Title: Parenting with Purpose: How to Raise Well-Behaved Children and Build a Strong Parent-Child Relationship
Author: Nina V. Garcia
Publication Year: 2015
Website: Sleeping Should Be Easy
Amazon Product Page (Affiliate Link)

Note: For a limited time, you can get a FREE Kindle version of this book. Offer ends October 22, 2015. Don’t miss it!

Note 2: I was given a free pre-release copy of this book in electronic format in exchange for an honest review. See the note above to get a free copy too!

Review: At 130 pages, this book is a bit shorter than most parenting books. However, it really takes the best parenting advice from all of my favorite books, such as Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids and How to Talk so Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk and distills them down to this compact guide filled with the best wisdom applied to young kids. And honestly, what parent of toddlers and preschoolers has time to read super long books? (…besides me, but I’m a weirdo…)

The author supports the gentle, respectful parenting techniques that I personally strive to implement with my own kids. However, I don’t always succeed. Laura Markham, in Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids, uses a tough love writing style that frequently makes me feel guilty when I lose my temper and yell at my children. I still love that book, because it motivates me to do better. Nina Garcia, in this book, Parenting with Purpose, supports the same connection-based parenting philosophy, but is MUCH more understanding and forgiving when it comes to parents failing to follow through with these techniques in the heat of the moment. Her friendly, conversational writing style and understanding tone make this book easy and enjoyable to read.

Even though the author provides a lot of similar advice in this book as can be found in other connection-based parenting books, she also has several original ideas and interpretations that I found refreshing, interesting, and useful. For example, she describes the difference between distraction and redirection. I’ve always been a little uncomfortable distracting my kids during outbursts, because I sort of feel like it’s both a cop out and disrespectful to their feeling to change the subject completely when they are upset about something specific. However, the author’s redirection technique makes a lot of sense and not only respects their feelings, but uses the child’s misbehavior or meltdowns to help teach the child a better behavior.

I also appreciated the subtle distinctions the author made between concepts such as guilt and shame and her explanation of how praising for traits or qualities that require effort (such as intelligence) which is well-documented as a bad idea, is completely different than praising for inherent traits (like kindness or honesty). The author has a clear, concise writing style that is very effective and a unique perspective on many parenting topics.

Another aspect of this book which I found extremely helpful was that the author did not neglect to discuss incidences between siblings since many parenting books simply discuss how to respond to a single child during an incident. As the parent of 3 young children, 2 of which are twins, the author has plenty of experience handling these sorts of conflicts. As I am also the parent of 3 young kids, there were times reading this book when I honestly felt like the author was describing my life. She has a deep understanding of how young kids react in certain situations and is wonderful at motivating parents to see these events from the child’s perspective. (She describes an event involving a happy face sticker on page 59 that I swear happens to me at least once a month. From now on, I’ll respond better.)

Overall, this is the best parenting book I’ve found for families that have a child between the ages of 2 and 6. I’d recommend this book even more strongly to parents who have more than one child in this age range. If you support a gentle, respectful, understanding parenting philosophy which emphasizes your long-term relationship with your child over immediate results, then you will greatly enjoy and appreciate the wisdom contained in this book. (Personal Rating: 9/10)

Related Links:

Parenting Book Reviews
Parenting Books on Discipline
General Parenting Books

The post Parenting with Purpose appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

Review: I don’t think I’ve ever disliked a book as much as I disliked this one. I wanted to read the whole thing. I really did. After the first couple pages when the author paints motherhood using extremely negative imagery followed by a lively description in which the author describes an instance when he beat his dog, I knew I wasn’t going to agree with very much of the content.

However, I still wanted to get through it, to better understand how other parents who choose to spank their kids rationalize their actions. However, I just couldn’t do it. I read every word up to page 46 when the author says, “Mild spankings can begin between fifteen and eighteen months of age…When spankings occur, they should be administered with a neutral object; that is, with a small switch or belt…”.

After that, I’d had enough. I have a 23 month old and while I may be tempted to smack her cute little bottom on occasion, I can’t imagine actually doing it, and know for a fact that with my child, it’s completely unnecessary and would be more harmful than beneficial. I skimmed through the rest of the book and found other disturbing charts and descriptions, such as “My Attitude Chart (pg. 58)” in which the child earns points based on their daily attitude which determines a consequence ranging from “the family will do something fun together” all the way to “I get two swats with the belt.”

Seriously? I try to be open-minded about different parenting practices and I strongly believe it’s important to set clear limits and be firm with children, however, I don’t even want this book in my house. (Note that there is a much newer version of this book, called The New Strong Willed Child, which is surprisingly highly reviewed on Amazon. However, from what I can tell, the philosophy seems to be basically the same.) (Personal Rating: 2/10)

Related Links:

Parenting Book Reviews
Parenting Books on Discipline

The post The Strong-Willed Child appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

Review: In general, I agree with all the tenets of “attachment parenting,” I just sometimes get irritated when I see it being discussed as if it were something that needed to be invented and is a practice that should be subscribed to as opposed to common sense. Past infancy, in my mind, attachment parenting really just boils down to “have a good relationship with your child” and who doesn’t want that?

The most annoying thing about this book was that for many of the topics (i.e. how to grow your child’s self-confidence, how to discourage lying/cheating/stealing, how to prevent tantrums, etc.) the primary bit of advice is “practice attachment parenting.” There are other secondary suggestions too, but those also seem more or less like common sense and generally a good idea.

There really isn’t much discussion of what exactly you should do in certain difficult situations, which would be more useful from a book on discipline. I will say that I pretty much agree with all the advice in this book. There are some sections on time-outs and reward charts, which are practices that I know some parenting philosophies oppose, but I think are useful as a last resort. However, there’s not really anything particularly enlightening or thought-provoking in this book either, so generally speaking, I didn’t find it that helpful. (Personal Rating: 7/10)

Related Links:

Parenting Book Reviews
Parenting Books on Discipline

The post The Discipline Book appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

Review: I was really expecting to fully support this book, as I’m a big proponent of positive discipline. However, I had several issues with this book. 1) It’s pretty dull. 2) I feel like the authors probably had kids under the age of three a long time ago, as many of their scenarios seem like distant memories or stereotypical TV scripts. 3) They support a version of the cry-it-out method for older babies and suggest that co-sleeping can lead to more demanding behavior during the day, an opinion with which I personally disagree. 4) Many of the suggestions seem fairly obvious.

I still support positive discipline techniques above time-outs, yelling, threats, spanking, and other punitive methods. If these are the methods one finds oneself relying on in general, I might consider recommending this book, as I agree with over 90% of the content. However, it just wasn’t that helpful or enjoyable for me. The authors frequently reference the work of Rudolf Dreikurs, and I found his book, Children: The Challenge, to be far more readable and useful.
(Personal Rating: 6/10)

Related Links:

Parenting Book Reviews
General Parenting Books

The post Positive Discipline: The First Three Years appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

Review: There is nothing really wrong with this book. I more or less agree with most of the author’s parenting philosophies. However, I was not overly impressed with this book for two reasons: 1) It’s boring and I had a hard time even motivating myself to finish it and 2) It doesn’t really offer any original or interesting ideas. I feel like most of what is presented is just common sense (like give your child positive attention, be consistent, and encourage them when they behave) and the rest of it is a compendium of all sorts of typical parenting practices (like time outs and star charts). I’ll admit it is a very thorough book discussing everything from reasons for misbehavior to how to deal with common preschool challenges like bed time and potty training, I just didn’t happen to enjoy it. (Personal Rating: 5/10)

Related Links:

Parenting Book Reviews
Parenting Books on Discipline

The post How to Behave So Your Preschooler Will, Too! appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

Review: I bought this book, published in 1964, at a used book fair for 25 cents. After the first couple chapters, I thought it was going to be so outdated and awful (making references the atom bomb, desegregation, and women’s equality), that I mostly planned on reading it to amuse myself. However, once I got into the core of the book, I was astonished by how much sense many of the suggestions make. While many parenting books speak in generalities about what a parent should do in certain situations, this book is really just tons of examples, back to back, tied together in each chapter by a different theme or piece of parenting advice. Don’t get me wrong, this book is extremely outdated in certain respects (for example, “Going to school is the child’s function in life, just as going to work is Daddy’s and homemaking is Mother’s function (pg.118)”) and I completely disagree with about 10% of the advice presented (for example, “If Ellen has the right to slap or kick or bite, Mother has the same right…Mother slaps Ellen – and doesn’t pull her punch. (pg. 104)”). I also don’t agree with most of the advice for babies under a year old, as the author believes than even a newborn can manipulate. However, most of the advice for toddlers and older (the author seems to focus on 12 and under), seem truly helpful.

The author starts by discussing the main reasons children misbehave which are 1) a desire to get undue attention, 2) to demonstrate their power over the parent, 3) retaliation and revenge, and 4) a sense of helplessness. He believes in encouraging children, not punishing and criticizing them, and in treating them democratically and with equality. Many of the lessons are common sense, such as using logical consequences instead of punishment, but seeing them applied to various examples is useful for understanding how one might not be using the idea very effectively. Other lessons I feel are truly novel, such as never telling your child what they should do, but only stating what you, the parent, will do, so as not to elicit a power struggle. For the truly discouraged and frequently misbehaving child, his suggestion is to respond to every act of naughtiness including fighting, with a hug. Yes, it sounds crazy, but when the examples are presented, one gets the sense that what the author suggests really could work. Overall, the central advice to the parent appears to be to stay calm and respond to all children’s wild and crazy behaviors with a casual and friendly attitude. Easier said than done, but in my opinion, definitely worth trying. (Personal Rating: 9/10)

Related Links:

Parenting Book Reviews
Parenting Books on Discipline

The post Children: The Challenge appeared first on ResearchParent.com.