A new approach for dealing with the most common—and seemingly intractable—battles of will between parents and children. Authoritative and sound, but lighthearted and guilt-free, all of the authors' suggestions work toward building a child's self-esteem.
Two simple but powerful ideas stand behind this book's advice for coping with children's behavior you can change your child's behavior by changing the way you react to theirs; and you must accept that much of what unnerves parents is actually appropriate to the various stages of a child's development.
Change Your Child's Behavior by Changing Yours tackles thirteen particularly difficult situations that prompt most tugs-of-wills, including conflicts involving bedtime, dressing, eating, going places, shopping, and sibling rivalry. Each chapter opens with a section called "Sound Familiar?" that describes a scenario parents will quickly recognize. Authors Chernofsky and Gage then identify the development stage that is prompting the distressing behavior, help parents to relate the child's behavior in a somewhat parallel situation, and offer strategies for coping with and changing the situation for the better.
A succinct overview of how to address the most common issues parents face with children aged 2-6. Most of this stuff I have already learned by trial and error, but I wish I had read this book two years ago. The cutesy format (low notes, high notes, the tune they sing, etc.) gets a little tiresome, but, overall, it's helpful, or at least would have been if I had read it sooner in my parenting "career."
Excellent advice for parenting young kids ... wish it'd been around when my kids were a little younger! (We came in when the kids were on the older side of the advice offered.)