Customer Reviews

Kids Are Worth It!: Giving Your Child the Gift of Inner Discipline

5 star:		(44)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

If you don't want to put effort into raising your kids, this is not the book for you. But if you want clear-thinking, responsible kids, and don't mind some effort getting there, you can't have a better reference. Ms Coloroso's advice is clear, and should make you think hard about how you interact with your children. Yes my son is 3 and I'm 30. Yes I'm the parent, but he still has opinions about his life, and some are worth paying attention to. And sometimes I'm wrong. Being the parent doesn't make me God. Also note, I'm usually in the right, listening means that I pay attention to my sons' opinions and wants, not that I cave in to them every time.

Believe me it's much, much harder making a 3 year old take the consequence of a misbehavior, and helping him try to fix his problem himself than it would be to punish him for it and fix things myself, but oh boy does he learn more when I put in the effort.

This is not minimum effort parenting, and it's not about letting your kids always having their own way. It's about teaching them how to think rather than what to think.

As another, more supercilious reviewer notes, the ideas in this book are similar to the work of the developmental psychologist Diane Baumrind. However, this in no way detracts from the value of the book for three reasons: First, it means that the ideas are based on scientifically supported ideas. Second, explaining parenting styles only takes up one chapter at the beginning, then Coloroso builds on the ideas with her own. And third, comparing the presentation of Coloroso's books, tapes, and videos with reading a scientific paper is silly! ...Most people will neither have access to, nor enjoy reading dry academic papers.. And they are not likely to be able to suddenly derive from them, the kind of carefully thought out and articulated system of parenting that Coloroso offers. From concrete examples as well as abstract ideas, this book will help you incorporate commonly held goals of parenting into real-life interactions with your kids. This is not a book on just one concept or how to handle one particular parenting problem, but a way of thinking about parenting that makes each concrete situation so much more clear cut.

You will like her style if you value giving kids BOTH a warm, respectful, open relationship where they can feel safe to be themselves and develop their own unique identity, AND an environment with strong clear boundaries where they can grow to understand how to make healthy compassionate choices for themselves and those they care about... And if you are tired of books by "experts" who have never been parents. This book grew out of Coloroso's lectures, which grew out of her own teaching and parenting experiences, and it is clear that she "has been there" and she practices what she preaches.

Because this book was once lecture material, Coloroso dose sum everything up into, sometimes silly, but catchy little phrases as some have noted. However, I have found them incredibly useful through the years as issues arise.. When my step-daughter and I butt heads, like a mantra I hear in my head "Children need to know how to think not what to think."... or when my two year old "painted" our new linoleum floor, I took deep breaths and chanted "Never treat a child at six a way your don't want to be treated a sixty".. or during the thousand other trials that a blended family endures everyday I try HARD to remember the ultimate goal of parenting which is to raise adults who can say, "I like myself, I can think for myself, and There is no problem so great it can't be solved". In Coloroso's way of thinking these simple phrases translate to: model correct behavior consistantly eveyday, help your children to learn to make better choices in the future through natural consequences and making incorrect behavior an unattractive choice, and teach them to solve problems by progressively allowing them to earn more responsibility for thier choices and the consequenes of those choices... and much, much more.

If you are someone who needs to hear from experts to be convinced: I was first exposed to this book when it was used in my mother's school for children with behavioral problems as a training guide for teachers, then I found it again as a frequent recommendation in my Le Leche League's library, then just today I sat in a crisis counselor's office and listened as she quoted directly from the book to my husband and his ex-wife when they asked about parenting a troubled teen. If you don't like to read, go to her website and get the video "Winning at Parenting Without Beating Your Kids". This is a good stuff!...

Having just heard Ms. Coloroso speak, I can say with certainty that her critics here online who claim she teaches kids new-age ideas and is anti-family discipline are wrong. Her emphasis is emphatically on teaching kids to be respectful of themselves, people in authority, and their communities. She says that if you teach kids to do what you say just because you say so, they'll grow up to do what people in their peer groups do because they can't think for themselves. But you're still the parent and the one who draws the line in matters of security, morality, and legality. One of her shorthand references shows the differences between punishment and discipline. Her idea of discipline is to show kids what they've done wrong, and give them ways to solve the problems they've created, but allow them to keep their dignity. If your idea of traditional discipline involves shaming children when they make honest mistakes or "explaining" decisions by saying, "Because I said so, that's why," then she's not your kind of disciplinarian. But if you want to teach your children to think for themselves so that they can grow up to be less influenced by their peer groups and work well with other people at home and in their communities, her theories are worth a look. And as for the London reader who says the book is "Typically American," I suggest that person spend some time familiarizing himself or herself with the styles of parenting that actually prevail in this country. If her attitude were typically American, there'd be no need for this book.

I just picked this book up in a grocery store and I can not believe how excellent it is. It has completely changed how I deal with my kids. I am not yelling anymore. I wish some of the parents I know were reading it. Everything she says makes perfect sense and that's why it's so easy to change. I recommend it to anyone who wants to quit being their child's conscience and instead give them the gift of developing and using their own.

It takes much longer to follow the advice given in this book than it does to slap a child - but I think the results are excellent. My 4 and 3 year olds hit each other significantly less now that I have told them that the rule in this house is "we don't hit". But boy, it can be seriously exhausting with 2 very stubborn children to carry out her theories. We're carrying on with it because I seriously believe she is right and the children learn to think for themselves - go for it, take the plunge too and learn how to treat your children how you were probably not treated yourself! I have already recommended this book to two friends and, after hearing the tape, they have been converted!

I'd like to give this book 3.5 stars. I bought three parenting books at the same time from Amazon: Kids, Parents, and Power Struggles; How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk; and Kids Are Worth It! and read them in that order. When I first started Kids Are Worth It!, I was only 10 pages into it and put it down for a couple of weeks. I had a hard time with the intro because it felt condescending and harsh at times. (Ironically, it was like I was being lectured by a parent.) I understand that approach might work well for the author when she speaks publicly, but in print it feels like a turn-off. I was determined to read the book though, so I picked it up again and started feeling more positive toward the book when it explained the three different types of families: Brick-wall, jellyfish, and backbone.

Some people object to this book because they feel there are more than three types of families, but the book acknowledges that some families will be a "patchwork of all three" (p. 39). This makes sense to me because I grew up in a family that falls mostly in the brick-wall category but has some features of a jellyfish-b. At times the author does make it sound like all brick-wall (or jellyfish) families have the same exact traits she writes about, but that would be impossible because each family is unique. The descriptions of brick-wall and jellyfish families are general and should only be used as guidelines.

Somewhere around the middle of the book, it starts feeling a little random because sections start popping up about all kinds of stuff. A lot of it is helpful, but some of it may only apply to a certain group of parents (like the section on potty training). The index can assist the reader in finding specific topics, but not all, as "potty training" or "diapers" doesn't appear in the index but is mentioned in the book.

There are sections of the book that I find hard to believe will work with kids. I don't have a child that's old enough to try the ideas on, so I can't confirm if they work. But one example is "The Game and the Sit." Two children have a fight over a game so the backbone parent tells the children they must sit together on the couch and neither can get up until they both give each other permission to get up. That's it. There's not much else the author says about resolving the situation. I have a hard time envisioning two arguing children cooperatively sitting on the couch together, agreeing that they will give the other permission to get up, and ending their argument. Maybe it happens, but I have a hard time imagining that it's that simple.

I'm glad I read Kids, Parents, and Power Struggles first because I felt that it was an easier read and focused more on relationships between parents and children with far fewer tangents. Kids Are Worth It! covers a ton of issues between kids and parents, some of them without much detail and others with some helpful pointers. Kids, Parents, and Power Struggles helped me develop my parenting direction and Kids Are Worth It! added some additional practical ideas to the mix.

Although the book is focussed on parenting, the ideas and philosophies the author promotes apply to anyone who works with kids. I have found that using the techniques suggested in this book as made me 100 times more effective in my job. Colorosso understands the value of self-awareness and an internal locus on control in healthy development. The book not only helped me in work with kids, it also gave me insight into myself, my experiences, and my relationships in general. I believe that the 3 types of families - backbone, brickwall, or jellyfish - also can be seen as 3 personality styles, so that we are not only brickwall, jellyfish, or backbone people with kids, we are that way in general, where our relationships are concerned. If you look at it this way the book will go a long way to giving you tools to deal with all sorts of conflicts in your life.

Wow! Where has this book been in my life? I've read most of the parenting books out there, and this one is the best concise overview I've come across. The author gives real examples of the issues we all face, such as chores and temper tantrums. It seems her basic principle of inner discipline means respecting your child as an individual, taking responsibility for yourself and teaching them to make good choices by learning from their own mistakes. Forcing your child to do what you think is right doesn't allow them to LEARN. This is fantastic.

This book changed my life as a parent. The most important thing it taught me is how to stay calm, and not escalate with my children. I also learned how to teach my children to become problem solvers. My 8 year old son complimented me after I started using these techniques! I use to yell and carry on now I never raise my voice and our dignity, both theirs and mine, are left in tact! Anyone working with kids needs the solid advice this book has to give.

A couple of decades ago we figured out that hitting kids is NOT good for them. However, many parents did not know what TO do. Barbara Coloroso writes an easy-to-read as well as entertaining presentation of what to do to give the "gift of inner discipline." Every parent should read this book first to grasp the basic concepts of the best-so-far paradigm for parenting.

As a parent, counselor and parenting teacher, this is the basic book that I recommend. Most parents learn more each time they read it.