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mrs_bonaventure's review against another edition
5.0
Excellent common sense advice which, though I hope I’m not too bad a parent, I still wish I’d read years ago.
Essentially it’s about letting your children have their own lives, becoming who they were meant to become, and not directing or over-helping because you think you know better.
And the importance of listening. The older I get, the more I think listening is a super power and a JedI skill all in one.
Essentially it’s about letting your children have their own lives, becoming who they were meant to become, and not directing or over-helping because you think you know better.
And the importance of listening. The older I get, the more I think listening is a super power and a JedI skill all in one.
tophat8855's review against another edition
5.0
I’ve heard most of this before, but as always with any parenting book, it’s always good to get a reminder. I think my only concern is the emphasis of sharing your strong feelings with your kids: there is a place for helping them understand that their actions affect people but also you need to make she that children don’t feel responsible for their parents’ feelings. He doesn’t really address that. But other than that, very good.
writerethink's review against another edition
3.0
I found active listening, I-messages, and no-lose conflict resolution to be very useful concepts and I think I'll get a lot from this book on that front, but I felt like the book itself was about twice (or more) as long as it needed to be, very repetitive, and very...I don't know, borderline-infomercialish in terms of the way Gordon promoted his perspective. So it was a bit of a slog on that level. And all of the proclamation about the tendencies "today's youths" just made me roll my eyes, because it's the kind of overgeneralized writing I see a lot of in the freshman-level college writing class I teach - my students learn to write better by the end of the class :)
kwugirl's review against another edition
5.0
Wow, it took me over a year to finally get myself through this book, even though the entire time I was reading it, I felt like it was excellent and worthwhile. I have very extensive highlighting throughout the book, but tl;dr I think if people were only going to read one parenting book ever, it should be this one.
===================================
Ch2: Parents are persons, not Gods
* When a child receives "mixed messages," she may begin to have grave doubts about the honesty or genuineness of her parent. She learns from many experiences that her mother often says one thing when she feels another. Eventually the child grows to distrust such a parent.
* In a relationship as close and enduring as the parent-child relationship, the parent's true feelings seldom can be hidden from the child.
* Parents need to understand that they had better not try to extend their area of acceptance beyond what their true attitudes are. Far better for parents to realize when they are not feeling accepting and not pretend that they are.
* Whether a child feels that she as a person is unaccepted will be determined by how many of her behaviors are unacceptable. Parents who find unacceptable a great many things that their children do or say will inevitably foster in these children a deep feeling that they are unacceptable as persons. Conversely, parents who are accepting of a great many things their children do or say will produce children who are more likely to feel acceptable as persons.
* Parents are people, not gods. They do not have to act unconditionally accepting, or even consistently accepting. Neither should they pretend to be accepting when they are not. While children undoubtedly prefer to be accepted, they can constructively handle their parent's unaccepting feelings when parents send clear and honest messages that match their true feelings. Not only will this make it easier for children to cope, but it will help each child to see her parent as a real person--transparent, human, someone with whom she would like to have a relationship.
* Many parents fall into the trap of assuming responsibility for solving problems that their children own, rather than encouraging them to solve their problems themselves.
Ch3: How to Listen So Kids Will Talk to You: The Language of Acceptance
* nonintervention to show acceptance: keeping hands off when a child is engaged in some activity is a strong nonverbal way of communicating acceptance. Many parents fail to realize how frequently they communicate nonacceptance to their children simply by interfering, intruding, moving in, checking up, joining in. Too often adults do not let children just be. They invade the privacy of their rooms, or move into their own personal and private thoughts, refusing to permit them a separateness. Often this is the result of parental fears and anxieties, their own feelings of insecurity.
* In Active Listening, the receiver tries to understand what it is the sender is feeling or what his message means. Then he puts his understanding into his own words (code) and feeds it back for the sender's verification. The receiver *does not* send a message of his own--such as an evaluation, opinion, advice, logic, analysis, or question. He feeds back only what he feels the sender's message meant--nothing more, nothing less.
* active listening requires certain attitudes, or else it will sound mechanical and insincere: willing to take the time to listen, want to be helpful, be able to accept the feelings, trust in the child's capacity to handle their feelings, appreciate that feelings are transitory and not permanent, and see your child as someone separate from you
Ch4: Putting your active listening skill to work
* Unusually coded messages that children send, particularly questions, often mean that the child is coping with a deeper problem. Active Listening provides parents with a way of moving in and offering to help the child define the problem for herself, and starting up the process of problem-solving within the child. Giving direct answers to these feelings-coded-as-questions almost invariably results in the parent's muffing an opportunity to be an effective counselor on the real problem the child is grappling with.
* When parents complain that their kids never talk about serious problems at home, it usually turns out that such problems have been tentatively and hesitatingly tossed out on the table by their kids, but the parents went into the traditional routines: admonishing, preaching, moralizing, teaching, evaluating, judging, sarcasm, or diverting. Slowly, then, kids start pulling down the curtain that forever will separate their own minds from the parents' minds. No wonder there is such alienation between parents and children.
Ch6: how to talk to kids will listen
* [Adults] assume that a friend has brains enough to find his own solution to your problem once he is told what the problem is. An adult would simply tell the friend her feelings.
* Children will be much more likely to change their unacceptable behavior if their parents send I-Messages containing these three parts: 1) a description of the unacceptable behavior, 2) the parent’s feeling, and 3) the tangible and concrete effect the behavior has on the parent. [behavior + feeling + effect]
Ch7: putting i-messages to work
* Parents learn in PET that if they frequently vent angry You-Messages, they had better hold a mirror up to themselves and ask, “What is going on inside me?” “What needs of mine are being threatened by my child’s behavior?”
* Children, not unlike adults, often don’t know how their behavior affects others. In the pursuit of their own goals they are often totally unaware of the impact their behavior might have. Once they are told, they usually want to be more considerate. Thoughtlessness frequently turns into thoughtfulness, once a child understands the impact of his behavior on others.
* Adults often underestimate the willingness of kids to be considerate of adults’ needs, once they are honestly and straightforwardly told how others feel. Kids can be responsive and responsible, if only grown-ups take a moment to level with them.
* Positive I-Messages are not likely to be interpreted as manipulative and controlling the way praise usually is as long as these two conditions are met:
The parent is not consciously trying to use the messages to influence the child to repeat the desired behavior (to modify the child’s future behavior).
The message is simply a vehicle for communicating a spontaneously experienced temporary feeling–that is, the feeling is genuine and real, as well as here and now.
Ch9: inevitable parent-child conflicts: who should win?
* it would be a rare relationship if over a period of time one person’s needs did not conflict with the other’s. When any two people (or groups) coexist, conflict is bound to occur just because people are different, think differently, or have different needs and wants that sometimes do not match. Conflict, therefore, is not necessarily bad–it exists as a reality of any relationship. As a matter of fact, a relationship with no apparent conflict may be unhealthier than one with frequent conflict.
* This is the critical factor in any relationship: how the conflicts get resolved, not how many conflicts occur.
* “I am permissive with my children until I can’t stand them. Then I become strongly authoritarian until I can’t stand myself.”
Ch10: Parental Power: Necessary and Justified?
* Parents assume that adolescent rebellion and hostility are inevitably a function of this stage of development. I think this is not valid–it is more that adolescents become more able to resist and rebel.
* An adolescent, therefore, does not rebel against her parents. She rebels against their power. If parents would rely less on power and more on nonpower methods to influence their children from infancy on, there would be little for children to rebel against when they become adolescents. The use of power to change the behavior of children, then, has this severe limitation: parents inevitably run out of power, and sooner than they think.
* What children have a right to expect, however, is that they always be told when their parents are not feeling accepting of a certain behavior…This is quite different from wanting parents to use authority to set limits on their behavior.
* when parents ask, “Isn’t it my responsibility to use my power to influence my child?” they reveal a common misunderstanding about the effectiveness of power as a way of influencing their children. Parental power does not really “influence” children; it forces them to behave in prescribed ways. Power does not “influence in the sense of persuading, convincing, educating, or motivating a child to behave in a particular way. Rather, power compels or prevents behavior. Compelled or prevented by someone with superior power, a child is not really persuaded. As a matter of fact, she will generally return to her former ways as soon as the authority or power is removed because her own needs and desires remain unchanged. Frequently she will also be determined to get back at her parent for the frustration of those needs as well as the humiliation inflicted on her. Therefore, power actually empowers its own victims, creates its own opposition, fosters its own destruction.
Ch12: parents’ fears and concerns about the “no-lose” method
* Parents have to be helped to grasp the fundamental difference between Method II and Method III. They need repeated reminders that in Method III, they too must get their needs met; they too must accept the ultimate solution. If they feel they have given in to a child, then they have used Method II, not Method III.
* We do not equate Method III with the term “compromise” in the sense of accepting less than you want, because it is our experience that its solutions almost always bring more to both parent and child than either expected.
* How can anyone refute the idea that parents are wiser and more experienced than children? It seems to be such a self-evident truth. Yet, when we ask parents in our classes, whether their own parents made unwise Method I decisions, they all say, “Yes.” How easy it is for parents to forget their own experiences as children!
* “Parents have superior wisdom” No, not about many things concerning their children. Parents do have much valuable wisdom and experience, and that wisdom and experience need never be buried. Many parents in P.E.T. overlook at first the point that the wisdom of both the parent and the child is mobilized by the no-lose method. Neither is left out of problem-solving (in contrast to Method I, which ignores a child’s wisdom, or Method II, which ignores the wisdom of parents).
Ch13: putting the “no-lose” method to work
* In the no-lose method, parents would simply assume that the kids will carry out the decision. That is part of the new method–trust in each other, trust in keeping to commitments, sticking to promises, holding up one’s end of the bargain. Any talk about penalties and punishments is bound to communicate distrust, doubt, suspicion, pessimism. This is not to say that kids will always stick to their agreement. They won’t. It says merely that parents should assume that they will. “Innocent until proven guilty” or “responsible until proven irresponsible” is the philosophy we recommend.
ch14: how to avoid being fired as a parent
* Parents get fired by their kids when they hassle and harangue them to change cherished beliefs and values. Adolescents dismiss their parents when they feel they are being denied their basic civil rights. Parents lose their opportunity to have a constructive influence on their children by too desperately and too persistently trying to influence them where kids are the most eager to determine their own beliefs and their own destiny.
* When children strongly resist attempts to modify behavior that they feel won’t interfere with the parents’ needs, their behavior is no different from that of adults. No adult wants to modify her behavior when she is convinced that it is not hurting someone else. Adults as well as children will fight vigorously to maintain their freedom when they feel someone is pushing them to change behavior that is not interfering with the other person. This is one of the most serious mistakes parents make and one of the most frequent reasons for their ineffectiveness. If parents would limit their attempts to modify behavior to what interferes with the parents' needs, there would be far less rebellion, fewer conflicts, and fewer parent child relationships that go sour. Most parents unwisely criticize, cajole, and harass their children to modify behaviors I have no tangible or concrete effect on the parent. In defense, children fight back, resist, rebel, or breakaway.
* Much of the rebellion of today's adolescents can be attributed to parents and other adults who put pressure on them to modify behavior that the kids feel is their own business. Children do not rebel against adults–they rebel against the adults' attempts to take away their freedom. They rebel against efforts to change them or mold them in the adults’ image, against adults’ harassment, against adults’ forcing them to act according to what the adults think is right or wrong.
* This might not have been the outcome in another family in the same circumstances. The point is, the child must accept the logic that her behavior is having a tangible and concrete effect on the parent. Only then will she be willing to enter into no-lose problem solving. The lesson for parents is that they had better be able to make a good case for some particular behavior having a tangible or concrete effect on their lives, or the child may not be willing to negotiate.
* Libertarian parenting! – Granting children civil rights or certain inalienable freedoms presupposes viewing children as separate human beings or independent persons, having a life of their own. Not many parents see their children this way when they first learn P.E.T. They have difficulty accepting the principle of allowing their children freedom to become what they want to become, provided their behavior does not tangibly and concretely interfere with the parents becoming what he or she wants to become.
* Is it even possible to impose values on another healthy person by power and authority? I think not. More likely, the result is that those whose minds one wishes to influence or resist even more strongly such domination, often defending their beliefs and values all the more tenaciously. Power and authority may control the actions of others; they seldom control their thoughts, ideas, beliefs.
In addition to influencing children's values by modeling, parents can use one other approach to teach what they feel is right or wrong. They may share with their offspring their ideas, their knowledge, and their experience, much as a consultant does when her services are requested by a client. There is a catch here. The successful consultant shares rather than preaches, offers rather than imposes, so just rather than demands. Even more critical, the successful consultant shares, offers, and suggests usually no more than once. The effective consultant offers her clients the benefit of her knowledge and experience, yes, but does not hassle them week after week, does not shame them if they don't buy her ideas, it does not keep pushing her point of view when she detects resistance on the part of her client. The successful consultant officer ideas, then leaves responsibility with the client for buying or rejecting them. If a consultant behaved as most parents do, her client would inform her that her services were no longer desired.
* All a parent can do is to try to influence by being a model, being an effective consultant, and developing a “therapeutic” relationship with the kids. After that, what else? As I see it, a parent can only accept the fact that she ultimately has no power to prevent such behaviors, if the child is bent on doing them. Maybe this is one of the prices for being a parent. You can do your best, then hope for the best, but in the long run you run the risk that your best efforts might not be good enough. Ultimately you, too, may then ask, “Lord, grant me the serenity to accept what I cannot change.”
ch15: how parents can prevent conflicts by modifying themselves
* The last concept that we offer parents is that they can prevent many conflicts between parent and child by changing some of their own attitudes. This idea is presented last because it can be somewhat threatening to parents to be told that sometimes they might be the ones who should change, rather than their children. It is far easier for most parents to accept new methods to change their children and new methods for modifying the environment and then to accept the idea of making changes within themselves. Parenthood in our society is considered more a way to influence the growth and development of children than the growth in the development of parents. Too often Parenthood means raising kids; they are the ones to adjust to parents. There are problem kids, but not problem parents.
* Studies show that a direct relationship exists between how accepting people are of others and how accepting they are of themselves. A person who accepts himself as a person is likely to feel a lot of acceptance for others. People who cannot tolerate a lot of things about themselves usually find it difficult to tolerate a lot in others. A parent needs to ask himself a penetrating question: “How much do I like who I am?”
* I often tell parents, “Don't want your child to become something in particular; just want him to become.”
===================================
Ch2: Parents are persons, not Gods
* When a child receives "mixed messages," she may begin to have grave doubts about the honesty or genuineness of her parent. She learns from many experiences that her mother often says one thing when she feels another. Eventually the child grows to distrust such a parent.
* In a relationship as close and enduring as the parent-child relationship, the parent's true feelings seldom can be hidden from the child.
* Parents need to understand that they had better not try to extend their area of acceptance beyond what their true attitudes are. Far better for parents to realize when they are not feeling accepting and not pretend that they are.
* Whether a child feels that she as a person is unaccepted will be determined by how many of her behaviors are unacceptable. Parents who find unacceptable a great many things that their children do or say will inevitably foster in these children a deep feeling that they are unacceptable as persons. Conversely, parents who are accepting of a great many things their children do or say will produce children who are more likely to feel acceptable as persons.
* Parents are people, not gods. They do not have to act unconditionally accepting, or even consistently accepting. Neither should they pretend to be accepting when they are not. While children undoubtedly prefer to be accepted, they can constructively handle their parent's unaccepting feelings when parents send clear and honest messages that match their true feelings. Not only will this make it easier for children to cope, but it will help each child to see her parent as a real person--transparent, human, someone with whom she would like to have a relationship.
* Many parents fall into the trap of assuming responsibility for solving problems that their children own, rather than encouraging them to solve their problems themselves.
Ch3: How to Listen So Kids Will Talk to You: The Language of Acceptance
* nonintervention to show acceptance: keeping hands off when a child is engaged in some activity is a strong nonverbal way of communicating acceptance. Many parents fail to realize how frequently they communicate nonacceptance to their children simply by interfering, intruding, moving in, checking up, joining in. Too often adults do not let children just be. They invade the privacy of their rooms, or move into their own personal and private thoughts, refusing to permit them a separateness. Often this is the result of parental fears and anxieties, their own feelings of insecurity.
* In Active Listening, the receiver tries to understand what it is the sender is feeling or what his message means. Then he puts his understanding into his own words (code) and feeds it back for the sender's verification. The receiver *does not* send a message of his own--such as an evaluation, opinion, advice, logic, analysis, or question. He feeds back only what he feels the sender's message meant--nothing more, nothing less.
* active listening requires certain attitudes, or else it will sound mechanical and insincere: willing to take the time to listen, want to be helpful, be able to accept the feelings, trust in the child's capacity to handle their feelings, appreciate that feelings are transitory and not permanent, and see your child as someone separate from you
Ch4: Putting your active listening skill to work
* Unusually coded messages that children send, particularly questions, often mean that the child is coping with a deeper problem. Active Listening provides parents with a way of moving in and offering to help the child define the problem for herself, and starting up the process of problem-solving within the child. Giving direct answers to these feelings-coded-as-questions almost invariably results in the parent's muffing an opportunity to be an effective counselor on the real problem the child is grappling with.
* When parents complain that their kids never talk about serious problems at home, it usually turns out that such problems have been tentatively and hesitatingly tossed out on the table by their kids, but the parents went into the traditional routines: admonishing, preaching, moralizing, teaching, evaluating, judging, sarcasm, or diverting. Slowly, then, kids start pulling down the curtain that forever will separate their own minds from the parents' minds. No wonder there is such alienation between parents and children.
Ch6: how to talk to kids will listen
* [Adults] assume that a friend has brains enough to find his own solution to your problem once he is told what the problem is. An adult would simply tell the friend her feelings.
* Children will be much more likely to change their unacceptable behavior if their parents send I-Messages containing these three parts: 1) a description of the unacceptable behavior, 2) the parent’s feeling, and 3) the tangible and concrete effect the behavior has on the parent. [behavior + feeling + effect]
Ch7: putting i-messages to work
* Parents learn in PET that if they frequently vent angry You-Messages, they had better hold a mirror up to themselves and ask, “What is going on inside me?” “What needs of mine are being threatened by my child’s behavior?”
* Children, not unlike adults, often don’t know how their behavior affects others. In the pursuit of their own goals they are often totally unaware of the impact their behavior might have. Once they are told, they usually want to be more considerate. Thoughtlessness frequently turns into thoughtfulness, once a child understands the impact of his behavior on others.
* Adults often underestimate the willingness of kids to be considerate of adults’ needs, once they are honestly and straightforwardly told how others feel. Kids can be responsive and responsible, if only grown-ups take a moment to level with them.
* Positive I-Messages are not likely to be interpreted as manipulative and controlling the way praise usually is as long as these two conditions are met:
The parent is not consciously trying to use the messages to influence the child to repeat the desired behavior (to modify the child’s future behavior).
The message is simply a vehicle for communicating a spontaneously experienced temporary feeling–that is, the feeling is genuine and real, as well as here and now.
Ch9: inevitable parent-child conflicts: who should win?
* it would be a rare relationship if over a period of time one person’s needs did not conflict with the other’s. When any two people (or groups) coexist, conflict is bound to occur just because people are different, think differently, or have different needs and wants that sometimes do not match. Conflict, therefore, is not necessarily bad–it exists as a reality of any relationship. As a matter of fact, a relationship with no apparent conflict may be unhealthier than one with frequent conflict.
* This is the critical factor in any relationship: how the conflicts get resolved, not how many conflicts occur.
* “I am permissive with my children until I can’t stand them. Then I become strongly authoritarian until I can’t stand myself.”
Ch10: Parental Power: Necessary and Justified?
* Parents assume that adolescent rebellion and hostility are inevitably a function of this stage of development. I think this is not valid–it is more that adolescents become more able to resist and rebel.
* An adolescent, therefore, does not rebel against her parents. She rebels against their power. If parents would rely less on power and more on nonpower methods to influence their children from infancy on, there would be little for children to rebel against when they become adolescents. The use of power to change the behavior of children, then, has this severe limitation: parents inevitably run out of power, and sooner than they think.
* What children have a right to expect, however, is that they always be told when their parents are not feeling accepting of a certain behavior…This is quite different from wanting parents to use authority to set limits on their behavior.
* when parents ask, “Isn’t it my responsibility to use my power to influence my child?” they reveal a common misunderstanding about the effectiveness of power as a way of influencing their children. Parental power does not really “influence” children; it forces them to behave in prescribed ways. Power does not “influence in the sense of persuading, convincing, educating, or motivating a child to behave in a particular way. Rather, power compels or prevents behavior. Compelled or prevented by someone with superior power, a child is not really persuaded. As a matter of fact, she will generally return to her former ways as soon as the authority or power is removed because her own needs and desires remain unchanged. Frequently she will also be determined to get back at her parent for the frustration of those needs as well as the humiliation inflicted on her. Therefore, power actually empowers its own victims, creates its own opposition, fosters its own destruction.
Ch12: parents’ fears and concerns about the “no-lose” method
* Parents have to be helped to grasp the fundamental difference between Method II and Method III. They need repeated reminders that in Method III, they too must get their needs met; they too must accept the ultimate solution. If they feel they have given in to a child, then they have used Method II, not Method III.
* We do not equate Method III with the term “compromise” in the sense of accepting less than you want, because it is our experience that its solutions almost always bring more to both parent and child than either expected.
* How can anyone refute the idea that parents are wiser and more experienced than children? It seems to be such a self-evident truth. Yet, when we ask parents in our classes, whether their own parents made unwise Method I decisions, they all say, “Yes.” How easy it is for parents to forget their own experiences as children!
* “Parents have superior wisdom” No, not about many things concerning their children. Parents do have much valuable wisdom and experience, and that wisdom and experience need never be buried. Many parents in P.E.T. overlook at first the point that the wisdom of both the parent and the child is mobilized by the no-lose method. Neither is left out of problem-solving (in contrast to Method I, which ignores a child’s wisdom, or Method II, which ignores the wisdom of parents).
Ch13: putting the “no-lose” method to work
* In the no-lose method, parents would simply assume that the kids will carry out the decision. That is part of the new method–trust in each other, trust in keeping to commitments, sticking to promises, holding up one’s end of the bargain. Any talk about penalties and punishments is bound to communicate distrust, doubt, suspicion, pessimism. This is not to say that kids will always stick to their agreement. They won’t. It says merely that parents should assume that they will. “Innocent until proven guilty” or “responsible until proven irresponsible” is the philosophy we recommend.
ch14: how to avoid being fired as a parent
* Parents get fired by their kids when they hassle and harangue them to change cherished beliefs and values. Adolescents dismiss their parents when they feel they are being denied their basic civil rights. Parents lose their opportunity to have a constructive influence on their children by too desperately and too persistently trying to influence them where kids are the most eager to determine their own beliefs and their own destiny.
* When children strongly resist attempts to modify behavior that they feel won’t interfere with the parents’ needs, their behavior is no different from that of adults. No adult wants to modify her behavior when she is convinced that it is not hurting someone else. Adults as well as children will fight vigorously to maintain their freedom when they feel someone is pushing them to change behavior that is not interfering with the other person. This is one of the most serious mistakes parents make and one of the most frequent reasons for their ineffectiveness. If parents would limit their attempts to modify behavior to what interferes with the parents' needs, there would be far less rebellion, fewer conflicts, and fewer parent child relationships that go sour. Most parents unwisely criticize, cajole, and harass their children to modify behaviors I have no tangible or concrete effect on the parent. In defense, children fight back, resist, rebel, or breakaway.
* Much of the rebellion of today's adolescents can be attributed to parents and other adults who put pressure on them to modify behavior that the kids feel is their own business. Children do not rebel against adults–they rebel against the adults' attempts to take away their freedom. They rebel against efforts to change them or mold them in the adults’ image, against adults’ harassment, against adults’ forcing them to act according to what the adults think is right or wrong.
* This might not have been the outcome in another family in the same circumstances. The point is, the child must accept the logic that her behavior is having a tangible and concrete effect on the parent. Only then will she be willing to enter into no-lose problem solving. The lesson for parents is that they had better be able to make a good case for some particular behavior having a tangible or concrete effect on their lives, or the child may not be willing to negotiate.
* Libertarian parenting! – Granting children civil rights or certain inalienable freedoms presupposes viewing children as separate human beings or independent persons, having a life of their own. Not many parents see their children this way when they first learn P.E.T. They have difficulty accepting the principle of allowing their children freedom to become what they want to become, provided their behavior does not tangibly and concretely interfere with the parents becoming what he or she wants to become.
* Is it even possible to impose values on another healthy person by power and authority? I think not. More likely, the result is that those whose minds one wishes to influence or resist even more strongly such domination, often defending their beliefs and values all the more tenaciously. Power and authority may control the actions of others; they seldom control their thoughts, ideas, beliefs.
In addition to influencing children's values by modeling, parents can use one other approach to teach what they feel is right or wrong. They may share with their offspring their ideas, their knowledge, and their experience, much as a consultant does when her services are requested by a client. There is a catch here. The successful consultant shares rather than preaches, offers rather than imposes, so just rather than demands. Even more critical, the successful consultant shares, offers, and suggests usually no more than once. The effective consultant offers her clients the benefit of her knowledge and experience, yes, but does not hassle them week after week, does not shame them if they don't buy her ideas, it does not keep pushing her point of view when she detects resistance on the part of her client. The successful consultant officer ideas, then leaves responsibility with the client for buying or rejecting them. If a consultant behaved as most parents do, her client would inform her that her services were no longer desired.
* All a parent can do is to try to influence by being a model, being an effective consultant, and developing a “therapeutic” relationship with the kids. After that, what else? As I see it, a parent can only accept the fact that she ultimately has no power to prevent such behaviors, if the child is bent on doing them. Maybe this is one of the prices for being a parent. You can do your best, then hope for the best, but in the long run you run the risk that your best efforts might not be good enough. Ultimately you, too, may then ask, “Lord, grant me the serenity to accept what I cannot change.”
ch15: how parents can prevent conflicts by modifying themselves
* The last concept that we offer parents is that they can prevent many conflicts between parent and child by changing some of their own attitudes. This idea is presented last because it can be somewhat threatening to parents to be told that sometimes they might be the ones who should change, rather than their children. It is far easier for most parents to accept new methods to change their children and new methods for modifying the environment and then to accept the idea of making changes within themselves. Parenthood in our society is considered more a way to influence the growth and development of children than the growth in the development of parents. Too often Parenthood means raising kids; they are the ones to adjust to parents. There are problem kids, but not problem parents.
* Studies show that a direct relationship exists between how accepting people are of others and how accepting they are of themselves. A person who accepts himself as a person is likely to feel a lot of acceptance for others. People who cannot tolerate a lot of things about themselves usually find it difficult to tolerate a lot in others. A parent needs to ask himself a penetrating question: “How much do I like who I am?”
* I often tell parents, “Don't want your child to become something in particular; just want him to become.”
katehyde's review against another edition
5.0
This may very well be the best parenting book I've ever read. The author provides fantastic advice on how to deal with people - not just your children, but everyone. The author is a strong advocate of using "I-Messages" (ex. "I feel _______ when _________, because _________."), which I think is a great way of communicating with anyone.
I highly recommend this book to any parent, or any person for that matter!
I highly recommend this book to any parent, or any person for that matter!
chanelchapters's review against another edition
5.0
This book isn't just for helping communication between you and your children, this book also helped me communicate and compromise better with my husband, stopped a lot of arguments in their tracks. Can't speak highly enough of it.
storycraft's review against another edition
4.0
Seems strange to rate a parenting book. It felt like a refresher with theory after reading [easy to love difficult to discipline] a year or so ago. But I've been trying it out with ours at home and it seems to be helping through a tough period, so maybe there is something to this.
supatrey's review against another edition
4.0
Very quick read with lots of very useful ideas and information.
It's really just an introduction, though. The book is full of examples on how to apply the techniques in different situations, but they don't really cover each technique for each age group. I think some additional conversation around edge cases would also be useful.
Even so, this seems to me to be a very solid introductory text for non-punitive parenting approaches.
It's really just an introduction, though. The book is full of examples on how to apply the techniques in different situations, but they don't really cover each technique for each age group. I think some additional conversation around edge cases would also be useful.
Even so, this seems to me to be a very solid introductory text for non-punitive parenting approaches.
jfwhitton's review against another edition
5.0
I decided to read this book after a friend said her dad read this book, followed it's ideas and raised her & her brother accordingly. She's a kind, put together, successful woman, so her dad did something right.
This book gives me a lot to ponder about raising my kids. Ugh, parenting can be so hard sometimes!
I liked the thoughts and theories in this book. I will definitely try to incorporate them in my relationships with my kids.
This book gives me a lot to ponder about raising my kids. Ugh, parenting can be so hard sometimes!
I liked the thoughts and theories in this book. I will definitely try to incorporate them in my relationships with my kids.