The Little Goo-Roo:
Lessons From Your Baby
by Jan and Tracy Kirschner, illustrated by Alana Lea GordeyAtlas Press P.O. Box 7054, Boulder, CO. ISBN: 0965796019 (1997).
The Little Goo-Roo, Lessons From Your Baby is a poignant, humorous, interactive, and thoughtful book whose purpose is to awaken consciousness through the experience of child rearing. It will be welcomed by parents who are reaching out for the gifts of truth that a child inherently brings. The book is a template organized in forty-sex lessons to facilitate parent-child relationships that promote personal and spiritual growth.
The authors appreciate the fact that babies are teachers as well as learners, and they come bringing their preferences thoughts, and feelings. Babies are in a fresh, innocent state of "beingness" that helps to raise the consciousness of the parents. How profoundly simple is the orchestration of life! The child teaches the parent who is teaching the child. Together they create the evolution of consciousness itself. This is what the Little Goo-Roo so vividly portrays. All consciousness is the ebb and flow of "being" and "becoming."
As a parent of children both living and passed on, I was struck by the realization that becoming a parent for any length of time automatically enrolls one in this interactive cycle. I realized, once again, what amazing Little Goo-Roos my unborn children were.
Adjacent to each lesson page is a blank page titled "Notes" where the reader can write thoughts, memories, and feelings stimulated by the lesson.
The Little Goo-Roo is provocative, spiritual, and can be used with each subsequent pregnancy and parenting experience.
As a potential learning tool, the Little Goo-Roo guides parents who want to see parenting in a new light where teaching and learning is reciprocal. It can open the eyes of parents-to-be, new parents, or veteran parents to the depth and potential of child rearing in a world where there is so much misunderstanding about both parenting and Self.
Reviewed by Sylvia Philpy, MSN, NNP
Colorado Springs, CO