Description
Product Description
Completely updated with the latest research in child development and learning, Positive Discipline for Preschoolers will help parents understand their preschooler and provide early methods to raise a child who is responsible, respectful, and resourceful.
Caring for young children is one of the most challenging tasks an adult will ever face. No matter how much you love your child, there will be moments filled with frustration, anger, and even desperation. There will also be questions: Why does my four-year-old deliberately lie to me? Why is everything a struggle with my three-year-old? Should I ever spank my preschooler when she is disobedient? Over the years, millions of parents have come to trust the Positive Discipline series and its common-sense approach to child-rearing.
This revised and updated fourth edition includes a new chapter on the importance of play and outdoor experiences on child development, along with new information on school readiness, childhood brain growth, and social/emotional learning. You'll also find practical solutions for how to:
- Teach appropriate social skills at an early age
- Avoid the power struggles that often come with mastering sleeping, eating, and potty training
- See misbehavior as an opportunity to teach nonpunitive discipline--not punishment
About the Author
Jane Nelsen, Ed.D., coauthor of the bestselling Positive Discipline series, is a licensed marriage, family, and child therapist and an internationally-known speaker. Her books have sold more than 2 million copies.
Cheryl Erwin, M.A., has been a licensed marriage and family therapist in Reno, Nevada, for more than twenty-five years. She is the author or coauthor of several books and manuals on parenting and family life, and she is a popular international speaker and trainer.
Roslyn Ann Duffy founded and codirected the Learning Tree Montessori Childcare, and has written adult and children's texts, as well as the internationally circulated column "From A Parent's Perspective". She lectures and trains in numerous cultures, is a parent to four and besotted grandma to three, and lives and practices counseling in Seattle, WA.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
Why Positive Discipline?
Parenting classes, preschool websites, and chat groups often echo with similar questions: “Why does my three-year-old bite?” or “How do I get my five-year-old to stay in bed at night?” Child development experts, preschool directors, and therapists’ offices overflow with parents whose offspring have reached the ages of three, four, or five and who are wondering what on earth has happened. Listen for a moment to these parents:
“Our little boy was such a delight. We expected trouble when he turned two—after all, everyone had warned us about the ‘terrible twos’—but nothing happened. Until he turned three, that is. Now we don’t know what to do with him. If we say ‘black,’ he says ‘white.’ If we say it’s bedtime, he’s not tired. And trying to brush his teeth turns into a battle. We must be doing something wrong!”
“Sometimes I wonder if any sound comes out when I open my mouth. My five-year-old doesn’t seem to hear anything I say to her. She won’t listen to me at all. Is she always going to act like this?”
“We couldn’t wait for our son to begin talking, but now we can’t get him to stop. He has figured out that he can prolong any conversation by saying, ‘Guess what?’ He is our delight and despair, in almost equal measure.”
“I thought it was cute when my three-year-old could use her little fingers to find all kinds of things on my cellphone. Now that she is five, she wants to play with the phone all the time and has terrible tantrums when I take it away from her. What can we do?”
As you will discover in the pages that follow (or as you may already realize), ages three to six are busy, hectic years for young children—and for their parents and caregivers. Researchers tell us that human beings ha