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Summary: A Prescription for Peace: Getting a Handle on Emotions
Review: Based on Daniel Goleman's book, Emotional Intelligence, and the author's own research in her practice, this book's basic premise is that conflicts in families can be resolved by understanding, recongnizing, and dealing with emotions effectively. Since these are skills wanting in many of us, the author suggests we teach our children and ourselves at the same time. Good advice.Carefully, patiently, she leads us through the basics: empathy, self calming, recongnizing feelings, listening, recognizing different temperaments and personality styles. Then she gives us the tools for coaching our children to become more effective in handling their feelings: to recognize them, name them, express them and seek a satisfactory resolution without being destructive to others. Nothing here is so revolutionary, but the approach of thinking about your child's difficult behavior as a cry for help in dealing with underlying emotions is incredibly helpful. Once you have tuned into this idea, it short-circuits your tendency to react to such behavior with knee-jerk, authoritarian stuff you are reading these books to avoid. You end up working with your child, not against him, and isn't that the point? Different parenting books work for different people. This might be the one for you. One caveat: the paper on this not inexpensive hardcover edition is cheap, cheap, and the type small and gray. You'd expect more from HarperCollins.
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Summary: Everybody Wins
Review: I like the advice given in this book. I see an improvement in my relationship with my son on the days that I make an effort to follow the tips in this book. I wish I had read it earlier, I could have avoided a lot of melt downs!
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Summary: Parents: Listen to Yourself!
Review: Mary Sheedy Kurcinka (2000) author of `Kids, Parents, and Power Struggles', opts to shed light upon effective strategies she believes relate to different temperament styles. In this book Kurcinka suggests that parents play the role of an "Emotion Coach", that the parent "...enhances [the] child's emotional intelligence..." (Kurcinka, 2000). Kurcinka most openly expresses the fact that neither kids nor parents are perfect. While I did fine Kurcinka's drawling examples utterly tedious, she does nicely sum up each chapter with easy-to-understand tips and pointers. Kurcinka's identifies two kinds of parents and calls them "Emotion Coach" or "Intimidator". Failing to leave room for the middle ground, Kurcinka views parents either as "sensitive...and encouraging" (the Emotion Coach role), or "insensitive... and dominating" (the role of the Intimidator). It is my personal opinion that these labels could double as Barbara Coloroso's `Brick-wall' and `Backbone', as they could for Diane Baumrind's `Authoritarian' and `Authoritative'. While there is little difference between the 3 labeling systems, Kurcinka's mainly fails to illustrate:
1. a middle ground
2. a parenting style that alternates between `Emotion Coach' and `Intimidator'
3. a negligent parenting style
Therefore, if you considering purchasing Kurcinka's book for the family structure views, I suggest you go directly to the source and read Baumrind's books. Back to the roles...authoritative parents, emotion coaches, and backbone families attempt to establish meaningful attachments with all family members. Despite the fact that siblings can be raised in a similar manner, by the same parents, there are numerous children who grow up insecurely attached. Kurcinka attempts to shed light upon this not so unusual phenomenon, and refers to it as "a clash in temperament". Temperament is a person's behavioral style and characteristic way of responding.
Kurcinka's book differs from others on the market because it teaches parents to understand their own self, as well as their children's. According to Kurcinka, understanding your child's temperament and understanding your own (as a parent) is important because it "...is one of the real fuel sources that may lie behind the power struggles..." one experiences with their child. For example, if you find yourself easily able to adapt to new situations but your child appears to struggle with change chances are your temperaments are different. In this case, the child has difficulty with spontaneity and probably prefers a more regular schedule. It can be frustrating when you're not on the same page with your child, but Kurcinka offers some coaching tips that include knowing and accepting yourself, but listening to your child's feelings as well.
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Summary: Parental Feedback wins for Life time Relationship
Review: Most of the parents adopt the system of 'Teaching skills' rathar than go through 'Teaching Life Essetial Skills'. Psychologists caution against casting children in specific roles: the quiet one, athletic one, smart one, clumsy one and even a negative type can provide harmful self image that a child may carry throughout his life. It is upto the parent to be an 'emotion coach' and teach the kids to cope up with situations of strengths and weaknesses and build up productive relationships.
In the Book 'Kids, Parents, and Power Struggles', Kurcinka offers unique approaches to solving the daily, and often draining, power struggles between the parent and the child. She views these conflicts as rich opportunities to teach the child essential life skills, like how to deal with strong emotions and problem solve strategies. The current problem lies in discipline and parents, not only fail to understand the behaviour patterns of kids but also fail to bring well mannered kids. Reasons maybe many leading to neglected parental duties. Understanding a child's temperament and understand own's style is necessary says the author. It always depends on how one takes the struggles - whether weigh it lighter or exaggerate things with end only getting much worse and the prob trigger to be a 'troubleshooter' and wind up to face challenging 'struggles'. Kurcinka focus on tips for parental approach and teach the child self respect and self control. Authority over the child never works and this is one thing not to miss out if a parent wish for a positive answer to 'How will I want my child to behave when he turns a teenager? Overall, a good parental feedback. It sure is a win for Life time parent-kid relationship.
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Summary: Absolutely terrific...
Review: Reading parenting books is practically a secret addiction of mine -- I read about one a month, sometimes more, and have read dozens since my son was born. Barbara Coloroso's Kids Are Worth It!(a great book) has held first place on my favorites list for the last three years, but Mary Kurcinka just knocked her off with Kids, Parents and Power Struggles. This is the best parenting book I've ever read and I highly, highly recommend it. I think the title was a little misleading -- the book wasn't as much about power struggles as it was about learning how to help your kids handle their emotions appropriately. It's also heavily oriented (not surprisingly, from the author of Raising Your Spirited Child) toward understanding your individual child -- his or her needs, temperament,and personality and how those factors affect behavior. The content is great. And the delivery is also wonderful. Kurcinka's writing style is clear, informative, thoughtful -- and fun!
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Summary: Good in Theory
Review: The messages in this book cannot be faulted: treat your child with respect and teach self control. The prequel, "Raising Your Spirited Child", teaches parents to first adjust to their child's temperament and is quite good. Much of content is repeated in this book. The disadvantage of this book is that the messages get lost in the overly abundant stories used to humanize and illustrate behavioral points. And all have simple causes and neat conclusions. Reading was slow and not particularly beneficial. For a parenting book that better addresses common problems, common responses and better responses, read "How to Talk to Your Child". However, there's still the need for a book that addresses how to handle situations where time doesn't allow diplomacy or diplomacy doesn't yield results.
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Summary: Excellent Resource and Information
Review: This book has really helped me learn better methods of dealing with and understanding my 3 year old son. The book provides some questionaires that help you identify strong parts of a child's temperment and then supplies strategies for dealing with those temperments. They work too! It really helped me take a step back from what was becoming a very negative, constantly yelling, stressful relationship and move towards making it positive and enjoyable. The ideas discussed are not about new ways to punish but methods to use to teach your child self discipline and stress management. It also keyed me in to differences in personality that were starting to be points of contention in our relationship. I would recommend this book to anyone who would like to build a more positive relationship with their child.
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Summary: Best I have read so far
Review: This is the type of book I read cover to cover as fast as I could, and know I will refer back to many times in the years to come. It has a lot of practical advice, and made me feel like "I can do this", or at the very least like I have some tools to help me do it as best I can.
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Summary: great book
Review: This was a very well written book. There is no mumble jumble to this book. Well informative and enjoyable. I would highly recommend to anyone who wants to become a better parent. I find it so important to let go of the old style of parenting and concentrate on the way a child should be treated without punishment (but of course with the proper form of disipline), critisim, belittling, and of course without spanking. A child is a human being and should be treated as such. He/she is an equal in your family. When you've read some great books such as this one you will learn and appreciate the proper way a child should be parented and taught. And these NEW parenting techniques REALLY DO work. Put yourself to the test and everyone will benefit form what you get out of it. I also recommend Kids are worth it(Barbara Coloroso), How to talk so kids will listen & listen so kids will talk(Faber& Mazlish), How to raise an emotionally intelligent kid (John Gottman) and The 7 habits of a highly effective family (Stephen Covey) Enjoy!
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Summary: Better than Spirited Child
Review: This well-written book is a fine, worthy follow up to the very useful Raising Your Spirited Child. The author uses the work of Daniel Goleman on Emotional Intelligence to help parents learn to avoid power struggles with their children. The author advocates the need for parents to both ddevelop their own emotional intelligence and to help their children develop this qualities. Part one gives a good, if not detailed enough, overview of what emotional intelligence is and why it's important. She could've referenced a bit more research here; it does exist. Parts Two and Four look at how parents can connect with their children to be "emotion coaches" for them. Part Two is about building a better relationship with your child. Part Four is is focused on life skills. I really enjoyed these sections of the book, although they, too, could've been more detailed. That said Kurcinka is gearing this book to a general audience and probably didn't want to get bogged down in alot of theory and research. That's actually a good thing - the book is not at all dry. It's readable and I think parents will be able to relate to the examples she uses. She uses alot of real life case examples from her own practice. I didn't find Part 3 to be as useful as the rest of the book, because it was all about temperment. This material was covered in detail in her previous book, which I've read. Everything about it was pretty much a carbon copy of the original book "Raising Your Strong Willed Child." For those who haven't read that book, the information is very useful, and I think necessary, but for me it was repetitive. She could've shortened or deleted this section of the book and given more exercises, activities, and overall detail in the other three parts. Overall, this is a very useful book for anyone who wants to learn to lessen conflict and power struggles with children. It's geared more toward children under 12, but the materials can also be applied to teens. Highly reccommended.
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