Child Wrangling

When I go on a long work trip, I often end up buying some books, because it is one of the rare times that I get to selfishly spend uninterrupted hours just reading. In September, I had a trip where I picked up a couple of parenting books.

My kids are getting bigger, and while at the moment I can get them to go where I need them to go by picking them up and taking them there, this is not sustainable. When we had babies, I read a bunch of books about how to get through that stage, but I hadn’t educated myself on parenting primary-school-age children. So, I picked two best-selling titles that seemed to have differing perspectives, and figured by reading both I would get a good coverage of the space. Now, by writing about them here, I am forced to understand them well enough to explain them.

The first book was 1-2-3 Magic by Thomas W Phelan. It is all about how to improve the behaviour of children 2-12yo through “effective discipline”, and is currently rated 4.7 out of 5 stars on Amazon (139 reviews). It is written by a child psychologist and is an easy read. I would say that this book has a basic assumption that children are happy and well behaved when they know what behaviour is required of them.

The second book was Calmer, Easier, Happier Parenting by Noel Janis-Norton. It is all about how to improve the behaviour of children 3-13yo through “five strategies” and is currently rated 4.5 out of 5 stars on Amazon (27 reviews). It is written by a child educator and is a comprehensive theory and practice for child-raising. This book has a basic assumption that children can work out what they are supposed to do, and will do the right things when they are supported appropriately and when doing the wrong things no longer works.

I seem to recall that I was a near-perfect child. So, my memories of how my own parents raised me should not be relied upon, and I find that I need to come up with things that suit my kids. Hopefully they will look back and think they were near-perfect as well.

Despite taking different approaches, the two books do agree on some aspects. There are five common strategies that I have noticed, and they seem reasonably sensible:

  1. Don’t ignore bad behaviour.
  2. Stay calm and don’t shout.
  3. Always follow through.
  4. Spend quality time with each child.
  5. All caregivers in a house act consistently.

However, there is probably more that they disagree about than they agree, as you may guess from their differing assumptions about children’s behaviours. In addition to the above five common strategies, Phelan’s book proposes two fundamental techniques for achieving household happiness:

  1. Impose time-outs for repeated bad behaviour.
  2. Establish everyday routines.

Of course, the book has plenty more detail around how to do this. In particular the title of the book refers to counting instances of bad behaviour, and putting a child into time-out when the third count is reached.

On the other hand, Janis-Norton’s book has different fundamental techniques that support a range of parenting strategies:

  1. Train children to want parental praise and recognition.
  2. Teach them how to verbalise thoughts and emotions.

Hers is a very thorough book, going into numerous examples over its 400+ pages. However, it doesn’t include any examples of disciplining children – at least not in a traditional way. Looking on the Internet, it seems this sort of approach is also known as positive discipline, and there are other authors out there that promote it. Janis-Norton many times states that she knows it may seem unbelievable that this could work, but reassures the reader that it does.

I haven’t decided yet how to put any of this into practice, but I feel now better equipped with a bunch of parental tools that I hope will make life easier and more sustainable. And if I don’t have to pick up and move children any more, my back will be thankful.