The Case Method Miracle: Socrates created it. Harvard Business School perfected it. We parent with it; anyone, anywhere, anytime. Kids get grit and wise judgment.

This is a book about how to have fun and stop worrying about your kids. How? Use the world-renowned Harvard case method in its bare bones.

Parenting Problems

1. Do you worry about your child’s future?
2. Do you want practical ideas for everyday parenting?
3. Do you need help in dealing with tantrums, tensions, and tears?
4. Have you read parenting books but often feel at a loss?
5. Do you prefer the simplest, proven methods?
6. Do you believe in teaching your child to think for himself?
7. Do you want to bond with your child?

The Help

Hi! I am Anne, the author. If you answered a YES to any of the ten questions, this book might help on your parenting journey.

I answered YES to ALL of those questions. I was searching for a simple, universal, and easy-to-apply parenting approach for everyday use. The solution I describe in my parenting book has been around for 2500 years. It’s just that nobody has explained how to use it with children, in everyday parenting. This parenting tool is no secret, many of us have used the approach in some form or another, not even knowing we were parenting with the case method!

The Proven Method

The Case Method Miracle is not about the Harvard case method in the traditional sense, and you do not have to be a Harvard graduate to use the case method in the parenting setting. In fact, if you think you have to have a degree from Harvard to parent successfully, then my parenting book is not for you. I am sharing my parenting experience as a mom to mom, not as a parenting expert.

The teaching and parenting expertise and the proof to this parenting approach come from Socrates, the father of teaching from ancient Greece over 2,500 years ago. In fact, this parenting book is as much for fathers as for mothers, for caregivers and teachers.

The Simplified Method

Over the two years I studied at Harvard Business School, I analyzed and discussed over 500 case studies. They follow a certain structure. I took that structure and stripped it to its core elements. They include the main character, the situation description, and the question. Instead of twenty-page descriptions of business situations, the cases in my book are one-minute stories with a simple question.

Benefits

Children; the case method parenting approach benefits:

• Children stay out of trouble because they learn to think for themselves, own their decisions, and take pride in them.
• Children grow self-confidence because they learn they can face what life brings, with confidence.
• Children develop mental grit, the ability to stand firm under peer pressure, something that becomes more and more important as the children grow up.
• Children develop early literacy by hearing and being heard, a crucial aspect to literacy development.

Parents; the case method parenting approach benefits:

• Parents learn how to use a proven method in its simplest form for a best parenting tool.
• Parents can provide a safe environment for discussions with their child—even difficult ones—because the stories are in third person.
• Parents bond with their child, because they are sharing with their child from the child’s perspective, communicating not just with love and logic, but with love and care, favorites for every child.

Anne Ylipahkala Jones grew up in Kiviniemi, Finland matriculating at the top of her class from one of the most successful educational systems in the world. The Finnish schooling is not based on testing and teacher control, but on both teachers and students taking responsibility. The Finnish school structure aims to produce independent learners, emphasizes broad knowledge, and teaches morality from a young age.Growing up in this kind of educational environment had an impact on Anne's views on training up children.

Trying her wings in the United States, Anne ran track on a full athletic scholarship at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia, and graduated with highest honors in systems engineering.  She worked in performance improvement consulting prior to receiving her MBA from Harvard Business School. Before retiring from the corporate world, Anne worked for ten years holding progressively senior positions in finance, strategy, and organizational effectiveness with NYSE companies including Southern Company and Mirant in Atlanta. The year Anne met her husband she had deliberately left her full-time corporate job for apart-time consulting gig to allow her time to date and perhaps meet that special man. She did.

During the early marriage years, Anne and Mark revitalized Mark's surgery business. Anne was able to apply what she had learned in the professional world to help the family business. With a baby in her arms, Anne, ever the engineer who seeks to be deliberate about her life,sought effective ways to raise a wise son. This is how she developed the way to use the Harvard Business School case method to train children in wise decision-making. 

Anne, Mark, and their youngest son, Jupiter,reside in Buckhead, a neighborhood in Atlanta, Georgia.