A Book in Review – Setting Limits with your Strong-Willed Child

Book Count: 73

Setting Limits with your Strong-Willed Child: Eliminating Conflict by Establishing CLEAR, Firm, and Respectful Boundaries By: Robert J. MacKenzie, Ed.D.
Non-fiction: parenting, psychology 264 pages 2001

This book was helpful. Although, like most parenting books the author seams to think that their idea will work much better then it realistically would in the real world it does point out that there will be issues with starting this and it may take 3-4 months until your children act like the examples he gave of how well it works. Plus, it requires less work then most any other method you are using that isn’t working, so at the very least it’s easier. The main idea of the book is that most people learn ineffective methods of disciplining kids from their childhood and repeat them. Either they are permissive and have kids that don’t do what they want or they are punitive and have kids that hate and/or fear them or they do both. This book is about getting kids to do what you want in a way that is respectful to them. This is done mainly by clearly stating what to want them to do, what will happen if they don’t do it once and then following threw when they don’t behave with punishments that make sense and are not too weak or harsh. An example would be telling a child to pick up their toys on the living room floor before dinner starts at 6 or they will be taken away until Saturday and at 6 putting all toys on the floor in a box. (Like I said earlier at least it is not a lot of work to do this method.) It also getting into teaching kids problem solving and child psychology.