all of these things, simplicity, peace, and calm will follow (ugh).

He points out that he is imagining a fairly privileged and affluent audience here, but I was uncomfortable with the rhetorical of parental dedication he employs in every chapter. (There's also a weirdly masculinist bent to his celebration of taciturn parenting a la Pa in Little House on the Prairie.) I experienced this as a rising tide of expectation from the psychologist who thinks I must do better at creating serenity (while also performing my job and paying my bills) and constantly chilling with my child, regardless of the other demands on my time. In fact, he explicitly criticizes parents for working too many hours, as though that was something that these parents just invented in an effort to mar their children for life (which he swears this does).

Unlike Judith Warner who points out the double-binds that contemporary working parents face in a country without subsidized childcare or flexible work days (not to mention with careers that colonize even at-home moments through the use of digital technologies), Payne promises multiple times that if we make the effort to simplify, our lives will also be simple. The individualist "you" at the center of this book is (to my mind) a lie. Also, he acts as if this could be achieved once and for all--that simplicity breeds simplicity--without recognizing, as my household has already found with our new efforts at keeping things tidy, categorized, not overstimulating, that this requires constant maintenance work that someone is performing.

Often, he sounds chastising ("if you haven't tried establishing a weekly meal menu, you really must because it will improve life for your child") in a way that doubles-down on the "parental imperfection is the source of this mess" tone. This becomes ironic when he identifies parental worry as one of the emotional sources (which he associates with mothers--of course) of the distress that unsettles the child's security. The effect of these proliferating injunctions is...worry.

I'm also deeply uncomfortable that he compares the hyper-stimulated first world kid to children he has worked with in Myanmar with PTSD. I hope I don't have to explain why this conflation of genocide, poverty, and hunger with overscheduling, junk toys, and picky eaters is troubling.

That being said, I do think that less stuff, less media, more chill time are all valuable for adults and children, and I do hope to implement some of his suggestions in our home life. Even if I don't come up with a weekly meal menu as he earnestly enjoins me to do.