All children have their moments - temper tantrums in the supermarket, stubbornness when they don't like what's for dinner, crankiness when they're overtired - but some of them seem to have developed their resistant behavior in the womb and are ready for fighting from birth. Call them strong-willed or call them spirited, the good news is, strong doesn't have to mean bad, and there are many ways to parent children with definite opinions without letting everyday clashes become the norm. In The Complete Idiot's Guide® to Raising a Strong-Willed Child, parents learn how to capitalize on their child's strengths, maximizing their good days and making their bad days more manageable. It helps them better parent the child they have, instead of trying to turn him into the child they think he's supposed to be. The authors share ideas and techniques to make the everyday and the special occasions more pleasant.
Above all, The Complete Idiot's Guide® to Raising a Strong-Willed Child is a manual on how to manage, and celebrate, more. The catch-all parenting philosophies that seem to work for most children cannot be effectively applied to the strong-willed ones. Because they are more, they need more.
- Who is the strong-willed child?
- How using empathy first and discipline second changes perspectives.
- Exercises and strategies that really work to calm toddler tantrums.
- Ways to deal with hot-button times of the day - wake-up, meals, and bedtime
- Bringing teachers on board to ease transitions from home to school to home again
- Raging hormones - helping the strong-willed child through adolescence.
- What to do if the something more is something MORE - dealing with health and safety issues, learning and emotional disabilities, and other issues.
