Customer Reviews

Mom, I Hate You! Children's Provocative Communication: What It Means and What to Do About It

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Dr. Fleming's book, "Mom,I Hate You" is a practical, easily understandable guide to dealing with your child's words and behaviors. I would highly recommend this book to my clients and friends.

My copy of "Mom, I hate You!" is dog-eared and underlined, the cover limp from being shoved into my purse on the way to My Gym and carpool. Even if your child does not communicate in a provocative way, I guarantee you there will be much to glean from this insightful, intelligent, highly readable book. Dr. Fleming is brilliant, and in an immensely enjoyable and helpful manner, he lays out a simple guide to enhance communcation between parents and children. I have read many books on child-rearing, but this book is the best. It's fun and fast to read, and the suggestions are laid out in a simple, easy to comprehend (and, most importantly, easy to remember fashion.) Best of all, at the end of each chapter, Dr. Fleming provides a summary to remind you of the main steps you need to take to increase effective communication. This guide alone is worth the price of the book because if you're an impossibly busy parent who falls into bed at night as I do you just don't have TIME to read all the helpful parenting books out there(wonderful as many of them may be). I have learned so much from this book but what has helped me the most is the chapter on your child's style and temperament. Dr. Fleming outlines several basic styles and you will be amazed to find how accurately your child will fit into one (or a few) of them. In one day, I found myself responding to each of my children with far more empathy and found our conflicts reduced by a huge percent! Equally important, Dr. Fleming outlines parents' basic styles and temperaments and suggests that we as parents examine our own
personalities to better understand how we interact--in positive and negative ways--with our children. He does all this simply, though, and manages also to assuage your guilt as a parent for the times you do and say things wrong (as we all do), the times you make mistakes and fly off the handle, etc. This book truly is a gem! Read it, and you will feel empowered about how you interact with your children each and every day.

This book is an easy read with lots of helpful information and tips on how to improve your relationship with your provocative child.

However, the tips the good doctor gives on consequences made me cringe! He suggest punishments like taking away a favorite toy or insisting on an earlier bedtime. These "consequences" are not connected to the "crime" and therefore really not helpful in terms of helping a child to change.

I recommend "There's gotta be a better way" by Becky Bailey for a guide to effective discipline.

Please don't let my title distract you, this is an incredibly informative and helpful book, but I would like to address two issues I have personally with it.
First, I don't buy that all the evil things children sometimes say are innocuous. Yes, telling g-ma she smells is innocent enough, but my experience is that when my daughter told me she hated me, at least partly, she meant it. To just shrug the comments off and to get at the "root causes" as the author suggests would be highly myopic. Again, for many the comments may not be as mean-spirited as I thought they were.
My second minor quibble with this great book would be that the suggestions he provides are really best for married (or divorced and civil to each other) parents. Oh sure, he instructs the separated parents to "get on the same page", but that is not always possible, so for divorced people there may be better tomes.
One more point prior to the actual review, I greatly admire that the author takes on his critics directly and forcefully. More on the critics later...
Initially when my daughter started saying things entirely inappropriate or mean, I assumed she learned them from an aspiring gangsta (loves thugs 50 cent, Eminem, etc. and yes they are talented) friend who is slightly older. My imploring her that talking like that was wrong and that she would be grounded was not working. Finally, when not getting her way one day, she said, "I hate you."
I completely lost it. I didn't get incredibly angry, rather, I became quite despondent. I told my ex about it and suggested her comments about me were contributing to the problem. She disagreed, and said basically that it was my fault/problem. Like any parent would I'm sure, I was very upset about the drastic decline in our relationship. Amazingly, despite sharing my situation with friends and family, no one offered suggestions or support. Partly, I'm sure, that is because I did not properly "nip it (her behavior) in the bud" in their opinion because I don't believe in spanking. Hence, it was my fault.

Dr. Fleming forces each and every parent to look in the mirror and think about how their behavior may be compounding the problems you are experiencing with your children. People that are screaming constantly can't expect children to not model that behavior. He focuses on several other parental patterns and their long-term deleterious effects. This can be very helpful in analyzing your situation. Personally, I didn't yell much at , but I did learn a lot about how to handle situations.
Dr. Fleming thoroughly discusses specific scenarios and how to handle them both immediately and long term through consequences for the child's actions.
This may be where Dr. Fleming's critics take aim. He does not advocate spanking. I personally completely agree, but I do know others that feel that the end of spanking is the downfall of civilization. Somehow, this has become a liberal/conservative issue. Frankly, I don't get it, but when I told the same people the suggestions in the book, they said invariably that it was coming from a West Coast/liberal/leftist. Whatever!

This book hopefully will help my relationship with my daughter; hopefully it will help you, too.

Thank you Amazon.com and we are STILL waiting for blogging abilities.