Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Best Book Ever

A friend of mine (another mom) asked me today for a recommendation for a good book on disciplining her kids, and I just love it when I get that request! Why? Because I love the answer: How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk (photo courtesy of Amazon.com)

This book is and has been my saving grace, my go-to book and the bible of play therapy. It just about sums up how to be a great parent, which will lead to happy kids!

What ages is it for? Well, it's a good start for parents that can be applied at the toddler stage all the way up to teenagers, and hey, I even use them on my husband too!  Yes, it works with adults because we all know, when someone is empathic and understanding to you (which the book teaches) you feel so much more understood and communicate better!  I have even started using the tips in here early with my non-verbal child so that we can get a running start and is good practice for us too.

Let me explain how it became the best parenting book of all time. The authors are 2 women who took a parent guidance class back in the 1970's from a famous psychologist, Dr. Haim Ginott, PhD and then took his principles and their every day experiences with their children, and created this step-by-step book. It's a classic because it's real moms with real stories, not just some research study on how to get kids to listen.  It's filled with cartoons and really easy to read guidelines in it- definitely NOT a boring textbook.

I love the first few sentences of the book in Chapter 1:

"I was a wonderful parent before I had children. I was an expert on why everyone else was having problems with theirs. Then I had three of my own."  "Living with real children can be humbling and every morning I would tell myself, 'Today is going to be different,' but every morning was a variation of the day before: 'He punched me', or 'this oatmeal looks like throw-up'..'you gave me more than her', etc.

And they go on to explain how they then decided to take a parenting class and it changed their relationships for the better with their kids.

Now, I read this book way before I had kids but was so glad that I did. It helped me empathize more with my parent clients and I used the book's techniques with them to help them with their children at home. I would assign them to read each chapter a week at a time and then I would go over it with them so they could apply all of the suggestions to their own situations at home.  We always got such great results with it, that I could not wait to use it when I had kids of my own.

To give you an idea of what the book has to offer, here are the chapters:

  1. Helping Children Deal With Their Feelings

  2. Engaging Cooperation

  3. Alternatives to Punishment

  4. Encouraging Autonomy

  5. Praise

  6. Freeing Children from Playing Roles

  7. Putting It All Together

So, not to bore you with step by step instructions and details about the book, I figured a few pictures from it will give you a better idea of what it teaches.

Here is an example from the first chapter of what not to do in a meltdown episode (and no, the book is not all cartoons):

And here is what the book teaches you to do instead (to avoid meltdowns and temper tantrums):

See how different the outcomes were above? Now, there are a lot of different techniques and tips in the whole book, but this first chapter starts with the basics such as identifying feelings, etc. The limit setting tips are a lot like the Limit Setting ones I gave in a previous post: listen first, acknowledge the wish or feeling, give the feeling a name and then grant them their wish in fantasy. Sounds basic and even corny but it completely works!

Here is an example for older kids when they disobey. In this example, the child was not coming home  on time from playing outside (you can use this for an older teen who misses a curfew too):

Parent: "I've been thinking that it's probably not easy for you to leave your friends when you are having fun."

Kid: "Yeah"

Parent: " On the other hand, I worry when you're late. Let's put our heads together and see if we can come up with some ideas that would be good for both of us. Let's write down all of our ideas together."

Kid:  "I'll come home at 6:30 and you won't worry."

Parent: "I'll write that down..what else?"

and they both write down their ideas on the list

Parent: "Now let's look at our list and see what we want to cross out and what we want to keep."

Kid: "Cross out where you pick me up."

And they both come up with a reasonable solution.

Sounds too good to be true I know, but it really does work! Imagine how you felt as a teen when you were grounded or sent to your room for something you did and how your parents 'just didn't understand!' But if they had come to you and said, "okay, so it looks like you keep getting in trouble and instead of grounding you all the time, I want you to write down a few ideas that you think we should consider, and I'll do the same and we can come up with a good solution together!"

You would have probably thought some had alien had taken over your parent's body, but how nice it would have been to hear something like that? I know I would have complied a lot more if I felt it was fair and I had some sort of say.

Okay, I could go on and on about this book, but hopefully you get the idea- it's amazing and no, I do not get any sort of payment for recommending this :) I've seen copies of it before in half price book stores or you can order it online here.

The author's website also has a lot of tips and information on how to order DVDs and tutorial information.

Have any of you read this book before and had any success?


  1. [...] yesterday I blogged about my favorite parenting book (How To Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk), and thought why not talk about my favorite children’s book?  Now, I have a ton of favorite [...]