Misadventures of a Parenting Yogi

May 5, 2014
In this follow-up to his 2012 title, Misadventures of a Garden State Yogi, Leaf offers a warm, funny memoir about the surprising and enlightening ups and downs of parenthood. The book covers wife Gwen’s pregnancies, the behavior and development of their two sons, and family and community dynamics in Northampton, Mass. (“the yoga, holistic health, folk music, and Lesbian capital of the U.S.”), among other topics. In 43 short chapters, Leaf comments on parenting approaches he used with varying degrees of success, including Dr. William Sears’s Attachment Parenting; the advice of stalwart Dr. Benjamin Spock (“a righteous dude”); Alfie Kohn’s Unconditional Parenting; anthropologist Gwen Ingrid Bauer’s no-diaper “elimination communication,” and many others. Very connected to his Jewish roots and his yoga practice, Leaf is a mindful parent, heeding the Dalai Lama’s advice that the sure key to parenting “is patience, compassion, forgiveness, and even faith, in my kids... but also in myself.” In this insightful book, he reminds readers to remain open to those transcendent moments of love, connection, and happiness that make parenthood a pure joy.