Book Notes that I print out and hang on the fridge for quick reference.

I was searching for a good book on kind and effective ways of dealing with tantrums, conflicts and even everyday situations, so I looked through Positive Discipline Resources and picked up How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber, Elaine Mazlish.

I’ve got to admit: I fell in love with this book. I even purchased a CD version of How to Talk So Kids Can Learn: At Home and In School to be able to listen to it in a car.

“I was a wonderful parent before I had children…”

I was caught from the very beginning. The book is a terrific “how to” tool that helps engaging cooperation, preventing tantrums, avoiding punishments, and, most importantly – effectively and respectively communicating with kids in ways that lets them know that they are being understood, and so that they understand what we are trying to tell them!

The book has caricature pictures of the situations, it has real life dialogs, parents life stories… and even has summaries to hang them on the fridge (at the top of this article you can find a link to my own summary and notes)!

“Does this method of communication work?” – asked a friend of mine. Oh, yes, it does. I can see that depending on my reaction “by the book” and by regular parenting ways, I have such different results with my son, that I am ready to worship this stuff. The book proposes scenarios with reactions that are respectful (both to your KIDS and YOU) and effective!

It is not as easy, as it seems: I think I am pretty good in accepting my son’s feelings, acknowledging them, working on his self-confidence skills… and yet the other week we stepped outside and he said that it is cold. It was a warm wonderful day, so I snapped: “No, it is not cold! Look it’s like spring!” I was ready to beat my head against the pavement. All I just said was “You can’t trust your own perception of the world. You have to take mine. Yours is no good. YOU are no good…” So simple, so innocent, and such a “below the belt” meaning underneath. I apologized, I asked him how he felt, I talked to him about seasons, and he said now he wants to take off his jacket (it really was very warm). And then then next day I was fighting through my wording to convince him to put the jacket on, since it is freezing cold. It is not as easy as it seems – I should respect his opinion, yet I have to make sure he is dressed, safe, comfy… This book still has tons of amazing suggestions how to get through this staff.

I loved it so much that I decided to try to share it with my husband and read a few things to him loud. I picked a bad time – my husband fell asleep while I was still flipping through the pages, selecting a page to start. Deeply offended, I just threw the book on the sofa and burst out of the room, stomping my feet as a mad elephant on a mission. On the staircase I paused and thought of the things I was planing to read to him: how discussing and working through the problems can be more effective strategy, then punishing kids (that never achieves the result we are after anyways), how acknowledging each other’s feelings can help see the other person’s point of view… without arguing through it! I decided to use some of the tips. I followed some of the advise. And then… it was like a miracle! Usually I do all the talking and my husband just appears to be either in comedy club where I am the best comedian in town (trust me, I don’t find it funny!!!) or in the strict monastery where he just gave a wow of silence (I don’t know which one I hate more)! Well, usually the more I try to explain things to him, the more I want to strangle him in the end. This time… it really was like a miracle: suddenly he was talking, and I was listening. Suddenly HE was doing the talking, and HE was giving suggestions and HE proposed the compromise, that I gladly took! I was in awe.

Since then I try this book’s advice regularly. Daily. Every minute. Every new thing I try on my husband first. Some things work better for my kid, then for my husband. Some things work wonders for both of them. My husband read most of it by know too and he is helping me avoiding common pitfalls. I am reading it slowly, rereading it often and making notes. It is really a small book, very well written and easy to read, and, definitely one of my favorites by now!