25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best Parenting Advice I ever heard... and opposite of most of what we've been told!, March 14, 2009
This review is from: Loving Our Kids On Purpose: Making A Heart-To-Heart Connection (Paperback)
I thought I had a great relationship with my daughter so I wasn't in a hurry to dive into all things Danny Silk - until I heard him speak at my church. He rewired my thinking. I slowly began to collect his teaching (you can download his Mp3 teachings). I work with teens in crisis and I see bad parenting all the time, but after reading this series I have a much better understanding. Let me sum up Danny's book like this...
We're afraid our kids will make the wrong choice so we either limit their choices to the right one and the other right one or we manipulate them into making the right decision. Then when something bad happens we step in the way of the consequence and figure out the solution for them and tell them what they're going to do with the mess they created. Danny's method let's them learn how to think... AMAZING! They get to make the choice and then we don't stand in the way of the consequences. They have to figure out solutions to their own messes. It empowers our kids. They have confidence in their decisions because they can mess up in a SAFE environment. How often do Christian families raise "GOOD" kids and then when they go off to college, they suddenly turn "BAD"... it's because the parents never taught their child how to think for themselves and come up with solutions to their problems that make them learn what the best choice is so the next time that same situation arises, they know how to avoid that consequence - DO WHAT'S RIGHT!
If you want to learn how to raise a competent adult, Danny has tools that are so easy to implement. This works for any age child. You can also implement these strategies with employees and students if you teach.
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36 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
For most, but not every, family who wants to survive, August 25, 2009
This review is from: Loving Our Kids On Purpose: Making A Heart-To-Heart Connection (Paperback)
I didn't choose this book. It was sent to us by a friend of my mother-in-law, so my wife and I approached it with some trepidation. Our children are not 'normal': One (6yo) has high functioning Autism and the other (3yo) has PDD-NOS. Neither of them self calm; that wiring is missing. So mostly when they lose it, they go until they run down and become irrationally Oppositional/Defiant during their extended and violent tantrums. (The tantrums are purposeful however; they don't just throw themselves to the ground and flop around like fish. They find something heavy to throw, or find someone to hit, not always the person who offended them. It is rage, but rage with intelligence fueling it. And it is as frightening to watch and manage as it is to imagine.)
So understand what I mean when I say that this book has 'limited application' for children with developmental disorders that affect their Amygdala. (The part of the brain that governs 'fight-or-flight' and is hyperactive in children with these kinds of developmental disorders.) If you child can't remain rational long enough to weigh simple choices between outcomes of their behavior, this book won't do your kid any good. And fundamentally, the book isn't about training your kids. Its about training you, the parent, to act in ways that are beneficial for your child in the long term, not reacting as we would do naturally in the moment.
This may seem awfully 'touchy-feely.' It isn't. The concept is hardheaded and practical and revolutionary for Christian Parenting books, most of which toe the line of Respect for Parent, elder or authority, and What-You-Get-If-You-Don't. Instead of a strap across the seat, Silk's book is predicated on a crazy idea: Freedom.
Freedom...to what? Of What? Obviously, for a child, freedom cannot be absolute. It is 'freedom within their ability to manage it.' But the idea is essentially 'Rational Anarchy.' That is, the individual is free to make their choices. The choice is theirs and no others, and the consequences (all of them) are theirs, too.
The author's assertion is that the human mind, even in immature form, is essentially an engine for computing consequences. Trial and Error. Action and Reaction. If what you want for your child is 'Freedom' (That is, a person who fully owns and accepts responsible for *every one* of his or her actions and doesn't expect anyone else to come riding to the rescue to fix their foul-ups) then this book is absolutely for you. If what you want is a compliant little door mat who knows how to say 'yessir' and does what he's told (and will still be blindly 'doing what he's told' long after he leaves home and is still geeking for what ever bully is pushing him around long after you're in your grave) then DEFINITELY, this book isn't for you.
Silk gives some priceless examples of not giving in to emotional manipulation, offering constant, constant, constant choices and allowing consequences to be either the pearl of great price (for good choices) or the harsh taskmaster (for poor choices.) You, the parent, may be the engine of the consequences ("You may stop making that noise, or you may go sit in time out. Your choice. Take your time.") And always be ready to help, but not to step in to solve a problem FOR your child.
Silk's best illustration of offering choices involve an anecdote where his son has unwisely (and without parental permission) taken his hamster to school in his back pack....and then left the backpack on the bus on the way home. And its Friday evening.
Silk re-tells the conversation, and it makes for laugh out loud reading. At the end of it, the hamster is recovered. But every decision about how to solve the problem between informing his father and the recovery of his pet is forced on to the boy by his father, who is content to be used as a sounding board for any ideas the child has about how to recover his pet, but isn't riding in to fix the blunder FOR his son. It is both sobering reading, and a brilliant example of judo parenting.
If I were to offer a single illustration, that sums up the Rational Anarchy concept, it is this:
"Boys! If you want to fight where you are going to draw blood, you'd better do it away from Mom's new couch. And to make sure no bones are broken, you have to have a referee. It so happens that I'm available. I charge $10 a-piece. DING! Go to it."
The boys looked at him like he was crazy and just walked away from each other, and Dad. Priceless.
Not that every parenting event can be so glibly met. I kept waiting for something that applied to my household, where a lost temper usually means considerable property damage (my son will respond to a reprimand by striking the screen on the TV. When he was three and that TV was glass, it hurt him more than it did the TV. Now that it is an HDTV with a fragile surface...let's say that a $1500 HDTV is an awfully high price to pay every time someone has a tantrum.)
I digress. Silk's book doesn't make any serious attempt to tackle parenting an emotionally or cognitively disturbed child. So it's use is limited for me. But Silk's purpose is great, to wit: A parent's job is to so thoroughly equip a child to be free and independent through full awareness and acceptance of responsibilities and their consequences that the child stops needing the parent and becomes wholly self-directed and self-reliant. I would assert that a parent who does NOT want that for their child is actively working to create yet another juvenile delinquent, no matter how helpful mummy or daddy want to be in the moment.
Silk's advice to me, the parent, doesn't fall on deaf ears. I've adapted some of his ideas, so I tend to stop out of control behavior first, and then offer choices. Instead of the event being over in 5 minutes with my son crying and holding his seat, usually it is over in 2 hours and he is crying in his bedroom and not holding anything. And I am numb and exhausted from having held my temper below the boiling point by sheer willpower for 120 minutes. In my house, I'm not sure which is the long term strategy that will work. But unless you have violent and developmentally delayed children in your house, Danny Silk's book is a great place to start 'Training Up a Child In the Way He Should Go...'
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