About.com Rating



By Meg Akabas; 199 pages

Bottom Line

Meg Akabas offers parents one topic per week for an entire year. Each chapter is short, only about a page or two in length, followed by questions for reflection and activities to do for the week.

Unlike most parenting books that focus on a single behavior or a single approach to parenting, Akabas addresses the importance of teaching life skills. She helps parents ensure that they are giving kids the firm foundation they need to become responsible adults by offering a different building block each week.

The book’s format stresses the importance of making changes and teaching your children new skills at a slow pace. Many books are read from front to back in a matter of days, which makes the new skills difficult to apply. Taking each chapter one step at a time gives parents an opportunity to spend the week reflecting on how they want to apply each principle.

Pros

• Short chapters ensure that even the busiest of parents have time to read the book.
• The book is geared toward parents from birth to 12 and offers tips to help parents apply the information to their child’s age group.
• There is a lot of information about building a healthy relationship with your child.
• There is a corresponding website that offers additional worksheets and items, such as a chore chart, to augment the book.

Cons

• It takes a lot of dedication to stick with the book for an entire year.
• There may be weeks that aren’t applicable to some parents. Not all children struggle with separating from parents or with managing certain behaviors.

• Some parents may not share the same values as the author.
• The book covers so many topics that none of them are covered in much depth.

Description

Week 1: Watch Your Attitude!

Week 2: The Best Lecture Is a Good Example

Week 3: Don’t Ask When You Mean to Tell

Week 4: The Gift of Sleep

Week 5: Sense and Sensitivity

Week 6: Those Who Give Respect, Get Respect

Week 7: Say What You Mean, and Mean What You Say

Week 8: Great Expectations

Week 9: No More “Punishments”

Week 10: Limits with Love

Week 11: Tweaking Time-Outs

Week 12: Choices, Choices

Week 13: Discipline (Yourself)

Week 14: Everything in Moderation

Week 15: Are Bribes OK?

Week 16: What Really Matters

Week 17: Interacting at All Ages

Week 18: Parting Thoughts

Week 19: Is Anybody Listening?

Week 20: Are You Over-Parenting

Week 21: Attention, Please

Week 22: Putting an End to Whining

Week 23: Who’s in Charge?

Week 24: Belief Follows Behavior

Week 25: Reasonable Responsibilities

Week 26: No Fighting, No Biting

Week 27: Inspire Confidence

Week 28: Manners Matter (No Matter How Young)

Week 29: Children Should be Seen and Heard

Week 30: Can’t We Just All Get Along?

Week 31: Activities: Too Many or Too Few?

Week 32: Humor Helps

Week 33: Just Do It

Week 34: Mealtimes Together

Week 35: Passion Pending

Week 36: The Power of Stories

Week 37: Allowance as a Teaching Tool

Week 38: Avoiding the Picky Predicament

Week 39: The Gift List

Week 40: Culture Connections I

Week 41: Untraditional Traditions

Week 42: Bond Over Books

Week 43: Engaging Family Trips

Week 44: The Best Birthdays

Week 45: Cultural Connections II

Week 46: Cooking Lessons

Week 47: Is TV Bad?

Week 48: Learn at the Library

Week 49: Toys R Not Always Us

Week 50: Constructive Computer Time

Week 51: My Favorite Things

Week 52: Great Parents are Made, Not Born

Guide Review

Overall, it’s a good book and I like the idea of helping parents focus on one skill at a time. I agree with many of the parenting philosophies, such as kids don’t need to be overindulged. However, I disagree on some of the specifics.

Readers are discouraged from tying an allowance to chores. The author says that doing so teaches kids they need to be paid for everything they do. I disagree. If you have a healthy relationship with your children, they’ll be willing to do some things out of love and a desire to please. Offering an allowance doesn’t mean they need to be paid a quarter when you say, “Pick up your socks.” However, you can say, “No TV time until you’ve picked your socks up.”

The author suggests giving kids a small allowance for no real reason. I think an allowance should be earned. Paying kids for doing chores teaches them a lot of real world value. As an adult, your employer won’t pay you unless you’ve done the work.

I agree with the book’s ideas on teaching self-discipline with money. There are many helpful tips about how to motivate kids to save their money and how to teach them healthy spending habits.

Another area I disagree with concerns bribes. There’s a difference between bribes and rewards, but the book seems to confuse the two. The book implies that rewards will give kids a sense of entitlement. However, there are plenty of rewards that don’t cost money, such as going to a friend’s house.

I think the vast majority of the information in the book is very good advice. It offers sound information about the difference between consequences and punishment and clearly encourages parents to use logical consequences. It gives good advice on how to handle specific behavior problems as well.

Most importantly, it focuses developing a healthy relationship with your child. Readers are encouraged to use simple, yet effective methods to talk to their kids and spend time together, which is an essential building block to discipline. It also encourages activities that are often overlooked, such as volunteering with your child.

The book may work best for parents who are already fairly confident in their parenting strategies and just want to look at some issues they can fine tune. It can likely help those parents make sure their child is getting all of the building blocks necessary to become responsible adults while reinforcing positive discipline techniques.



Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.