The Parent's Toolshop: the Universal Blueprint for Building a Health Family

Ever wish children came with instructions? Now they do!
This 2020 printing of the award-winning book combines solid positive parenting and developmental theories, references classic parenting courses, and is endorsed by authors of best-selling books such as Positive Discipline, Love and Logic, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families.

This one-stop resource saves you time, frustration, and money.
Avoid spending hours sorting through inaccurate or contradictory advice. Learn exactly what to Say and Do to get the best results! This book has 100+ practical language and action tools that research has shown to be effective in parenting toddlers, tweens, and teens in diverse families. Save yourself years of regret, guilt, and even therapy from using trial and error to get a quick fix.

Love may come naturally but effective parenting skills are learned.
The Parent's Toolshop® is like taking a parenting class with a parenting expert in the comfort of your own home. Step by step, with each Toolbox, you'll build a healthy family (or remodel yours), from the foundation up:

• Foundation-Building: shifts your mindset to be a more proactive and conscious parent. You’ll set healthy parenting goals and see how a Balanced (authoritarian) parenting style helps you reach them.
• Prevention: offers a simple formula for preventing common problems by raising your child’s self-esteem, fostering self-motivation and cooperation, and teaching the skills and behaviors for being independent and responsible.
• Child Problems: opens the door to communication, builds trust, and teaches children how to make responsible decisions and solve their own problems.
• Parent Problems: shows how to create individualized self-regulation plans, so each family member can keep their cool. Then assertively communicate concerns without lecturing or repeating yourself.
• Problematic Behaviors: reveals the root causes beneath these behaviors, how to avoid rewarding or escalating them, and stop attention-seeking behavior, power struggles, and revenge cycles. Hold children accountable without blame, shame or hurt, so they learn self-discipline.
• Maintenance: shows how to use family councils to make decisions, prevent problems, and develop leadership skills. By the end, your confidence will be so strong that you'll know your family can work through any issue with this system and its tools.

You’ll learn the unique "Universal Blueprint®" for parenting success.
This simple problem-solving system guides you to individualized solutions for each challenge. Just answer three simple questions based on your child and situation. The system leads you to the steps and tools you can choose to create your own solution --- in minutes! You can even use the system to improve relationships with adults!
The Universal Blueprint® system applies to hundreds of common challenges, offering tips you can tailor to your needs, such as sibling rivalry, chores, allowances, morning delays, homework, picky eaters, messy rooms, dating, tantrums, bullies, driving, bedtime, lying, rudeness, curfew, friendship fallouts, A.D.H.D. ...and more!

Comprehensive yet easy to read, "The Parent's Toolshop®" enlightens, informs, and entertains.
Each chapter ends with a summary page, practice exercises to apply what you learned to your family and an answer key with valuable how-to tips! You’ll refer to “The Parent's Toolshop®” again and again, using the index to find tips for over 1,000 topics. When a crisis hits, just open the back cover where you'll find key tools summarized ON ONE PAGE.

Anyone who lives or works with children will benefit from the practical skills and profound revelations in "The Parent's Toolshop®."

Jody Johnston Pawel is a licensed social worker and second-generation parent educator who has worked over twenty years with families and children of all ages and has taught parenting classes since 1980.

Jody's "parent education" began at age eight when her parents attended a parenting class and then went on to teach parenting classes for nearly ten years. (Her mother has continued teaching over thirty years.) Jody helped her parents make audiotape vignettes for their classes and attended her first parenting class at age fifteen, with her mother as the instructor. The skills Jody learned as a result of her upbringing benefitted her during her teen years and prepared her to be a highly skilled family social worker, other of two children and a nationally-recognized parenting expert.

After starting The Family Network, a local nonprofit parent-to-parent organization, Jody wrote Shared Blessings: Creating and Facilitating Stay-at-Home Parent Discussion Groups. She then spent the following 10 years researching, developing and writing The Parent's Toolshop: The Universal Blueprint for Building a Healthy Family and over seven years field testing it with thousands of parents and family-service professionals. She's also the author of a parent educator certification training program, dozens of training manuals for family education professionals, parenting-tips articles and advice columns.

As the President of Parent's Toolshop Consulting, Ltd., Jody Provides her entertaining and informative training programs each year to hundreds of parents and professionals throughout North America. She has trained and certified dozens of "Tour Guides" (parent educators) to teach Parent's Toolshop programs throughout the U.S.

Jody has over twenty years of media experience. She was the Assistant Producer and on-air child Care Expert for the Emmy Award-nominated Ident-a-Kid television series, is a frequent guest on radio/TV talk shows, and magazines seek her expert opinions for parent-advice articles. Jody's advice is regularly featured in dozens of magazine articles and radio talk shows. Jody's advice regularly appears in national publications such as Parenting, Parents, Christian Parenting Today, Christian Science Monitor, Redbook, U.S. News & World Report, the Chicago Tribune, and many others.

TABLE OF CONTENTS: THE PARENT'S TOOLSHOP: The Universal Blueprint for Building a Healthy Family Introducing Your Toolshop Tour Guide Chapter 1: Touring The Parent's Toolshop: Another Parenting Book? - What "The Parent's Toolshop" Does - Suggestions for Use

STEP A: PREVENTION TOOLBOX

Chapter 2: Foundation-Building Toolset: Establishing a Common Language - What Are Our Parenting Goals? - Parenting Styles - Parenting as a Team - Attitude Adjustment Tools - Practice - Detailed Answers

Chapter 3: The Universal Blueprint: Balancing Logic and Emotion - ABC-123-D Steps - Types of Problems - Identifying Problem Types - Tips for Tots to Teens - Nobody Said Parenting Was Easy - Practice - Detailed Answers

Chapter 4: Self-Esteem Toolset: What Is Self-Esteem? - Encouragement Versus Praise - Self-Esteem Tools - Is Praise Ever Okay? - Encourage Yourself - The Language of Encouragement - Practice - Possible Answers

Chapter 5: Cooperation Toolset: The Difference Between Cooperation and Obedience - Cooperation Tools - Practice- Possible Answers

Chapter 6: Independence Toolset: The Balance of Independence - Developing Responsibility - Independence Tools - Tips for Tots to Teens - Practice - Possible Answers

STEP B: CHILD PROBLEM TOOLBOX: Taking over Child Problems

Chapter 7: F-A-X Listening Toolset: Peeling Onions - Fax Communication - Problem-Solving Styles - Communication Barriers - F-A-X Listening - Step B1: Focus on Feelings - Tips for Tots and Teens - Practice - Possible Answers

Chapter 8: Problem-Solving Toolset: Step B2: Ask Helpful Questions - Step B3: X-amine Possible Solutions - When to Move from Step to Step - Variations of Problem Solving - Problem-Solving Worksheet - Common Child Problems - Practice - Possible Answers

STEP C: PARENT PROBLEM TOOLBOX: Where We Are in the Universal Blueprint

Chapter 9: Keep Your Cool Toolset: What Is Anger? - Steps of Constructive Anger/Stress Management - Resistance to Change - Dealing with Others' Anger and Stress - Use an Anger Log

Chapter 10: Clear Communication Toolset: Styles of Communication - Nonverbal Communication - Clear Communication Tools - Tips for Tots and Teens - Practice - Possible Answers

Chapter 11: PU Toolset (Unintentional Misbehavior): Identifying PU Problems - Using the Universal Blueprint - Step C2: Redirecting PU Behavior - Common PU Behaviors - Practice - Detailed Answers

Chapter 12: PO Toolset ("On Purpose" Misbehavior): Identifying PO Problems - The Four Types of PO Behavior - The Importance of the Universal Blueprint - PO Tools - Important Points to Remember - PO Combination Problems - The Goals of Adult Misbehavior - Lying - Practice - Detailed Answers

Chapter 13: Discipline Toolset: The Difference Between Punishment and Discipline - Discipline Tools - Parent's Decision-Making Worksheet - Practice - Detailed Answers

STEP D: MAINTENANCE TOOLBOX:

Chapter 14: Family Council Toolset: The Purpose of Family Councils - The Benefits of Family Councils - Family Council Roles - Format Options - Getting Started The First Few Meetings - Family Councils Use All the Tools - Family Council Trouble-Shooting Guide - Agenda/Activity Ideas - Practice - Detailed Answers

Chapter 15: Three C's: Consistency, Criticism, Confidence: Increasing Consistency - Handling Criticism and Unhelpful Advice - Practice - Possible Answers - Maintaining Your Confidence - Closing

APPENDIX Glossary of Terms Index (over 1000 references/cross references)