I was on pediatrician Dr. William Sears’s website www.askdrsears.com today and saw his “Top Ten Discipline Principles.” It is definitely worth a read. Here’s a link to the post TOP TEN DISCIPLINE PRINCIPLES.
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In 1-2-3 Magic, Thomas Phelan outlines his deceptively simple approach to discipline. Any time that a child is engaged in a disapproved of activity, the parent gives two warnings followed by a time out. The first warning is indicated by the parent saying “that’s one.” The second warning is indicated only by “that’s two.” Finally, [...]
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In my 10 Best Parenting Books for Parents of Challenging Boys, I put a Yoga DVD as my number 10 “book.” I did this because parenting young children, especially challenging boys, can be physically demanding and emotionally stressful. If we do not take care of our bodies and our stress we can’t be at our [...]
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What does “setting limits” really mean? A “limit” refers to a rule that establishes a specific behavior to be unacceptable. “No blowing bubbles in your milk” is an example of a limit. “Setting” a limit refers to a two-step process. Step 1 is communicating the rule to the child. For example, Johnny is blowing bubbles [...]
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“His greatest personal strengths are exactly those things that make it most difficult to be his parent,” mom of a challenging boy. Challenging boys have many great personal strengths. They are sensitive, empathic, energetic, driven, persistent, principled, and committed. These characteristics give challenging boys a strong moral compass. They have clear convictions about right and [...]
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Child development is so complex that there are practically no certainties. There are experienced, well-meaning, well-credentialed experts lined up on all sides of almost every major issue in parenting. This uncertainty and confusion of conflicting expert opinion can leave a parent bewildered. We can thank anthropologist Ronald Rohner, Ph.D. and his colleagues for identifying one [...]
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Reward charts (also sometimes called “sticker charts” or “behavior charts”) are frequently employed by parents to deal with their young children’s undesirable behaviors. When administered properly, a reward chart is a powerful parenting tool. However, in too many cases, reward charts fail because of a few common errors. Below I have listed common mistakes that [...]
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Carl Rogers was one of the most important psychologists of the twentieth century and his work, along with that of Abraham Maslow, formed the basis for the creation of today’s Positive Psychology movement. In 1957, Rogers described what he believed were the necessary and sufficient conditions for positive personality development to occur. Fifty years later [...]
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Marriage and family researcher, John Gottman, has observed that spouses in happy, stable marriages engage in positive expressions of feelings and actions towards each other about five times as often as they engage in negative expressions. He has labeled this 5 to 1 ratio as the “Magic Ratio.” Gottman has found that couples who do [...]
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I have placed Ross Greene’s book, The Explosive Child, at number 8 on my list of my all time favorite parenting books. In this book, Dr. Greene argues that conventional parenting approaches that are based on limits and consequences do not work well with explosive children. This perspective contradicts the position of many experts who [...]
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