1 out of 4 stars
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Who Hears While Not Listening? is a non-fiction book about the effect of poor communication on the family. The author, Alim M. Bey, notes that family structures are breaking down. He attributes it to poor communication between parents and their children. He feels that parents are often too engrossed in their own worlds to really listen to their children. He observes that some children make mistakes and wrong choices in the process of growing up. He feels they would not have made those mistakes if they had been properly guided by their parents. He attributes some criminal behavior exhibited by young people to lack of guidance and poor communication with their parents. He gives an example of a child who was totally unprepared for puberty. She suffered severe mental anguish when she observed the changes in her body because she thought they were abnormal. He also gave some examples of effective communication between parents and their children. The author strongly condemns beating children who want to express themselves. He adds a nice political angle to it by discussing political leaders who do not listen to the masses. He does this discreetly without mentioning any names.
The book is targeted at adults and parents who do not pay attention to their children. The author's passion for children is evident in this book. He appears to be genuinely concerned about their welfare. I admire and identify with his concern for children. He is so passionate about the subject matter that I wonder if he wrote this book because of his own personal childhood experiences.
I could relate to this topic because I have childhood friends who had difficulty communicating with their parents. One of them thought she had breast cancer when she noticed early changes in her chest region in childhood. Some of them felt that there were topics they could not talk to their parents about. I feel we should be close enough to our parents to tell them anything without the fear of being misunderstood. However, it will take some effort on the part of parents to make their children trust them enough to discuss freely with them.
While I understand and identify with the subject matter of this book, this is probably the worst book I have ever read. It had no clear outline or structure. It was filled with repetitions. Indeed, I believe that a good editor can reduce all the text to three pages. The sentences were sometimes very awkward and incoherent. It appeared to have been written by someone who learned English as a second language. If English is not the author's first language, I advise that the author should engage the services of a professional editor. I have never read a more badly written book. There were several grammatical and punctuation errors. There were missing commas, missing periods, missing phrases, and spelling errors. Some of the sentences were extremely long. There were paragraphs that contained only one long, awkward sentence. Sometimes, words were misused in sentences, and the statements lost their meaning entirely.
I found this book very hard to read and I struggled to finish reading the book. I rate this book 1 out of 4 stars. The one star is for the idea and the effort. I suggest that any reader who finds typographical errors very distracting should avoid reading this book. In its present poorly written and poorly edited state, I am afraid I cannot recommend it to anyone.
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Who Hears While Not Listening?
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