Common Sense Parenting of Toddlers and Preschoolers

by Bridget A. Barnes

Hugs and smiles and If only parenting 2- to 5-year-olds was this simple. But any parent of a toddler or preschooler knows that it also often requires dealing with whining, tantrums, "no, I won't" and other generally naughty behavior that tests the limits of your ingenuity and patience. How can parents balance nurturing behaviors that demonstrate love and affection with the discipline all children need to learn and thrive? Common Sense Parenting of Toddlers and Preschoolers shows parents how discipline can be more about teaching than punishment and more positive than negative for both you and your child. Included in these
How to set reasonable expectations based on your child's age, development, and abilities
How to use a parent's version of "show and tell" to both prevent problems and correct misbehavior
How to use praise like a compass, helping your child stay on the right path
How to create plans for staying calm for you and your child
How to use consistency, consequences, and practice to help your child learn what you expect of him or her
How to celebrate special rituals and everyday routines as cherished family traditions Winner of the National Parenting Center's 2001 Seal of Approval
Gold Award Winner, 2002 National Parenting Publications Awards

Genres: Parenting

277 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2001

Reviews

[Brittany]

Great book with helpful tips. It is a bit outdated but the messaging is still relevant.

[Jun Yan]

This book mainly teach about some life skills and social skills, and didn’t mention some very important skills such as delaying rewards, grit, etc. For life skills such as bedtime routine, meal routine, im not sure they are so important. For example, sleeping at 8:30 everyday or picking up toys, is this something so important to teach and enforce ? Also I don’t agree with rewarding about going to sleep at 8:30 nor using mom/dad’s attention as explicit reward. The book is also pretty repetitive and offer few examples . Sibling without rivalry is a much better book.

Despite the many limitations , I still learned something from the book:
Show and tell
Preventative teaching (teaching in anticipation of a new thing/event or when past experience is not great)

[Emily]

Gave some good tips into dealing with the rebellious 2 yo. Title is honest - a lot of the approaches are common sense, but the way they explained the strategies made a lot of sense. I think we're already trying a lot of these things but I hadn't analyzed why I was doing what I was doing or seen it as a concrete strategy to meet a recurring goal.

One of the important things they stress is that you have to teach your child your expectations for a situation before you can fairly expect him to follow them. Honestly, I forget this a lot, especially with Ben being so verbal. We've started rehearsing ahead of time, e.g., "These are the things you do when you go to the grocery store: you walk next to me and you don't touch anything on the shelves without permission." It seems to have helped already and if he misbehaves, we can go back and have him repeat the few simple rules for that setting, which he seems to retain.

[Michelle]

As the mother of a three and four year old, I would highly recommend this book. I just finished it and plan to read it again. The author provides helpful strategies with dealing with minor and major types of misbehavior of kiddos without spanking, yelling or mental breakdowns by the parents. If you feel overrun by your tiny minions, then you should read this book.

[Brigitte]

This book was excellent. As described, much of it is common sense, but it was a nice change to read a parenting book that was in no way offensive, even unintentionally.

[Lisa]

Good tips and guidance as well as a few cool behavior charts.

[Megan]

As the title suggests, some of the information presented in this book is common sense. However, there is some interesting and useful tips.