How To Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk - Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish - ★★★

AUTHORS: Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish

GENRE: Parenting.

RATING: 3 stars.

In a Nutshell: Might have worked better for me had I actually read it when I was supposed to read it. Some good methods and exercises herein. A tad outdated, though a revised version might be available now.

I am not a person for nonfiction guides. But when my elder girl was a toddler, I was hit by this bug of purchasing some parenting books. I bought two books, read one five years after purchase, and was so bored by it that this second title stayed unread till now, a dozen years later. Don’t take this as an indicator of the quality of the books. It is more of a ME problem – this head isn’t built for self-help or advice guides.

This book covers various aspects of effective communication with children. To those with young kids, this book can offer some sensible advice on how to get your point across without either pampering or punishing. There is textual content as well as case studies, comic strips with examples, questions & answers, and practical exercises in every chapter. Quite a lot of important and relevant topics are covered, such as alternatives to punishment, dealing with feelings, rejections, and tantrums, stopping the tendency to lecture, correct, or multitask when kids are talking, true listening, and developing a mutually harmonious relationship.

I did enjoy the comics depicting the varying situational responses, but honestly, some of the suggested replies felt sarcastic to me. My favourite part was the section on descriptive praise – I implement it in real life and it was nice to see the technique corroborated as a suitable one.

If I had read this a decade ago, it would have served its purpose as a learning tool. But now, I was reading the book more in judgemental mode, checking if the techniques were usable and relevant. As an experienced parent, most of the content was already familiar to me. Parenting is anyway a job learnt with experience than with advice. Still, some parents might find the content useful, though you would do well to remember that no single method works for all. Common sense is your best guide in parenting (and in everything else.)

This book was first published in 1980. There have been many revised editions since. My paperback is the 30th anniversary edition published in 2013 – the era before the social media boom and before every teenager and child had a smartphone of their own. So much of the content is now dated. I must appreciate the addition of a special section at the end, written by the daughter of one of the original authors, detailing HER experience of parenting the next generation. This is more updated and inclusive, and covers some tough topics. I hope a newer version that tackles phone addiction has also been released.

I felt a bit cheated as well as relieved that the main content lasted only till page 239 in a book of 350 pages. The rest is letters by parents, detailing how they used the prescribed techniques in their own parenting.

Recommended to those who enjoy learning behavioural techniques from books. A good time to begin reading this would be when your child is just a baby, so that by the time the terrible twos come, you are prepared, or at least as prepared as you can realistically be.

As I said, I am not fond of such nonfiction works. After 50 pages or so, my attention started to dwindle. So honest confession: I speed-read the rest, paying 100% attention only to the comic strips. But I'm still counting this book in my annual goal, dammit! I'm way behind schedule and this will make amends for all the picture books I haven't counted for my reading challenge. 😎

Hitting the midway rating because it isn't the book's fault that I picked it up a decade too late, and the content is good enough.