Parent Training

I was lucky to find this little book, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk, at the thrift store one day. I love it. It is an integration of my favorite parenting perspectives and techniques (John Gottman's emotion coaching and Love and Logic), it is simply written with lots of examples and descriptive images, and it is has exercises to practice for each lesson. The authors' purpose is to offer us new skills and patterns that will enable us to respect our children, support our children to be caring and responsible, live without blame and accusation, express our feelings with sensitivity, and help us all to feel good about ourselves.

The book takes us through 6 different areas of focus: 1. Helping children deal with their feelings; 2. Engaging their cooperation; 3. Alternatives to punishment; 4. Encouraging autonomy; 5. Praise; and 6. Freeing children from imposed roles. I learned the most from the chapter on praise. The book says that sometimes praise can have the opposite effect of what we intend by producing self-doubt rather than self-esteem. When someone tells me, for example, that I "look great," I think, "Yeah right. I haven't lost my pregnancy weight and I barely fit into these pants. You should have seen me 2 years ago." The praise got me right into my issues. But if someone tells me "those pants are really flattering on you," I think, "Cool. I'll wear these pants more often!" In the same way, we can encourage our children by being specific and descriptive with our praise. The authors show us how to describe what we see, describe how we feel, and sum up the child's praiseworthy behavior with a word.

I'm looking forward to coming back to this book again and again.


Related posts:
Our Children Are Our Best Teachers
The Intentional Family
Winning at Parenting Through Trust