Change Your Child's Behavior by Changing Yours: 13 New Tricks to Get Kids to Cooperate

A new approach for dealing with the most common—and seemingly intractable—battles of will between parents and children. Authoritative and sound, but lighthearted and guilt-free, all of the authors' suggestions work toward building a child's self-esteem.

Two simple but powerful ideas stand behind this book's advice for coping with children's behavior problems: you can change your child's behavior by changing the way you react to theirs; and you must accept that much of what unnerves parents is actually appropriate to the various stages of a child's development.

Change Your Child's Behavior by Changing Yours tackles thirteen particularly difficult situations that prompt most tugs-of-wills, including conflicts involving bedtime, dressing, eating, going places, shopping, and sibling rivalry. Each chapter opens with a section called "Sound Familiar?" that describes a scenario parents will quickly recognize. Authors Chernofsky and Gage then identify the development stage that is prompting the distressing behavior, help parents to relate the child's behavior in a somewhat parallel situation, and offer strategies for coping with and changing the situation for the better.

Barbara Chernofsky, M.S., is a child-care specialist for KNSD-TV, the NBC affiliate in San Diego, and formerly served as the child-care expert for Inside San Diego on KGTV, the ABC affiliate.

Diane Gage is the author of eight books and has written for many national magazines. She is Director of Corporate Relations for Sharp HealthCare in San Diego.