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Kids, Parents, and Power Struggles
Parents and kids pitted against one another, opposing forces pulling in different directions - both determined to win! Every family experiences power struggles, but these daily tugs of war are not inevitable. In Kids, Parents, and Power Struggles, Mary Sheedy Kurcinka presents real strategies for getting to the root of the emotions and needs that can creates daily hassles. But power struggles aren't just about winning and losing. They provide rich opportunities for learning how to deal with strong emotions and for parents and children to solve problems together.
Kids, Parents, and Power Struggles helps to unravel the mysteries of power struggles by recognizing that every child is unique and every discipline situation different. The author presents successful strategies for understanding emotions, managing intensity, and identifying triggers. In a new light, she views power struggles as an opportunity to teach you child essential life skills: such as how to calm themselves, to be assertive rather than aggressive, to solve problems, and to work cooperatively with you and others.
Hard as it may seem in the heat of the battle, conflict really does present an opportunity to connect with your child!
Audiobook
First published January 1, 1999
122 people are currently reading
1608 people want to read
About the author
Mary Sheedy Kurcinka
13 books46 followersMary Sheedy Kurcinka is a best-selling author and internationally recognized lecturer and parent educator. Her books Raising Your Spirited Child, Raising Your Spirited Child Workbook; Kids, Parents, and Power Struggles; and Sleepless in America: Is Your Child Misbehaving or Missing Sleep have been translated into ten languages.
As director of parentchildhelp.com, Mary provides training nationally and internationally for families and professionals, including medical personnel, educators, and social service providers who serve families. Licensed as a parent educator and early childhood teacher, she has pioneered efforts to bring topics such as temperament, neurobiology, the importance of sleep, and emotion coaching into homes, schools, medical practices, and businesses. She is as comfortable as a keynote speaker for major professional conferences as she is working one on one with families in their homes or teachers in their classrooms.
Known for her real-life examples, Mary links research-based information with typical challenging behaviors and provides practical solutions that really work. Her presentations have helped hundreds of thousands of parents and professionals to understand children better, and themselves as well.
Born on a third-generation dairy farm, Mary lives with her husband in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is the proud mother of one son and one daughter — now adults with whom she loves to spend time.
As director of parentchildhelp.com, Mary provides training nationally and internationally for families and professionals, including medical personnel, educators, and social service providers who serve families. Licensed as a parent educator and early childhood teacher, she has pioneered efforts to bring topics such as temperament, neurobiology, the importance of sleep, and emotion coaching into homes, schools, medical practices, and businesses. She is as comfortable as a keynote speaker for major professional conferences as she is working one on one with families in their homes or teachers in their classrooms.
Known for her real-life examples, Mary links research-based information with typical challenging behaviors and provides practical solutions that really work. Her presentations have helped hundreds of thousands of parents and professionals to understand children better, and themselves as well.
Born on a third-generation dairy farm, Mary lives with her husband in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is the proud mother of one son and one daughter — now adults with whom she loves to spend time.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 92 reviews
June 5, 2014
Fantastic parenting book. Possibly the best I've read. I think a good tagline would be: Know yourself, know your kids, know success. It covers all sorts of ways to get to the root of the problems that parents and children face every day, through all stages of life. It's easy to think your main task is to get your kids to change, but this book really helps readers as parents see how their own behaviors contribute to the struggles, and most importantly I think, how to work together with your kids to have harmony in the home. Some of my favorite lessons: Your kids aren't out to get you; connect first; be an emotion coach instead of an intimidator; and so many more. I fully believe I will reread parts (if not all) of this book every year for the rest of my parenting life. So, forever. It's just awesome. I can't recommend this book enough. If you are a parent, read it. Then you'll want to read it again and again.
February 6, 2019
I really enjoyed this parenting book. I have read quite a few parenting books and I find that many sound great and have great concepts, but you are left with no way to know how to apply them. They often sound too good to be true. This book has a lot of specific examples and things to do or say in certain situations. I loved how she broke situations down by each type of temperament so you could understand how your child communicates and handles different situations. It is a very practical book. I actually listened to it as an aduiobook but I would definitely suggest a hard copy instead because I feel like you will be doing a lot of highlighting. I took a ton of notes.
July 19, 2010
I just love this author! All of her books are awesome! (I'm wishing she would write one about "shy" children right now!) She always gives really hands on advice and cushions it with lots of stories from other families. It helps me know I'm not alone--and sparks a lot of good ideas--some of which actually work.
I think my biggest take away from this book was anger management--first for myself and secondly to teach my kids better solutions. Current power struggles have definitely up-ed the ante in our house and this has helped me get better control of my end of the reactions and brainstorm a few solutions.
Hope you don't need it...but if you do I give it all my stars!
I think my biggest take away from this book was anger management--first for myself and secondly to teach my kids better solutions. Current power struggles have definitely up-ed the ante in our house and this has helped me get better control of my end of the reactions and brainstorm a few solutions.
Hope you don't need it...but if you do I give it all my stars!
April 5, 2023
One of the best parenting books I’ve read yet! Incredibly straightforward with tons of useful tips to put to practice right away. I especially enjoyed the chapters on temperament because as a parent you’re often told “different kids need different things” but I’ve yet to see it broken down as clearly and as helpfully as I saw in this book. Will definitely be recommending to other parents!
January 11, 2019
Easily one of the best parenting books I have read. Many of the examples (although not all) actually seem like events/conversations that truly happen, including some I have experienced. I love the idea of parenting with the end in mind. It is too easy to get caught up in the day-to-day with young children and lose sight of the relationships we are fostering for 10, 20, 30, etc. years down the road.
April 23, 2019
This book is excellent. For my strong willed self and my spirited kids, she gave lots of useful phrases and things to try to help bring the temperature of our home down. I really appreciated the ideas of emotionally coaching our kids (and selves) and strongly feel it is a missing or fractured skill for so many of us. The world could use some more well adjusted problem solvers.
I borrowed the book from our library and will be buying it to read again and take notes. :)
I borrowed the book from our library and will be buying it to read again and take notes. :)
March 13, 2018
A decent book, but not exactly life-changing or earth-shattering, though the fact that I've read several books in this genre recently could be contributing to that sentiment. It had an overall sound approach and contained several nuggets of wisdom, but not enough to make it stand out from other entries.
October 13, 2008
This is one to buy and read and re-read and re-read...
August 29, 2010
This book was full of practical insight. One I most likely will return to again and again.
Highly recommended.
Highly recommended.
April 11, 2012
Like almost all parenting books, it made its point in the first few chapters and then spent 200 more pages reiterating.
April 7, 2023
This is a pretty good book, I think. I just couldn't get into it. It's a positive parenting / gentle parenting book from the early aughts, which is to say, before that corner of the universe dove off the deep end.
The summary: see your kids as generally good people who have some bad moments. Build a deeply connected relationship with your kid so they won't want to be bad.
This consists of trying to understand them (and how they are different from you and how that may cause friction); of extending that understanding into moments of strife; of trying to foster connection at all times; of clearly setting and holding boundaries, but not to an unreasonably didactic level.
There were moments when I understood what she was saying. Create boundaries. Hold them. But don't be a monster about it; everyone has bad days.
There are moments in the book where I just felt confused. Like: are you really supposed to run a bath every time your kid needs to calm down if that's their jam? She does insinuate that a couple of times. And she does presage the excesses of positive parenting.
For example, if you ask your kid to set the table and they balk, you should then try to make it fun and exciting and basically abandon whatever you are trying to get done in order to jolly them into setting the table, so that it is absolutely no help to you at all if they do end up setting the table (in the example given, the kid did not). The alternative -- just yelling at the kid to set the table -- would not be more successful, but you'd at least get something else done at the same time.
In the end I didn't finish it. It just couldn't hold me. I don't know if it was because I've read too many parenting books, and this just didn't add anything for me. Or maybe there was some weakness in the writing, a lack of clear message and direction.
The summary: see your kids as generally good people who have some bad moments. Build a deeply connected relationship with your kid so they won't want to be bad.
This consists of trying to understand them (and how they are different from you and how that may cause friction); of extending that understanding into moments of strife; of trying to foster connection at all times; of clearly setting and holding boundaries, but not to an unreasonably didactic level.
There were moments when I understood what she was saying. Create boundaries. Hold them. But don't be a monster about it; everyone has bad days.
There are moments in the book where I just felt confused. Like: are you really supposed to run a bath every time your kid needs to calm down if that's their jam? She does insinuate that a couple of times. And she does presage the excesses of positive parenting.
For example, if you ask your kid to set the table and they balk, you should then try to make it fun and exciting and basically abandon whatever you are trying to get done in order to jolly them into setting the table, so that it is absolutely no help to you at all if they do end up setting the table (in the example given, the kid did not). The alternative -- just yelling at the kid to set the table -- would not be more successful, but you'd at least get something else done at the same time.
In the end I didn't finish it. It just couldn't hold me. I don't know if it was because I've read too many parenting books, and this just didn't add anything for me. Or maybe there was some weakness in the writing, a lack of clear message and direction.
August 26, 2020
As usual, Mary Sheedy Kurcinka seems to be the only parenting-advice author who actually understands the kids I have, instead of the kids your neighbor has -- you know, the one putting pics of her kids eating raw cucumbers on Facebook and making lunches from Pinterest.
There is a particular kind of kid, the kind Kurcinka calls "spirited," that cannot be parented with the "normal" advice, and this is where she steps in and tries to lay out a path for those of us with the edge-case kids. It is a LOT OF WORK. But the alternative is that you constantly feel like a failure and your kid is constantly erupting! So, y'know. Needs must.
This is a perfect companion to Raising Your Spirited Child, though I think the advice in this book is even helpful for "normal" kids.
There is a particular kind of kid, the kind Kurcinka calls "spirited," that cannot be parented with the "normal" advice, and this is where she steps in and tries to lay out a path for those of us with the edge-case kids. It is a LOT OF WORK. But the alternative is that you constantly feel like a failure and your kid is constantly erupting! So, y'know. Needs must.
This is a perfect companion to Raising Your Spirited Child, though I think the advice in this book is even helpful for "normal" kids.
October 16, 2019
This is the second book by this author that I have read. She attacks parenting very much in the style I want to parent in, being an emotional coach. I searched specifically for this author when I was looking for the next step on parenting my now 6 and 8 year old kids who emotions seem to get bigger and more intense by the year. I read Spirited Child many times and passed it on to another parent in need; Spirited Child no longer applied to these school aged kids I found myself with.
I hope to apply the strategies over the years to help create a family that communicates better and thinks before acting. There is plenty of room for us all to grow and I am looking forward to the process. Much like Spirited Child I will likely reference this book many times over the years as a reminder to myself.
I hope to apply the strategies over the years to help create a family that communicates better and thinks before acting. There is plenty of room for us all to grow and I am looking forward to the process. Much like Spirited Child I will likely reference this book many times over the years as a reminder to myself.
December 2, 2017
p. 20
"Begin with the end in mind."
p.21
"Hold a clear understanding of your destination--the kind of relationship you want to have with your child in the long run."
Imagine a moment your child is graduating from high school.
- How do you want him to feel about himself?
How do you wnat her to feel about you?
Are the words and actions you're using today taking you in that direction?
"Begin with the end in mind."
p.21
"Hold a clear understanding of your destination--the kind of relationship you want to have with your child in the long run."
Imagine a moment your child is graduating from high school.
- How do you want him to feel about himself?
How do you wnat her to feel about you?
Are the words and actions you're using today taking you in that direction?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 25, 2023
Myers-Briggs personality type research is questionable but the emotion coaching foundation balances it out.
I think the two most helpful aspects are the book directs you to understand your needs and your kid's needs, preferences, and triggers and the other helpful aspect is the examples given to help you implement the principles.
I think the two most helpful aspects are the book directs you to understand your needs and your kid's needs, preferences, and triggers and the other helpful aspect is the examples given to help you implement the principles.
August 22, 2020
Great book with lots of scenarios from her sessions with parents. An encouraging author, Mary gave me some “tools”, really truths about how kids think and why they do the things they do. I’m a lot happier and my son seems to be too and there’s more love.
December 28, 2020
Slow-going because it has so much information and scenario examples, but written clearly. A few editing errors. Lots of useful ideas that I will be implementing in my day-to-day dealings with my preschoolers.
March 20, 2023
Great tips for the parenting toolbox and they work. I like how she explains that we are emotional coaches for our kids and how to teach them to handle them. It encourages emotional intelligence and knowing how to handle your triggers and emotions as a parent. Highly recommended!
October 24, 2023
Written more than 20 years ago but still perfectly relevant. I especially appreciated the sections on introverts and stressed children.
While I realized this wasn’t the topic I actually needed, it was short, sweet, and to the point — still worth the read!
While I realized this wasn’t the topic I actually needed, it was short, sweet, and to the point — still worth the read!
July 5, 2018
Thought Spirited Child was better
February 2, 2019
Good insights and valuable advice that I was able to apply.
March 27, 2019
One of the best parenting books I've read - if you've got strong willed children (who tend to be born to strong willed parents), it's a must.
July 3, 2019
Very enlightening and complete in its coverage. I only wish there was an Spanish edition so I can share it with my wife.
November 30, 2019
An excellent read for parenting all ages, toddlers to teenagers. I need to read this book at least once a year.
April 15, 2020
An amazing resource. I read the audio version and found I kept rewinding it to hear it again. A great read for educators and parents.
May 31, 2021
Good advice. Just a little dull. Read half and then came back to it a year later. Valuable information and practical application. I read the copy from 2000.
November 19, 2021
Express emotions and teach your children to do the same. A lot of great tools in this book.
February 3, 2022
Lots of good info to help make my relationship with my kids better. Now to put it all in to play!
March 19, 2022
Good as audiobook. An abbreviated version of her spirited kids book. Read by the author.
April 25, 2024
Very practical! Suggests strategies you can implement right away.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 92 reviews