Honestly as a parent, it’s been a long time since I’ve had a chance to
read a good book. Don’t we all get so caught up in working, being a parent, and managing our lives that finding time to read itself is a challenge?
Jersey Family Fun was recently invited to review Stop Reacting and Start Responding™ by Sharon Silver. It’s a parenting book designed to help us parents find better ways to respond when we might want to react. As a mom to 3 boys, this book spoke to me and I could not pass on the opportunity to learn how to be a better parent. Like other moms I struggle with how to maintain my composure and be the parent I want to be, especially when I’m overexhausted. It can be tough and at the end of the day you’ve gained nothing but lots of guilt.
From the very first page to the last I found inspiration to do my “mom” job, my most important one, better. I could not put the book down. In fact, I read it all in one night. Yes, it’s over 200 pages but because it’s broken down into over 100 useful parenting tips it’s easy to read. You can read it all at once or a few pages at a time, as your schedule allows.
The book made sense of some of my kids most challenging behaviors and gave me strategies to deal with them. These are just some of the questions the book can answer for you:
- What should you do when you’re in a battle of wills with your child?
- Why do kids really lie? 3 strategies to deal with it.
- Why one more chance doesn’t work?
- What is STRR?
- How should I handle a tantrum?
- What’s the difference between
- choices vs threats,
- demands vs empowering,
- bribes vs rewards,
- punishment vs discipline?
- How do you get ‘me’ time from your kids?
- Why do kids respond with fine or I dunno?
- Why your child never needs to go potty?
- What the best thing about a bad day is?
- What kind of praise is the right kind?
Unlike other parenting books, I like that Stop Reacting and Start Responding™ is based in reality. I feel like the tips in the book are doable for me and most parents. In fact, I plan to make some little cheat sheets that I can stash around the house. When one of those times comes up when I want to ‘REACT’ I’ll be able to ‘STOP’ and ‘RESPOND’ instead. Thank you Sharon Silver for showing me the way.
I’ve been so inspired by this book that I hope you’ll continue to follows us in the weeks ahead as we explore some of Sharon Silver‘s parenting topics further and add our own thoughts and yours to the discussion. Think of it as kind of an online book club. Join me in reading this book because as Sharon says it’s important for parents to learn this now before our children are tweens and teens and have the potential to become more difficult. I couldn’t agree more.
Stop Reacting and Start Responding™ is available for purchase through Proactive Parenting™
[...] 10, 2011 By Jennifer Auer Leave a Comment Tweet You might remember a few weeks back I reviewed Stop Reacting and Start Responding™ by Sharon Silver. I mentioned that Sharon Silver’s book had given me the [...]