Why Can't My Child Behave?: Empathic Parenting Strategies That Work for Adoptive and Foster Families

by Amber Elliot

Parenting a child who doesn't know how to be parented is the most difficult job in the world' This book provides friendly expert advice on how to respond to difficult behaviours and emotions for parents of children with developmental trauma. Each chapter focusses on the common difficulties faced by carers or parents and features quick, applicable ideas with exercises and illustrations. How do you react to a child's difficult behaviour? How do you deal with your own negative emotions? How do you know when to be empathic? The book looks beyond the traditional punishment/reward strategies and aims to provide an explanation for such questions whilst helping the child in the process. This book will prove to be an invaluable resource for parents, foster carers, social workers and professionals working with children who are adopted or fostered.

Genres: Adoption, Parenting

248 pages, Paperback

First published August 28, 2013

Reviews

[Sammy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Normally I stick to fiction books but having just started a new job, this was one of the books recommend to me. And to be honest I kind of struggled with it. I like the layout of each chapter: Introduction, Examples, old methods, new methods, advantages and conclusions. And I did learn some things but every chapter came down to the same: acknowledge your feeling and be empathetic to the child. So by the time the 234 page came round I was really losing interest. Overall I’d give it a 3.5/5

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is written for adoptive parents and foster carers. Dr Amber Elliot superbly explains how experiencing trauma can impact how a child thinks, feels and behaves. The book offers parenting strategies that kindly supports the child development domains; physical, cognitive, emotional, social and pro-social. I found the book extremely useful to parent biological children who haven't experienced trauma. I explain this in detail on my blog - https://raising2children.com/an-aston...

I highly recommend this book for any parent. #parentingadvice

[Hayley DeRoche · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really helpful in breaking down the WHYs, a little light on what to DO with the whys.

[Tracie Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was writing an argument essay for a MOOC class on why hitting a child to make him or her behave isn’t optimal, so picked this book up for research purposes. Once I started reading it I realized that my Mom, being in Foster care for a year or two and then adopted at the age of 5, was one of the children the book focused on, and found it quite insightful as to how that experience shaped her personality, and how her adoptive parents might have better helped her past it, had they read this book. :-)