My greatest accomplishment in life was becoming a mother. The ups and downs of parenting together with the love of my life and my best friend is indescribably awesome yet quite challenging. The balance of being a good parent and communicating with your little ones can be rough at times. Yet, it is through my mistakes that I have learned my greatest lessons from my kids. But with every year new challenges arise and I have learned to use every resource I have in my parenting bag of tricks that include:tips from other moms and dads, teachers, my husband, my parents, from the internet, and books. Books especially have different approaches and they don't fit every kid or parent. So read to find a book that fits your family I say. Sometime, it doesn't hurt to learn through strangers either and that is one of the things I like about this book. The different cases in this book have been very similar to what I has been going on in my household.
Having a boy first,my husband and I dealt with the challenges of eating healthy foods for my picky eater and then potty training. Most challenges were of a physical nature. With my girl, I have experienced more of a psychological challenge in defying my authority to reach her own independence. My 3 year old had an attitude of a teenager and the mouthiness to go with it. I could not believe the things she would say. " Stupid Mom", " Go to your room" to me when she was mad at me, "You are not being a good mommy," "I can do it myself" and then came the dangerous choices to run away from me at schools, parks, and this had to end. Sending her to her room did not help. Taking away toys did nothing. Timing her out in a corner. I tried these punishments for months with little success. Then, I was told about this book.
I was pleasantly surprised in the approach,the mind maps, exercises in the book, and the easy to read setup of the book.
Overall,this book has been life changing for me. I stop trying to teach her when she's upset which use to lead to yelling matches and slamming doors. Now, we go through a cooling down phase apart. She goes to one are and I go to another. I simply tell her I love her,but mommy needs quit time alone.
I started with our relationship choosing one of the
six stages of attachment : Proximity(hugging/closeness),
Sameness(things in Common),Belonging/Loyalty( when you are on child's side, you got his back,coming alongside your child, Significance( looking into your child's eyes, sending a letter, sharing her importance),and Being Known ( when child speaks you listen, refraining from lecturing and offering advise).
I found out that I had less in common with my daughter than my son. So I worked on changing what we did together from chores to playing Candy land, we became closer. Although, we still have much work to do. She has had less running away incidents, better communication, she takes initiative to do chores like emptying the washer and helping me with laundry .
This is one book I plan to add to my personal library in a hardcover. Very helpful book. I highly recommend it to those open to change in their relationships with their kids. Changing behaviors of kids starts with work on relationships between family first.
http://www.amazon.com/Parenting-Without-Power-Struggles-Resilient/dp/1451667663
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