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Positive Discipline – Jane Nelsen

I finally get on my to-read pile, and it is a pleasure to read this book from Jane Nelsen!

Posts to discuss this book in depth will come, I just need more time for that.

Meanwhile, I know this reading already helped me in my collaboration approach with the children : Each misbehavior is an OPPORTUNITY to learn!

Jane Nelsen created a training program for parents that is more recent than the Faber & Mazlish (How to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk), or the Gordon method (Parent Effectiveness Training) who date back from the 70s.

The Positive Discipline Association was in deed created in 2003.

I am so happy to get inspired by books like this one, where I can read such sentences: « Peace in the world begins with peace at home and at school »

 

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« He’s provoking me! » – Isabelle Filliozat

In the same vein as “I tried everything!” (« J’ai tout essayé ! »), a French book from Isabelle Filliozat, still not translated, this book has, as a difference, the fact that it focuses more on children from 6 to 11 years old, whereas the previous focused on children from 0 to 5.

The format is the same nonetheless, with a lot of small chapters, a lot of illustrations, a quick eglesead. With, once again, the advantage that it is very easy, the inconvenient that it reads too fast to really remember.

I figure we remember the spirit anyways, and that’s the most important.

My posts connected to this book:
Filling the tank
They « finally » express themselves
To call or not to call
To create intimacy
Filling the tank, once again!
Welcoming their feelings
Rules rather than limits

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Understanding children’s emotions – Isabelle Filliozat

This is the second book from Isabelle Filliozat that I am reading, after « I tried everything! » (« J’ai tout essayé ! »)

I am still not done, it is much denser than the previous one, but I already like all the questions it rises in me.
I feel I keep on making links between what I read, what I read before, what we live day after day.

I take my time to process what I read, and I will be enriching little by little this post with links to others, according to my progress in the book.

I – Can we develop our children’s EQ?
Does it feel like yes or no?

II – Seven questions to think about in front of (almost) every situation
What’s his story?
7 questions to think about
What message do I want to send?
Are my needs competing with my children’s?
What’s most precious for me?

7 questions à se poser
Quel message ai-je envie de lui transmettre ?
Mes besoins sont-ils en compétition avec ceux de mes enfants ?
Qu’est-ce qui est le plus précieux pour moi ?

III – Life is motion

He is trying to say I
He is blaming someone else
To help the kid to be himself
Why are you crying?
Reformulating
We can’t receive the child’s feeling
Il cherche à dire JE
Il accuse autrui
Aider l’enfant à être lui-même
Pourquoi tu pleures ?
La reformulation
Nous n’arrivons pas à recevoir l’émotion de l’enfant

IV – Fear
Fear of the fairy tale
The first contact with people
Fear

La peur du conte de fées
Le premier contact avec les gens
La peur

V – Anger helping identity

VI – Happiness

VII – Sadness

VIII – Depression

IX – Life isn’t a quiet long river

X – A few ideas to live happier with your kids

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« I tried everything ! » (« J’ai tout essayé ! ») – Isabelle Filliozat

Isabelle Filliozat is a French psychologist, who is very famous in France for being THE positive parenting figure.

This is the first book I read from her. Unfortunately, I didn’t find an English version of this book…

I find it great. Very easy to read, filled with illustrations to help understand, and full of good ideas.

It really focuses on young children, and making the link between cerebral development and the child’s behaviour, or how to see his reactions at a new angle…

In short: tantrums don’t exist, it’s just about finding where the reaction is coming from.

I find that understanding better the source of problems undeniably helps us in resolving it!

The only thing is that it reads so fast that we get to the end without having had the time to digest the information, which explains the scarcity of articles I wrote around this book…

My articles linked to this book:

The trap of the negative form
Adding the gesture
The “no” of two year olds
He doesn’t listen when we call him
Showing isn’t wanting
Giving guidelines rather than prohibiting
One word is enough

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How to talk so teens will listen and listen so teens will talk

 This book is very close to How to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk  , only focused on the teenager,   following what Faber and Mazlish (the authors) had to do when they were asked to organize workshops with teens’  parents.

 

We find the same basic skills  (especially in the early chapters) but with examples and developments more suitable to teenage years.

I found it was a good way to open up our horizons and begin using our new skills with our oldest.

 

Chapter 1: Dealing with feelings

Chapter 2: We’re still « making sure »

Chapter 3: To punish or not to punish

Chapter 4: Working it out together

Chapter 5: Meeting the kids

Chapter 6: About feelings, friends, and family

Chapter 7: Parents and teens together

Chapter 8: Dealing with sex and drugs

(No post made on chapters 6-8)

 

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Siblings without rivalry

This is the third book from Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish that I read, I am still enthusiastic!

In the introduction, they explain that this book was born from the fact that when they were writing How to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk, their chapter about siblings just got out of hand, so much that it couldn’t be a chapter… It became its own book.

I don’t regret having read it!

Of course it goes around the same principles as How to talk so kids will listen…, but it is really focused on the relationships between brothers and sisters, on the way we can intervene in the dynamic, how to encourage positiveness.

At the beginning, I was a bit confused by the title.
Siblings without rivalry? But… fights between children are not always a matter of rivalry… There may be a difficult relationship without rivalry, isn’t it ?

Well, reading it, I realized that rivalry is much more insidious than we can imagine it to be. That a lot of agressive behaviors between children can in deed come from a certain form of rivalry, and that working on it enables us to dream about a better world!

Contents:

  1. Brothers and sisters – Past and present
  2. Not till the bad feelings come out…
  3. The perils of comparisons
  4. Equal is less
  5. Siblings in roles
  6. When the kids fight
  7. Making peace with the past

(No post on the last chapter, just because it only sums up what has been said before)

 

 

 

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Liberated parents, liberated children

This is the 2nd book I read from Adèle Faber and Elaine Mazlish, in fact the first one they wrote, following the ideas of the person who trained them: Dr. Ginott.

I found it very interesting to complement  How to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk

When the latter was very structured, with reminder lists at the end of each chapter, this one has more of a narrative form. It is the learning story of the authors, the journey that helped them become who they are.

Before writing books and workshops, they have follow workshops themselves, have struggled to be better mothers, and reflected on the advice they received.
This also is a learning curve for me: it is not as easy to write chapter-by-chapter summaries, it is more the general atmosphere of the book that conveys the messages, letting them sink little by little…

Anyway, I’ll try my best.

Note: There are obviously some ideas that are directly linked with the principles presented in How to talk so kids will listen…, so even though there are more examples in this book, I sometimes use direct references to chapters already detailed in my previous notes.

Table of contents:
1 – In the beginning were the words

CHILDREN ARE INDIVIDUALS

2 – They feel what they feel

3 – Feelings and variations

4 – When a child trusts himself

5 – Letting go: a dialogue on autonomy

6. « Good » isn’t good enough: a new way to praise

7 – The roles we cast them in

8 – Don’t change a mind: change a mood

PARENTS ARE PEOPLE

9 – We feel what we feel

10 – Protection – for me, for them, for all of us

11 – Guilt and suffering

12 – Anger

13 – New portrait of a parent

 

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how to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk

This is the first book I read from Adèle Faber and Elaine Mazlish. How - to's

It isn’t the first one they wrote, but definitely their most famous.

During our last year in Mexico (2013/2014), I was part of a book club for parents, organized by the school psychologist. Each month she would suggest some kind of parenting book, and we would then meet to discuss about it.

It was very interesting, except that a book per month was too much. We didn’t have time to really get the concepts and put them into practice!

I missed the January session, because I gave birth on the 31st of December.. And that turned out to be a good thing, because that session was about the book that people enjoyed most! Surprising reflexion? Well: I bought it anyway, and knew I would have more time to read it well!

And in deed, one country later, at the beginning of 2015, I began reading  Cómo hablar…

 

I spent several months on it, and I learned so many things!

My taste for parenting books was born before, but it’s really reading this one that it developed!

Table of contents:
Chapter 1: Helping children deal with their feelings
Chapter 2: Engaging cooperation
Chapter 3: Alternatives to punishment
Chapter 4: Encouraging autonomy
Chapter 5: Praise
Chapter 6: Freeing children from playing roles
Chapter 7: Putting it all together

(No link to Chapter 7, which is brief and doesn’t bring new knowledge)

 

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