Soft-Spoken Parenting: 50 Ways to Not Lose Your Temper With Your Kids
by H. Wallace Goddard Ph.D.
All parents lose their tempers with their children from time to time, but some parents find this unacceptable and want to avoid speaking harshly or yelling at their kids. How can we change our reactions, slow down and become “soft spoken” with our kids? And why would we want to anyway, especially if getting angry seems to get results?
These questions are the focus of this book. Dr. Goddard starts out in the introduction by tackling some of the longstanding beliefs, however false they are, about anger. For many years mental health experts said that to avoid letting out our anger was unhealthy. Now, after decades of research, we know that the opposite is true: that the expression of anger leads to even more anger and hostility, even towards our loved ones and especially our most precious children.
So, how does a parent learn to stop this negative spiral and control their anger? The remainder of the book gives parents 50 ways to to so. It’s broken down into small sections, each to be considered over a period of time.
There are no quick fixes for exceptional parenting, only the establishing of new habits. The first step is knowledge of how our kids perceive our anger and how it’s destructive to good relationships and even good discipline.
The book is laid out in a very helpful format for busy parents. Each strategy takes only minutes to read, but requires homework as the parent thinks about how to implement the strategy into their daily life. There is space in the book for journaling, which can be very enlightening as a parent learns to use tools that are already working for their family. You’ll find everything from using humor as a discipline tool to inviting children to help you solve their behavior problems. You can choose what will work for your and your kid’s personalities.
This is a wonderful book for any parent who struggles with their anger or who wants to learn more tools that will help them discipline with gentleness.
