Why Is My Child in Charge?: A Roadmap to End Power Struggles, Increase Cooperation, and Find Joy in Parenting Young Children

by Claire Lerner

Solve typical toddler challenges with eight key mindshifts that will help you parent with clarity, calmness and self-control. Through stories from her practice, Claire Lerner shows parents how making critical mindshifts—seeing their children’s behaviors through a new lens —empowers parents to solve their most vexing childrearing challenges. This process puts parents back in the driver’s seat, where they belong and where their children need them to be. These real life stories provide a roadmap for how to tune into the root causes of children’s behavior and how to create and implement strategies that are tailored to the unique needs of each child and family. Through these stories, Claire provides a treasure trove of practical solutions that are based in science and which work in real life. Why Is My Child In Charge? picks up where other books have left parents hanging. Most parenting books offer solutions that sound good on paper but don’t work in practice. They are aspirational rather than achievable, or they offer one-size-fits-all approaches that don’t meet the needs of an individual child. They can compound parents’ feelings of frustration and thus, can be counterproductive. Case by case, Claire unpacks the individualized process she guides parents through to solve the most common challenges such as throwing tantrums in public; delaying bedtime for hours; refusing to participate in family mealtimes; and resisting potty training. Employing a relatable story-telling approach, Claire Why is My Child in Charge? is like having a child development specialist in your home. It shows how you can develop “win-win” strategies that translate into adaptable, happy kids and calm, connected and in-control parents. It will help you be the parent you want to be.

Genres: Parenting, Nonfiction, Psychology, Audiobook, Adult

224 pages, Hardcover

Published September 2, 2021

Reviews

[Randye Kaye · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had the honor of thoroughly reading this book...out loud, since I narrated the audio edition. From the first chapter, I started using Claire Lerner's techniques with my three pre-school-age grandchildren - and, believe me, they work! Her book is easy to read, has lots of stories to illustrate the points, and provides the exact language you can use to help things go more smoothly and happily in your family - and get the end results you want. Highly recommended!

[Lesli Rotenberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally, a book that truly understands how to help parents!
There are so many parenting books out there and they are well intentioned but rarely helpful with real world problems. That’s where this book really stands out. This is the first book I’ve read that uses actual case studies of parents who were doing their best but were stuck in mindsets that were working against them. It’s a common problem but we often aren’t aware of what is flawed about our mindsets when it comes to our own kids. There’s all this baggage we are carrying around from our own pasts or from what we think parenting is supposed to be like. We all want to make our kids happy but sometimes the things we are doing are setting them up to fail or perpetuating negative patterns. Because she has so much experience in the field, the author is able to apply strategies that are proven to work and they make parenting more enjoyable and less of a power struggle. At the heart of her strategies is a deep love and understanding of what children need. It’s all grounded in science AND real life experiences with parents who are struggling just like us. I found the advice incredibly helpful and easy to implement. It made me rethink a lot of assumptions I was making about my own kids. It is such a find that I have now bought it for friends and family with young children so they can benefit too.

[Kristen McBee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helpful strategies for parents. I've read so many parenting books at this point that a lot of this was old news to me, but it's helpful to hear in different ways. This is targeted to parents who have some faulty thinking (we all do at times!), like, for example, thinking that it's bad for a kid to be unhappy at any point. I don't have that kind of faulty thinking, but the examples on boundary-setting did provide a few ideas, like reading half of a book in the bath and the other half in bed if the transition from bath to bed is cumbersome. Same idea for waking up in the morning - half at night, half after getting dressed. She recommends visual timers, which we've used before (and still do!) and found helpful. And then having a "mommy / daddy moment", either alone or together, in which the parent takes a beat to think aloud about the problem at hand. I can see that it will prevent reacting and shows the children that it's okay to take a moment to figure things out and come up with a response or plan. The problem, of course, lies in actually doing it. When one kid is hitting another, it's really hard to stop and have a stage monologue. Maybe with practice, it will become my first response.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a fantastic guide to teaching parents how to teach and parent with love and calm instead of reacting with frustration with things go awry. I love that Claire's main premises revolves around the fact that children are strategic, not manipulative and do not have the emotional skills to handle situations that parents may think they should, thus logic is not always the answer. Her parenting tips are firm, but kind, and her "two great choices..." plan is fantastic and works so well! The book format is intuitive and simple and there are gobs of examples for various situations for the reader to get ideas from. I love child development and read all of the new release books on the topic I can get my hands on, but this one was really different, in a good way! I enjoyed it immensely and will definitely be coming back to it! This is a hidden gem that you definitely want to read!

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

As with all parenting books, there were things that I did and did not agree with. I like that Claire Lerner's approach focuses on is and is not in a parent's control, and responding instead of reacting to your child.

I wish these parenting books offered more troubleshooting options though. In the stories, the child always miraculously started listening and behaving when the author's tools are put into place, with only a day or two of push-back. I would like to see a story where several tools had to be put into place after others failed. That would helpfully show how to more realistically integrate the tools.

Also, I was hoping this book would address how to interact with your child when they are physically clinging to the thing that you need taken away.

[Lindsey Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clear and to the point, with just enough background and context to help the reader understand their child developmentally without being overwhelming; the focus is on the scenarios and strategies, and it's easy to see how to adapt these to real-life scenarios. As a frequent reader of parenting books, I found this one straightforward and oddly more reassuring than most I've read - perhaps because of the level of detail in scenarios and solutions. I appreciated all the sample plans!

[Caitlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not typically a fan of self help books, but I found some very helpful advice in how to parent a young child. While some of the tricks I had already employed, some were new, and thankfully there were few I disagreed with. The outline of the book was repetitive in a way that repeatedly relied on the same framework to really drive the same messages home. I plan to use some of these tactics, knowing that I’m also human and can’t always be a perfect parent. But I’ll try!

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s probably because half of the stories/examples in this book are literally Jenna that I like it so much. But also, the suggestions in the book really work! I don’t know if they’re for every kid but for the kids who need a little more guidance/limits they are spot on. We already do most of these with Jenna but looking forward to implementing some of the new ideas that were presented!

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best parenting book I’ve read so far! The author lays out each chapter in such an easy to understand and helpful way. I feel prepared to handle so many more power struggles with my kiddo now in a way that feels like the way I have been wanting to parent but was getting stuck.

[Carlos · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an ok book. It has good examples and suggested solutions for kids between 2-6 years. But they also work for older kids

[Chelsea Triolo Feulner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of info that's in a million other parenting books, which she does admit! I did get a lot of helpful ideas and info that I hope to implement with my 3yo!

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars. Easy to read and concise with strategies that make sense and feel do-able. Time will tell if any of this helps with my kid. Wish I had found this book a couple years ago.

[Sarah Guldenbrein · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up after it was referenced in a way that intrigued me in some book or podcast, I can't remember now.

The main ideas are very obvious to me, which I guess just means that I'm in relatively good shape to parent a toddler.

Some of the specific conversations and resource recommendations were pretty helpful. I'd never thought about visual timers, which she recommends repeatedly, and that seems like a great kid tool. Also a good reminder for me that even though I have a lot of strong feelings about picky eating, that keeping a disinterested air about it may be helpful.

[Cb Sellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

What we can control and what we cannot. Parents role in providing a safe environment. Consistency. Not talking too much. Makes sense.