How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk

My girlfriend gave me this book to read. It's very insightful and the techniques work for me and my children. I highly recommend it!

Key takeaways:

- Kids are a lot more like adults than we often believe. Many of the tools we use to interact with kids work on adults. The opposite is also true
- Validate feelings. All feelings are acceptable, not all behaviours are
- Consequences and punishment are not the same

This is another one of those books that I'm going to have to listen to a couple of times for everything to sink in.

Okay, so I started this book three and a half years ago and got about halfway through. Recently, I picked it up and read it through from the beginning to the end.

What I like about this book is that it reminds me to treat my boy as a person who has his own thoughts and feelings. The authors take this into account while offering advice on ways that give children practice resolving conflict in healthy, constructive ways.

Because children are people who are self aware and have their own thoughts and ideas and personalities, each is going to respond in different ways. As the authors point out, this doesn't change your kid into a unicorn child who always ones and is never difficult. Nor does the advice turn us into picture perfect parents who never show a hint of emotional distress. Having tools to resolve conflict can help us to avoid shaming and blaming and gaming to a sometimes rocky road of conflict resolution that encourages building the relationship rather than resentment.