Easy, Step-by-Step, Lasting Change for You and Your Child
by Dr. Alan Kazdin with Carlo Rotella
“Renowned Yale University psychology professor and child psychiatrist Kazdin (The Kazdin Method for Parenting the Defiant Child), director of the Yale Parenting Center, offers practical strategies to help parents manage everyday behavioral problems. His science-based method may surprise some readers, particularly those who favor a more authoritarian approach. The core of the book focuses on the “ABC’s”: antecedents, behavior, and consequences. According to Kazdin, parents can effect desired behavior in their children by offering choices and speaking in pleasant tones. Failure to offer a choice—such as letting a child decide to do homework before or after dinner—decreases the likelihood of compliance, as do hints of stress or desperation in a parent’s voice. As Kazdin shows, praise—when given in a specific manner at a specific time—is more effective than trinkets or other rewards; he also suggests that a two-week punishment for an offense (e.g. taking a bike away for that time) is no more effective than a two-day punishment. In fact, he asserts that punishment is “wildly overrated” and works only when it’s mild and paired with positive reinforcement. Featuring plenty of concrete examples and useful strategies, this book will help parents trying to nurture well-behaved kids.”
–Publishers Weekly
Some of us are just naturals when it comes to parenting. But the rest of us wish that parenting came with operating instructions.
Now it does. The result of thirty years of scientific research, Alan Kazdin’s The Everyday Parenting Toolkit will guide you through every developmental stage—from toddler to teenager—and make you a more relaxed, confident, and competent parent. The rigorously tested strategies in this book will not only help change your child’s behavior, they will also decrease the stress in family relations, increase your joy in parenting, and help build a more nurturing home life that can directly improve children’s mental and physical health and school success.
You won’t find abstract philosophy here. You’ll see every point, every strategy, illustrated with real-life examples. From toilet training to teaching a child to accept “no” without a tantrum all the way up to struggles over cellphones and curfew; from swiftly and gently correcting problem behaviors to fostering positive character qualities like respect for others, honesty, good friendships, or altruism, The Everyday Parenting Toolkit will surprise you time and again with counterintuitive advice that works.
For years parents have been using the Kazdin Method® for help with the challenges, large and small, of child rearing. With the publication of this book, every reader can gain access to that advice and to parenting know-how that transforms families.
