
Today I am taking a brief break from the picky eating topic to review The No-Cry Discipline Solution, by Elizabeth Pantley.
Overview:
In the No-Cry Discipline Solution, Elizabeth Pantley offers readers easy-to-use tools to address common behavior issues in a gentle, loving way. Pantley simplifies the complex job of parenting by offering practical techniques that effectively address behavior as well as strengthen the parent-child relationship.
The Book Teaches Parents:
· How to adjust parenting attitudes in order to enjoy parenting more and discipline more effectively
· How improving the parent-child relationship can reduce behavior problems
· About a child’s emotional development and the impact on behavior
· Specific discipline techniques to:
- Address everyday challenges
- Encourage cooperation
- Reduce tantrums, fussing and whining
· Ways to stay calm and manage anger
· Solutions to for specific problems such as:
- Backtalk
- Hitting
- Lying
- Sharing
- Sibling Fights
- Teasing
- Yelling
Recommendation:
I use the No-Cry Discipline Solution in both my personal and professional life. As a mother I appreciate Pantley’s gentle approach to discipline as well as her nonjudgmental attitude towards parents. As a busy mother, I want a parenting book that is quick to read, offers real, practical advice and is easy to refer back to when a new behavior arises. As a parent coach, I recommend this book for similar reasons. Most of the parents I work with lack time and energy to dig through a theoretical book that makes parenting feel more complex. Instead, they want a book that normalizes their challenges and offers them practical tools that they can start using right away.
There are so many parenting books out there. So what is unique about Pantley’s book?
* My favorite part of the book is a section that addresses how your actions today can affect your future teenager. It includes a chart, which identifies common challenging teenager behaviors, the preferred behavior and how to encourage it at each developmental stage starting during toddlerhood. By teaching children the preferred behavior (i.e. talk respectfully) early they will be more likely to exhibit it as a teenager. Imagine a teenager who doesn’t talk back and cleans up after herself!
* There is a whole section of the book, which identifies over thirty common behaviors and gives very specific tools to address each of them. This section is very useful and great to refer back to when a specific behavior arises.
* There is another section which is dedicated to creating a calm household and managing anger. Unmanaged anger and frustration increases the likelihood that parents will resort to ineffective discipline techniques that can negatively impact the parent-child relationship, and may increase misbehavior. Most parenting books shy away from this, but Pantley understands the importance of encouraging parents to change their own behavior before changing their child’s. In this chapter, Pantley, outlines a specific plan for addressing and managing anger.
Please Note:
I would caution readers from believing that this book will end all whining, tantrums and tears which it alludes to on the book cover (“Gentle Ways to Encourage Good Behavior Without Whining, Tantrums and Tears”). Toddlers and children have emotions as do adults and the goal of the book is not to prevent child from having feelings, but help children manage them better. The book will not help parents eliminate all whining tantrums and tears, but it does give parents the tools to reduce these behaviors as well as the techniques to manage them.