Book Review: The Well-Behaved Child

Since the Hubz and I are "first-timers", we are finding ourselves a little shell-shocked sometimes with Bean's behavior.  She'll act out and we catch ourselves standing there staring at her thinking “who is this kid?”.  And we are also finding out that our disciplining styles are different.  I like to use the countdown and the corner.  If Bean is doing something that I don’t approve of, then I usually start out by telling her "no", and then if we have to, we go onto “One”, “Two..."  Ninety percent of the time, by one and a half, the behavior has stopped.

I really didn’t think I’d be one of those moms.  When I was in high school I worked at a department store and I would see these horrible, evil heathens running around causing chaos, i.e., normal every day kids.  I would see parents do a countdown, plead, threaten, bribe, all that jazz and it hardly ever worked.  Usually I would think...just do what my mom did...give them a smack on the rear end and be done with it.  Hey, if it’s good enough for Mom...

But I decided to take the softer approach and try the countdown and it does work most of the time.  If it fails, Bean has to spend time in the awful, dreaded CORNER.  Bean does not like this one bit.  But it works.  There have been those special days where there have been several trips to the corner for the same behavior but those times are rare.  Now Hubz,...he’s not so patient.  Hubz likes to raise his voice.  It’s definitely not his inside voice he’s using.  And there have also been times where a spanked hand or bottom has occurred but that usually makes both Bean and me cry so I hate to do it. 

And of course, when you’re first-timers, you get a lot of advice.  Let me say that again...you get a lot of advice.  And it’s never the same advice.  So I have started looking around for ways to improve my means of discipline.  I am a book reviewer for Book Sneeze (formerly Thomas Nelson), and while searching their available titles, I found The Well-Behaved Child by John Rosemond.

In this book, Rosemond brings back a straightforward, almost hard-nosed approach to parenting.  It was like reading a book on the way my mother disciplined.  This is a no-nonsense, bare basics approach.  Granted, most of the book dealt with issues that are further on down the road for us since Bean is only two.  I will definitely incorporate some of these techniques as Bean gets older but more because this is the way I was raised myself and it’s what I know.  The Well-Behaved Child is a good reminder for those of us that grew up with parents that were stricter than most.  If your parenting style is less structured and you are not seeing the results that you’d like, then I would recommend reading this book so that you can understand and know that it is okay to set those boundaries and follow through with those consequences.  I have friends that think if they are too strict, their children won’t like them.  I think it’s not a popularity contest.  It’s parenting.  You’re not always going to be the good guy.  And if you are afraid to do the work, or don’t know how, maybe you should spend time with Mr. Rosemond and his book.

*I am a reviewer for Book Sneeze.  A copy of this book was provided to me free of charge in return for this review.