Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting - Laura Markham

Talk about putting someone through the mommy guilt wringer. While reading listening to this book, I vacillated between chastising myself for essentially ruining my children's lives and patting myself on the back for maybe not doing such a bad job afterall. The final outcome is that yeah, I could probably do better as a parent. And lucky for my kids, I'd like to try to do better. I won't always get there, but I will try. So they've basically won the parenting lottery right?

Essentially, if I had to condense this book's advice into a single sentence, it would be, "Don't be an asshole." And really that's kind of it. But it's more nuanced of course, as all things parenting are. In effect, we must realize that "do as I say, and not as I do" is not an effective parenting technique. Children learn by watching adults, and for the large portion of their early lives those role models are their parents. When we yell and overcome them with physical force to prove a point or to punish, we are modeling to them the way we believe they should handle their own conflicts. NO WONDER WE HAVEN'T ACHIEVED WORLD PEACE YET! 

It also touches on a lot of the evidence from studies that suggest that children cognitively cannot pull their behavior into line with our expectations with the kind of regularity we would expect from adults. So give the kids a break, show them some love, understanding, and compassion, and move on from a punishment mindset. All in all some good reminders for busy parents. If you don't want to read the entire book, just check out the website where a lot of these topics are discussed. You can find it here.

4/5 Stars.