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If you think it's a difficult time to be a parent, consider how challenging it is to be a child in today's world. Recent studies show that children are more impulsive, disobedient, lonely, sad, irritable, and violent than ever before. The authors of
Emotionally Intelligent Parenting: How to Raise a Self-Disciplined, Responsible, Socially Skilled Child assert that what's needed now is an approach called emotionally intelligent parenting. An emotionally intelligent parent, according to the authors, follows the Twenty-Four Karat Golden Rule: "Do unto your children as you would have other people do unto your children." Maurice J. Elias, Steven E. Tobias, and Brian S. Friedlander pick up where Daniel Goleman's bestselling
Emotional Intelligence leaves off, translating Goleman's basic principals into specific parenting tactics for solving daily family issues. The book includes exercises for raising the family "humor quotient," becoming aware of feelings, praising and prioritizing, and coaching your child in responsible action.
Emotionally Intelligent Parenting is easy to follow, and provides suggestions for parents at all levels of commitment to the concept. Parents may choose to try some or all of the exercises, or may simply find it an interesting and informative read. The "Sound 'EQ' Parenting Bites to Help with Common Family Issues" closing the book are especially sensible, profoundly compassionate, and effective.
--Ericka Lutz
From Publishers Weekly
The authors of this overbearing book?based on the bestselling Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman?urge parents: "Do unto your children as you would have other people do unto your children." Meaning, try to see things from the child's perspective; stop nagging, threatening and yelling to get your point across; foster positive, and discourage negative, behaviors. Although the authors, all psychologists and themselves parents, claim they are providing parents with a new way of relating to their children that's "not a fad or a gimmick or a technique," the suggestions they offer seem unnecessarily complex. If two siblings are fighting, they are sent to "chill out," the authors' variation on the endlessly described time out. The children are then required to "keep calm" (a deep-breathing exercise), fill out a Trouble Tracker Report and practice their BEST behaviors (Body posture, Eye contact, Speech, Tone of voice). In the midst of these multistep exercises, there are some good ideas, but Goleman's emotional intelligence principles seem less than pioneering in this context because most parents' guides, from Spock onward, have traveled this terrain before and offer much more practical parenting advice.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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