I've read dozens of parenting books but this is by far my favorite! I read this book, as well as several other books on toddler discipline, a few years ago before my child was even at the toddler stage because I wanted to be prepared for the dreaded toddler years that everyone warned me were going to be terrible. I knew I wanted a discipline method that was more respectful then the one I was raised with but I was also worried about becoming overly permissive. This book was exactly what I was looking for. I thought it had the perfect balance of being strong on discipline while still being completely respectful and maintaining a strong parent-child connection. I found the examples in which Janet models how to handle various situations in a respectful way to be enormously helpful. Having not been raised in a respectful manner myself, it was very helpful to have this model to learn from rather then just being given a set of steps to follow. It's easy to tell parents to just be respectful of their toddlers, but not having any experiences with what successful, respectful parenting actually looks like to draw from, I found the examples to be invaluable. While I loved the advice in this book , it just seemed way too simplistic and I was very skeptical that this method would actually work so I wanted to wait to review it until I had a chance to put the advice into practice. After a year of following the advice in this book, it has worked amazingly for me and I no longer dread the toddler years.
I will share the experience I had that first sold me on this method. When my toddler was about 1.5, he was having a tantrum over something seemingly so ridiculous. He had a toy hotdog and a toy bun and he was upset because the toy hotdog would not stay in the toy bun. As I was busy cooking supper, my husband was the one to deal with the tantrum. My husband handled the situation by telling our son that it was silly to get upset by a toy and it wasn't a big deal. He tried to help by showing him how he could keep the toy hotdog in the bun by holding his finger over the hotdog when he moved. But my toddler had no interest in his father's solution and continued to move his finger off the hotdog and scream in frustration when it would inevitably fall out of the plastic bun. This went on for several minutes as my son's tantrum continued to escalate along with my husband's frustration with him. At one point, my husband was even considering a solution to glue the hotdog to the bun to keep it from falling out in order to stop the tantrum. Before he could go that far, I decided to step in and calmly ask my son what the problem was. In response to my question, he put the hotdog back in the bun and then tilted it so it would fall out, then let out a frustrated cry and looked at me to see how I would respond. I responded by simply saying, " Oh I see. You want the hotdog to stay in the bun and it keeps falling out. That is so frustrating. " I sat there with him calmly without saying another word as he cried about it for another 30 seconds or so. He then dropped the toy hotdog and bun and calmly and happily went to play with his toy cars instead like nothing ever happened. My husband just stood there in stunned silence for a few seconds with a look on his face like, "What just happened??". I explained to him that our son was just trying to express his feelings of frustration to him and he wasn't listening. The tantrum wasn't about the toy at all. Before I read this book I probably would have done the same thing my husband did and attempted to invalidate my sons feelings by trying to convince him that he was being silly for getting so upset over something so small or tried to fix the problem for him and the tantrum probably would have escalated into a huge meltdown. I would have mistakenly thought the tantrum was simply about the toy rather then something deeper. The solution was so simple I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.
I wish I could say that every tantrum was solved so quickly and easily. Of course it's not always that easy and sometimes there are bigger feelings that need to be worked out. But I have found that just taking a minute to calmly acknowledge my son's feelings and letting the feelings be rather then trying to fix it or stop it, always helps to deescalate the situation and prevent a small tantrum from turning into a huge meltdown. Just let the feelings be. That is the one re-occurring message throughout this entire book. So simple yet so powerful.
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It came in perfect condition just started to read but by the context I already see it's everything covered.
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M Casas
Libro indispensable si tú hijo tiene entre 1 y 3 años
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Must have books if you are struggle understanding your toddler
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