Children Are from Heaven: Positive Parenting Skills for Raising Cooperative, Confident, and Compassionate Children

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Summary: Discipline While Keeping The Dignity of Parent & Child
Review: Gray shares a welcome sensible perspective on raising children of all ages that keeps the parents in complete charge while encouraging the parents to respect and understand the kid's feelings. That does not mean the kids always or even usually get their way. My older children (9, 12 and 15) have told me during our calmer more rational discussions, outside the heat of the moment, that they like the change is MY behavior and they feel more like I'm on their side rather than the enemy on their backs screaming, insulting, and punishing like I used to. The younger kids (4 and 6) also seem to cooperate more when I acknowlege their feelings and then clearly state and stick to the boundaries. We are by no means wimpy parents with our 5 kids; however, we have become more aware of separately addresing feelings from behavior. I find myself much calmer and listening a lot more than I used to. The amazing thing is that my husband and I have stopped much of the yelling, threatening, and searching for an even harsher punishment that wasn't really working anyway. Another book that really is very compatible with Gray's thoughts is called "The Pocket Parent". It has hundreds of suggestions to try with your 2-5 year old, focusing on most of the annoying behaviors that often drive even the best parent to the edge of their sanity. I highly recommend both books that specifically teach you how to change your behavior first inorder to get more cooperation from the kids.

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Summary: The perfect trilogy!
Review: I see this book as a third pillar in a self-help trilogy from Dr. Gray together with "How to get what you want..." and "...Together forever". The book reveals to a great extent how a person's childhood and adolescence affect his perceptions about life, and the way he raises up his children later. I have seen parents who followed 2 or 3 skills out of the five that Dr. Gray mentioned, but not all five. That implied either "soft" or "hard" parenting which ARE negative methods. But the way stipulated in that book, from my prospective, is really THE positive way! My uncle has raised up his son in a way very close to Gray's method, and now he has a World Champion in Karate with very high self-esteem! I am longing for the next gem from you Dr. Gray! Well done!

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Summary: very insightful and challenging book
Review: I was very exited when I stumbled upon this book because my husband and I have been at war with each other on the issues of what type of parenting we wanted to use. After reading the book I realized that I was soft-love parenting and my husband was more fear based parenting. This had to be confusing for our children. We are now working together and using the basic ideas from the book to raise confident, cooperative and respectful children. The only complaint that I had about the book was the redundancy of it. Many things were explained many times but different ways but the message was the same. If it could be re-issued with better editing it would be a 5-star book.

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Summary: Positive, worthwhile message; poorly written book
Review: This book has a wonderful message for parents. It is too bad the book is tediously repetitive and has obvious editing errors. It was encouraging to get support for not being on the logical/natural consequences bandwagon; my sensitive child responded with feelings of negative self-worth when she experienced such consequences. It is also nice to be encouraged to be loving and supportive of your children and not be accused of spoiling them or making them too dependent on you. It is truly unfortunate more time was not taken to make the material more presentable.

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Summary: not a parent? doesn't matter!
Review: this book is absolutely brilliant! it tells us how we should communicate with children with the correct approaches. from the book you'll also know that children can be grouped into four types - sensitive, active, responsible, and receptive. these terms may seem new to you but after reading it you will know that children are from heaven, they are born to be cooperative. well you see, i'm only 18, yet i think this book really teaches me a lot. not only does it provide positive parenting skills, but also everything that you need to know about children. you don't have to be a parent to read Children Are From Heaven. if you like kids, then this book is for you.