Stop, Think, Engage: Rethinking child discipline - methods that work

Description

Based on more than 10 years at the coal face, child, adolescent and adult therapist and researcher Dr Anna Martin brings us Stop, Think, Engage, a humorous and informative book that pulls together her own professional experience, her PhD research and numerous national and international studies. Parenting is challenging and is probably one of the most important jobs to undertake, yet parents have very little training and often need to learn as they go. They often question if what they are doing is right and helpful for their children's development. Stop, Think, Engage provides parents with evidenced-based discipline methods using step-by-step guidelines and emphasising key points in a humorous way. They will learn how to identify ways to communicate effectively with their children and make changes that work! Parents suggest that there is a lot of conflicting information, this book provides them with an all-in-one parenting tool to help them understand why and what to change in their discipline approach.

Dr Anna Martin is a child, adolescent and adult therapist who also works with families. Anna was awarded her PhD from the University of Auckland and her Master of Counselling from Massey University. Her PhD thesis involved undertaking research that explored the discipline process and the parent/child relationship. Anna also investigated some of the mainstream discipline methods widely used by parents. Anna found that the methods often did not provide the parent with the necessary tools to achieve a productive discipline event outcome, or support the parent-child relationship. Anna developed two new discipline methods (Awareness Discipline Method and the Reflective Discipline Method), based on the `Stop, Think, Engage' format to encourage a new discipline paradigm. These methods support the bond between the parent and child and help work towards a productive discipline event outcome.

...I have tried numerous things over the years - Supernanny was big when my son was young and I've read Diane Levy and Ian Grant and Nigel Latta and Steve Biddulph and Harvey Karp...etc etc. I regularly read parenting columns and watch shows and really have been pretty confused. My children would often end up in their bedroom for x amount of minutes after a lot of screeching from me but they really hated it and it never sat right with me. I found the text easy to follow - very simply laid out and not at all preachy. In fact I liked that it didn't try to make me feel guilty for my parenting mistakes. The question niggling all the way through was that I would feel like I had lost control doing things this way (ha! as though I have any anyway!) but then that was covered as well...I'm excited to try this out. It's going to take me a while to adapt but just in the last 2 days we've had several things happen here and I haven't resorted to yelling at them so even if I'm not quite wording things right yet, that has to be a positive. So thank you.