Listen

I’ve spoken before about my journey to change my parenting style and I’ve recommended books that have been great stepping stones on the journey.

Today I am recommending another one.

It is “Listen : Five Simple Tools to Meet Your Everyday Parenting Challenges” by Patty Wipfler and Tosha Schore.

Like many of the other books it is centred on respectful interactions. And as the title would suggest, many of the tools revolve around listening. Listening to our children, allowing them space to deal with their issues, and helping them address those issues as best we can.

What I love about this, is that it doesn’t insist on forcing the kids to stuff down their hurts, but rather focuses on helping them to unpack those hurts and emotions. The analogy of a backpack really resonates with me… we can either help them get those hard emotions out of that backpack and have a lighter load, or we can insist they stuff more and more emotions in that sucker and have a much heavier load.

I know which option I’m on board for working towards.

The integration of listening and playing, along with one aspect that I had missed in earlier books – parenting Listening Partnerships – makes it the most rounded, succinct expression of the basic tools to help our kids (and ourselves).

I love it and can’t recommend it enough if you’re looking for tools to help you set limits without punishment or threats, deal with your kids’ big emotions (including outbursts), understand the underlying reasons your kids act out, get a grip on your own emotional reaction to your kids’ behaviour and generally have an all-round better relationship that’s not a power tug-o-war !

Yes, I gave it a 5 out of 5 on Goodreads, where I am not alone in doing so.

I’ll be adding it to the sidebar here for anyone wanting to get themselves a copy*.

And for those who would like to get to know the authors a bit better, they have a website that you can visit.
It’s called Hand in Hand Parenting.

Happy reading!