Description

In this groundbreaking book parenting expert and acclaimed author of the bestselling book Simplicity Parenting Kim John Payne MEd flips the script on childrens challenging or defiant behavior and lays out an elegantly simple plan to support parents in establishing loving agesensitive boundaries that help children feel safe and settled In short What looks like misbehavior is actually your childrens signal that theyre feeling lost that they are trying to find direction and looking to you to guide them back on course

Payne gives parents heartwarming help and encouragement by combining astute observations with sensitive and often funny stories from his long career as a parent educator and a school and family counselor In accessible language he explains the relevance of current brain and childdevelopment studies to daytoday parenting Breaking the continuum of childhood into three stages Payne says that parents need to play three different roles each corresponding to one of those stages to help steer children through their emotional growth and inevitable challenging times

The Governor who is comfortably and firmly in chargesetting limits and making decisions for the early years up to around the age of eight
The Gardener who watches for emotional growth and makes decisions based on careful listening assisting tweens in making plans that take the whole familys needs into account
The Guide who is both a sounding board and moral compass for emerging adults helping teens build a sense of their lifes direction as a way to influence healthy decision making

Practical and rooted in common sense The Soul of Discipline gives parents permission to be warm and nurturing but also calm and firm not overreactive It gives clear doable strategies to get things back on track for parents who sense that their childrens behavior has fallen into a troubling pattern And best of all it provides healthy direction to the entire family so parents can spend less time and energy on outmoded punitive discipline and more on connecting with and enjoying their kids

Advance praise for The Soul of Discipline

The Soul of Discipline offers practical tools for helping parents implement discipline thats respectful and effective but the book is so much more Kim John Payne offers a framework to guide parents in making decisions about why when and how to hold tighter reins as we build skills in our children and why when and how to loosen the reins as we scaffold freedomTina Payne Bryson PhD coauthor of NoDrama Discipline

This book gets deep inside the challenge of getting along with children and teens and thinks deeply about what they need from us to become strong and selfmanaging It elevates discipline to what it should bea caring process of helping kids orient to the world and live in it happily and wellSteve Biddulph author of The New Manhood

Kim Payne provides a useful model for choosing our parenting stanceGovernor Gardener or Guidedepending on the situation Most powerfully Payne begins with the radical view that children are not disobedient but rather disoriented The upshot of this shift in perspective is that discipline is about helping children orient themselves effectively not about controlling or chastisingLawrence J Cohen PhD author of Playful Parenting