Parenting Books

By kim ( September 24, 2009 at 9:59 am) · Filed under Uncategorized, , , ,

As you may have noticed, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about parenting types and styles. I am completely confident that attachment parenting is for Brad and I, but beyond that, how does one discipline?

I’ve got a couple of books that I’m hoping to read soon. With Gwen well into toddlerhood - my goodness, I feel like she’s had a toddler’s mentality since she started crawling! - we’re thinking more and more about discipline and I’m finding myself more and more confused as to what feels right for us. The only thing I do know is that I don’t want to hit, and I don’t want to punish. I want to discipline - to teach our children the correct way of being in relationship with others.

Here’s my list of soon-to-reads (I hope!):

7 comments »

  1. Chelsea said,

    September 24, 2009 @ 11:09 am

    Kim, it sounds like Barbara Coloroso’s books would be a good fit for you. She is big into natural consequences and that kind of thing. I have a friend who loves her and your post sounded a lot like her. :)

    I would recommend Kids Are Worth It to start.

  2. kim said,

    September 24, 2009 @ 8:09 pm

    Awesome - thanks for the recommendation, Chelsea!

  3. Shannon said,

    September 25, 2009 @ 1:13 am

    I have Grace-Based Parenting, and while I like it, it’s not nearly as good as Families Where Grace is in Place.

  4. kim said,

    September 25, 2009 @ 5:07 am

    Chels, I picked up Kids Are Worth It from my LLL library today and am enjoying it!

    Shannon - I’ll have to look into that one, thanks!!

  5. Lindsay Bunn said,

    September 25, 2009 @ 7:56 am

    Hi Kim - have you considered the Time-In approach? I am thinking about trying this with Beckett when he’s a bit older. I am going to dig up some resources and do some reading about it myself, but I like the idea behind it. Instead of leaving your child in Time-Out on their own, you sit with them and console them etc. while at the same time removing them from the activity (this is especially pertinent if they were in danger or they were in danger of hurting someone else). When they are old enough, you can explain why they needed some time away from the activity they were doing etc. That’s my rudimentary understanding thus far anyway….

  6. jenny the big sis said,

    October 1, 2009 @ 1:07 am

    I use the time-in approach with great success. Time outs are so often misunderstood; and they’re NOT supposed to be used to punish, rather as a way to remove a child from an over stimulating or harm inducing situation and give them space to calm down, at their own speed, where they feel safe.

    For that purpose, when Liam loses control of his emotions (he is 2) I take him to his room and calmly shut the door and place him on the floor (not on his bed) and sit in a chair looking at a book while he works it out. (I don’t think I’ll continue using his room after we get our own place, but for now, its the only place to remove him to)

    Generally he figures out how to calm himself in about a minute (even though it feels like much longer for me!).

    When he approaches me for a cuddle (usually with tears and snot running down his face) we have a quick chat with lots of eye contact, then we hug it out and say we’re sorry and then we go back to whatever area of the house we were in when the tantrum/melt down started and we give the activity (or conversation, or game, or whatever) another shot.

    It has worked WONDERFULLY and I know that Liam feels secure in expressing himself without fear that he’ll be left alone to work it out alone (so sad)

  7. Sarah said,

    October 16, 2009 @ 12:33 am

    We LOVED Grace Based Parenting. Totally changed the way we do things.

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