The First Teachers: Ancient Stories and Modern Research on Bonds That Shape a Life

Most books on parenting tell you what to do. Most books on mythology keep their distance. The First Teachers does neither. It observes. It places stories from the Sanskrit epics, the Upanishads, Homer, the Norse tradition, and the Hebrew scriptures alongside findings from attachment theory, developmental psychology, and neuroscience, and lets the reader notice what is already known. The ancient stories and the modern research are not offered as explanations of each other. They illuminate the same territory from different centuries and different methods. Ten chapters, ten recurring patterns in the parent-child relationship - the parent whose love blinds them, the child whose gifts exceed the household's compass, the truth a mother carries - each traced through story, history, and research. For the reader who has been a child, is now a parent, and noticed that the distance between those two experiences is both larger and smaller than expected.