Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Work!
Review: The people who give negative reviews to this book or say that the methods are "dated" need to read their bible, which is never dated. Spanking is necessary. Children, more often then not, need a good old-fashioned ...-blistering. The bible says in Proverbs to do it at bedtime, and I strictly adhere to this. PADDLING IS EFFECTIVE. Time-outs are not.
Rating:
Summary: All or Nothing - 1 or 5
Review: Most people who reviewed this book gave it 1 star or 5. Quite an extreme. I was amazed to read the negative reviews for this book. I almost wonder if the people who had a negative response actually read it or did they get so worked up about the suggestion of spankings they couldn't see past that. This is not a book about BEATING your children into submission, and it's not about whoever is bigger wins. This book gives parents encouragement to set rules and to expect RESPECT from their children. It's about DISCIPLINE which does not = spanking. Spanking is suggested as a last resort not the 1st and only option. Society was not as permssive when we were growing up as it is now and look at the decline of our young ones. Our generation had a lot more respect for authority than children do today. Dr Dobson is trying to help us see that permissiveness breeds lack of respect. I have found this book very helpful. He may not be politically correct by today's standards but I don't want to raise my children by today's standards.
Rating: 
Summary: Some concepts okay, others outdated & ineffective
Review: I'm a Christian parent and have listened to several audiobooks on parenting for my strong-willed children. While some of the concepts in Dobson's book are good old common sense, others do not seem to be effective when parenting a strong-willed child, a child with ADHD or other physical/emotional issues. And of course, the advice on spanking is controversial. If you can spank effectively, that's fine, but the truth is, most of us can't! The idea that you spank a child for discipline purposes only and not as a response to your own anger is purely theory only. How many parents do you see spanking children because they are furious and at their wit's end? Most of us can't do it effectively so there must be a better way! Try listening/reading "Raising Your Spirited Child" or "How to Talk so Kids Will Listen and Listen to So Kids Will Talk". These books will go one step further than Dobson's book and offer alternatives to spanking.
Rating:
Summary: Great Resource
Review: This is very good information. Some of the examples and studies are dated, but the truths are timeless. I'd love to see Dr. Dobson update this.
Rating: 
Summary: Not worth the paper its printed on
Review: Fine for James C. Dobson to instruct parents to bash their kids, now that he's a big person, but I'd still give him a clip round the ear if I saw him on my jib.
Rating:
Summary: James Dobson: DOG ABUSER
Review: "At eleven o'clock that night," author James Dobson writes in "The Strong-Willed Child" about his family's dachshund, "I told Siggie to go get into his bed, which is a permanent enclosure in the family room. For six years I had given him that order at the end of each day, and for six years Siggie had obeyed. "On this occasion, however, he refused to budge. You see, he was in the bathroom, seated comfortably on the furry lid of the toilet seat. That is his favorite spot in the house, because it allows him to bask in the warmth of a nearby electric heater..." One of the greatest "secrets" of nonpunitive parenting (or pet-keeping) is "don't sweat the small stuff." If the dog is comfortable sitting on the toilet seat by the heater, why not let him sit there (so long as no one has to use the toilet at that particular moment)? Of course, for the neurotically-rigid James Dobson, sweating each and every little trivial, easily-avoidable non-issue and turning it into a battle of wills is the pure essense of what parenting is all about. He writes: "I had seen this defiant mood before, and knew there was only one way to deal with it. The ONLY way to make Siggie obey is to threaten him with destruction. Nothing else works. I turned and went to my closet and got a small belt to help me "reason" with Mr. Freud." What the author never explains to his readers is WHY it was essential that the dog sleep where Dobson wanted him to sleep instead of where the dog wanted to sleep. Dobson is behaving like a toddler who throws a violent tantrum if his "bedtime ritual" isn't adhered to down to the slightest detail. Making Siggie go to sleep on command where and when Dobson wants him to has been part of this overgrown toddler's bedtime ritual for six years. Now, Siggie is interfering with a small detail of this bedtime ritual of Dobson's by wanting to sleep somewhere else which is warmer and more comfortable. So Dobson, true to his infantile level of emotional maturity, throws a violent tantrum: "What developed next is impossible to describe. That tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast. I fought him up one wall and down the other, with both of us scratching and clawing and growling and swinging the belt. I am embarrassed by the memory of the entire scene. Inch by inch I moved him toward the family room and his bed. As a final desperate maneuver, Siggie backed into the corner for one last snarling stand. I eventually got him to bed, only because I outweighed him 200 to 12!" This is one sick puppy. No... not the dog.... Dobson is OBSESSED with control. This may stem from the punitive upbringing he endured as a young child (and which he now praises, with unintended irony, for making him what he is today). Now that he is a grownup, and too old to spank, he is determined to finally get everything his way. Mr. Dobson is a 200 pound, verbally articulate version of the strong-willed" toddlers whom he exhorts parents to whip into submission "with a belt or switch" because "pain is a marvelous purifier." Dobson is walking proof of how just how badly a spanked child can turn out. The fact that parents like him exist in the world is an excellent argument for why all forms of corporal punishment should be abolished forthwith. Lest the more slow-witted among his readers fail to grasp the parallel between his relationship with his dog and the type of parenting advice the man dispenses, Dobson then lays it on the line: "But this is not a book about the discipline of dogs; there is an important moral to my story that is highly relevant to the world of children. JUST AS SURELY AS A DOG WILL OCCASIONALLY CHALLENGE THE AUTHORITY OF HIS LEADERS, SO WILL A LITTLE CHILD -- ONLY MORE SO." (emphasis Dobson's) Dobson's parenting style CREATES the sorts of problems for which he then claims to offer the only solution. He bullies children, and when they resist his oppressive, degrading treatment, he uses their "defiance" to further justify his behavior. He portrays the family as "a heirarchy of strength" in which the one with the greatest physical might and the strongest will prevails. His book is full of military metaphors in which children "marshall their forces," and "launch" every "weapon" in their "arsenals," while parents are advised to "draw a line in the sand" and to "win and win decisively" whenever a child "sticks their big hairy toe over the line" because "the child has made it clear that he is looking for a fight and his parents would be wise not to disappoint him." In fact, it is Dobson himself who starts out looking for a fight by his dysfunctional need for total control, (even to the point of dictating precisely where and when his dog sleeps at night). Yet, whenever his children can't stand it anymore and mount a valiant, hopeless bid to resist his domestic tyranny, he blames it on the children, claiming that: "Perhaps this tendency toward self-will is the essence of 'original sin' which has infiltrated the human family. It certainly explains why I place such stress on the proper response to willful defiance during childhood, for that rebellion can plant the seeds of personal disaster." The "rebellion" which Dobson blames on the child's original sinfulness is just the flip side of Dobson's own authoritarian, Parent-Wins-Child-Loses, control-obsessed approach to parenting. Totalitarian oppressive behavior by dictators breeds insurgency - coercive bullying behavior by parents breeds "rebellion." Dobson CREATES this sort of behavior in children, and then uses it as proof that still more authoritarian bullying is the only solution to the "rebellion" by "strong-willed" children which his tyranny provoked in the first place. Dobson uses the same twin weapons which dictators utilize to break the wills of pro-democracy dissidents: pain and fear. The major difference is that when dictators torture and intimidate anyone who resists THEIR tyranny, THEY don't claim to be doing it for their victims' own good as an act of love. Dictators hurt and intimidate because doing so meets THEIR needs. So does James Dobson.
Rating:
Summary: Couldn't read past the first chapter
Review: This guy starts by telling us how he successfully disciplined his small dog tough a "passionate" application of a belt and proceeds to telling us how he was equally successful when the object of this method was his son. Being a dog-lover and a child-lover, and not necessarily in that order, I could not keep reading this call for violence. Those who do not share my sensitivities should still ask themselves why did dog trainers abandon physical abuse in favor of positive re-enforcements to achieve the best results.
Rating: 
Summary: A few good ideas, but parents should exercise caution.
Review: Dobson makes a genuine effort to give parents well-balanced advice when it comes to discipline, but unfortunately manages only to temper his suggestions with euphemisms that make the actions appear more acceptable to parents but no less severe to their children. When recommending that parents strike their children with switches or belts, for instance, he stipulates that they should be "small" switches or belts (page 46), presumably to make the idea less harsh to his readers. Children, however, are sure to be hurt to the same degree regardless of the size of the belt with which they are being struck. Though he truly tries to be even-handed, referring to children as "vulnerable little creatures who need buckets of love and tenderness every day of their lives" (page 73), Dobson cannot stop himself from recommending that discipline start at eight months, and claims that a baby who still wears diapers should not be spanked through his diapers (as that would cause no pain), but given "two or three stinging strokes on the legs with a switch" (page 47). He tries to garner support for this kind of treatment by postulating that "The entire human race is afflicted with ... tendency toward willful defiance" (page 17) and de-humanizing children by describing them with any number of insulting adjectives and analogies, even going so far as to seriously suggest that there are infants who are "defiant upon exit from the womb" (page 20). Christian parents may also be insulted at his assertion that the Bible commands that they hit their children. He does actually suggest some creative ideas - for instance, his "Attitude Chart" on page 58, but most of these suggestions are tainted by his constantly linking them with corporal punishment. In order to take advantage of them, readers will have to wade through pro-spanking rhetoric and disentangle them from the abundant suggestions that they slap, swat, strike, deceive, intimidate, and otherwise mistreat their young children. Some moral judgment on the part of the reader is necessary, as well, in the face of Dobson's clear suggestions that they deliberately lie to and trick their children into behaving. For instance, with regard to the "Attitude Chart" mentioned earlier, Dobson states that "Although this...evaluation process has the appearance of being objective to the child, it is obvious that the parent can influence the outcome...(it's called cheating)" (page 59). Similar discretion will have to be used in taking Dr. Dobson's advice on children's feelings: He openly states that the child should not be permitted to say "I hate you" after being punished and twists that expression of honest emotion into a temper tantrum for which the child should be punished further (page 27). All in all, parents may be able to implement some of Dobson's more thoughtful ideas without resorting to the callous treatment he advocates, but I would suggest some more gentle and considerate books to moderate it as well, like Dr. William Sears' _The Baby Book_ and _Raising Your Child Not by Force but by Love_ by Sidney Craig.
Rating:
Summary: this guy is vicious
Review: says dr. dobson (i paraphrase only slightly): "don't beat your child with your hand...beat him with a small object used only for the purpose, like a belt or stick." how about don't beat your child at all? dr. dobson does what so many "specialists" in the field do - they blame the children for causing the parents problems, rather than seeing that in 99.9% of the cases it's the parents who, through their own unresolved issues and traumas from their own disturbed childhoods, create these little "problem" kids...these "strong-willed" little "monsters". and then he goes on to support the parents in their "difficult but necessary" journey to discipline and socialize their "troubled" children. never once does he suggest that the parents themselves go to therapy, work out their own deep issues, rather, he just suggests, using all his power as a "specialist", that parents continue to act out their own long-repressed inner shame and self-hatred on their defenseless children. for whom would i recommend this book: for no one. that this book exists, and that so many people read it...and believe it...scares me...but doesn't surprise me.
Rating:
Summary: Polemic in Favor of Spanking by a Man of Modest Intelligence
Review: I have a now 6-year-old daughter of high intelligence and strong will -- which made me a natural candidate for Dobson's book. What a waste. If I'd wanted someone to tell me to spank her everytime she got out of line, I could have called the local Neo-Nazi office. They're into a simplistic might-makes-right approach, too. Dobson's approach takes no brains, thought, or patience. And once the child gets too old to spank (if she ever reaches that point, in Dobson's view), I'm out of persuasive tools. I want advice that'll help me leave a LASTING mark on her character, to show her about compassion, fairness, kindness -- not the merits of adhering to my view for the sake of avoiding pain. Dobson compares a kid to a supermarket cart with a stuck wheel that just won't steer -- hardly a sophisticated approach. I was not only irritated at my wasted time, but disturbed by the thought that lots of people will hear his views and buy into them. What a terrible shame.
| 
