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

by Barbara Coloroso (Author) "There are no quick fixes, easy answers, or recipes for parenting, but I believe most of us have the tools we need to be good..." (more)
Key Phrases: jellyfish parent, backbone parent, jellyfish family, Con One, Con Two, Four-Letter Word (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Coloroso urges parents to teach children to take responsibility for their actions.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist
Coloroso says that there are three types of parents--Jellyfish, Brickwall, and Backbone. The first two muck it up royally by being too wishy-washy or too firm. The parent with a backbone, however, can be stern when necessary and provide structure yet have the flexibility that children and families need. Coloroso applies these models to a variety of parenting situations, from toilet training to curfew setting. Like the Cosby show, it looks and sounds so easy when the script is already written, but there are plenty of good ideas here for keeping parents' sanity intact. Portions of the book are taken directly from the author's excellent video Winning at Parenting as well as from her popular lecture series. Denise Perry Donavin --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Somerville House, USA (December 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0921051743
• ISBN-13: 978-0921051749
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (53 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,788,968 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

69 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is NOT for lazy parents, December 8, 2000

By	"kangarex" (Keokuk, IA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kids Are Worth It!: Giving Your Child the Gift of Inner Discipline (Paperback)

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.

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comedy AND Wisdom !, June 20, 2005

By	Nicole J. Laws-Carroll (Champaign, IL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Kids Are Worth It! : Giving Your Child The Gift Of Inner Discipline (Paperback)

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!...

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is worth every cent, November 22, 1999

By	Karen (Idaho) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kids Are Worth It!: Giving Your Child the Gift of Inner Discipline (Paperback)

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.