Book Review: The Discipline Book (by William Sears, M.D and Martha Sears, R.N)

This is the first of what I hope will be many book reviews of parenting books that I have read. I hope to include ones that I loved, ones that I hated and ones that I was unsure about. Enjoy and feel free to add your thoughts on the books or ask me questions if there is something you want to know about the book that I didn't answer in the review.

Overview

The Discipline Book: How to Have a Better-Behaved Child From Birth to Age Ten introduces parents to a variety of discipline styles and techniques. It is grounded in the principles of Attachment Parenting, but does include strategies that have been criticized by other discipline experts (e.g. Alfie Kohn's criticism of rewards, time outs, withdrawing privileges). William and Martha Sears' approach to discipline is based on the idea that you need to promote desirable behaviour and if you do that well, then you won't need to spend as much time doing "repair work" (i.e. dealing with bad behaviour) later on.

The book is based on the following ten principles:

1. Get Connected Early: This is basic attachment parenting theory.


2. Know Your Child: This includes understanding age-appropriate behaviour and getting inside your child's mind to see things from their point of view and consider their needs when making requests or demands of them. Basically, if you are reasonable in what you expect of your children and respectful of their needs, then you will face less opposition.


3. Help Your Child to Respect Authority: Tells you how get your child to respect you, but not fear you.


4. Set Limits, Provide Structure: This means that parents have to set limits (establish rules) and provide structure (create an environment that makes it easier to respect the rules - e.g. childproofing the home, not putting the chocolate in plain view if your child is not allowed to help himself, etc.).


5. Expect Obedience:This is about not being wishy-washy. If you tell your child not to do something, but then let her do it over and over and over again without doing anything more than saying "stop that", then she will not obey. However, if you tell your child not to do something and then consistently redirect your child or intervene to stop the behaviour (in a non-abusive manner), then your child will understand that no means no.


6. Model Discipline: Generally, you should try to be the type of person you want your child to be. If you are constantly angry, your child will be too. If you are happy, your child will be too.


7. Nurture Your Child's Self-Confidence: A child that feels right, i.e. that has high self esteem, also acts right. A child that feels worthless, will act out.


8. Shape Your Child's Behavior: This involves giving your child a sense of what is acceptable behaviour by instilling a when-then reaction (i.e. making them understand consequences).


9. Raise Kids Who Care: Teaching your children to care about others and the consequences of their actions on others and teaching them to take responsibility for their actions.


10. Talk and Listen: Talking in a way that your child will understand. And teaching your child to express his feelings and then listening when she does.

What I Like About This Book

Overall what I like about this book is that it is a good balance of theory and practical advice. Too many other books that I have read tell you to do something without explaining why or they go on and on about what not to do and providing theories for new approaches, without providing any real actionable solutions.

There are some parts of this book that I really enjoyed and that will refer to again and again.

• The chapter on understanding ones, twos and threes is great. I think this is the age where a lot of parents expect too much from their children and, as a result, end up using strict discipline that is confusing to the child and that can damage the parent-child relationship. Once that damage is done, the child settles into a pattern of misbehaving and dealing with the punishment, rather than choosing to behave out of respect and understanding. This chapter has great information on what age appropriate behaviour is at those ages. It also provides a great checklist for childproofing.


• There is a nice chapter on the father as a disciplinarian. Although I don't like the gender stereotyping, the fact of the matter is that most men were raised to be boys and will model their behaviour on their father, so unless they somehow managed to escape all gender stereotyping in their own upbringing and socialization, then some of this chapter may apply.


• The chapter on self-esteem is really well written. Unlike many other parenting books that tell you to keep saying "good job" or similar phrases, this book doesn't focus on such shallow approaches to trying to boost self-esteem. Instead it provides information on the foundations of self-esteem, such as attachment parenting, improving your own self-confidence, being positive, playing with your child, giving your child responsibilities, and so on.


• I liked the information on helping your child to express feelings, especially since I am not that good at expressing mine. Although I also really liked the book Baby Hearts (by Linda Acredolo, Ph.D and Susan Goodwyn Ph.D) on that topic.


• I like the list of 10 reasons not to hit your child.


• There is a great two-page chart (p. 162-163)on Discipline Talk that gives parents ideas on how to phrase things when disciplining their children to improve the chances of success.

Generally, there wasn't much that I could disagree with in the sections that dealt with promoting good behaviour. I think they are great ideas and combine well with what I read about avoiding meltdowns and other problems in Raising Your Spirited Child (by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka).



What I Don't Like About This Book

This book tries to be a one size fits all book. I found myself really liking some sections and really disliking or disagreeing with other sections.

• Although Dr. Sears makes it clear that he is against spanking, he devotes a whole section of the book to telling people how to spank better (i.e. do less damage). That is just a crazy concept to me.


• He promotes the use of rewards to encourage good behaviour, but this is something I am trying to move away from (despite it being an easy and convenient crutch). I don't like using rewards because I think they promote consumerism (wanting "things"), although I guess some rewards could be activities instead of things (but then I think you need to be careful that you aren't using spending time with you as a reward - that is a child's right). I also don't like using rewards since they are a type of conditional parenting (see Alfie Kohn's Punished By Rewards or Unconditional Parenting).

Recommendation

If you have a library near by, then take this book out of the library. It is not the type of book that you need to refer to over and over again. Rather, it is a good book to read to figure out what type of discipline you want to use and to make some mental or written notes on how to implement your discipline approach. Once you have figured that out and made your notes, take the book back to the library and head to the bookstore to get some books that will give you more detailed thoughts or strategies for implementing your chosen approach.

Further Reading

Dr. Sears' Web site also has a section on discipline where you can get a lot of materials that are covered in the book.

Comments

[Books and Magazines Blog &raqu]

[...] Original post by phdinparenting [...]

[Why I can’t recommend Fe]

[...] include some things that are not 100% my cup of tea, but that I do not think are wrong necessarily. Those books I will happily recommend with the caveat that I am not 100% of the same mind as the author. [...]

[Anthony Guzzaldo]

Again, love the blog, hate the Alfie Kohn references.

This guy is known for mischaracterizing research and has been completely discredited by actual professionals and researchers.

[Mable]

Sadly, he realizes many - especially immature Christians - will spank despite the preponderance of evidence of the damage it does.
Making it wise to try to mitigate the damage.