Parents in Charge: Setting Healthy, Loving Boundaries for You and Your Child

This book hits the nail on the head. Great, practical advice and insight, especially into how our children's minds work at different stages, what they can and can't comprehend, etc. Also, terrific insights on what we bring to parenting from our pasts and how to recognize and adjust or eliminate that to make our own parenting more effective. I found myself highlighting nearly half the book. I rarely recommend books, but have suggested this one to every parent I know.

After seeing Dana Chidekel on the today show I knew I would benefit from reading her book, and I did! It was so good to see that someone else besides my pediatrician believes disipline and structure go hand in hand with love when it comes to raising children. As parents of three children with totally different personalities, and age span, my husband and I were struggling to find a consistent yet flexible way of dealing with daily issues that met all their needs and ours, and this book gave us that. Not everything will work for everyone, but I'm sure anyone reading Parents in Charge will connect with it on some level.

Chidekel is quite correct in saying that "many parents bring along their own baggage to their skills as a parent." As a counsellor, I agree with the author that to be an effective parent one should first develop their own awareness of self. Parents tend to bring both the positive and negative aspects of their own personal upbringing to their role as a parent. How many times do you recall as a child saying, "When I have children, I am never going to say or do that to my child." In reality, many of us do find ourselves saying or doing the same things to our children as our parents said or did to us. Some of that is healthy, other aspects are not - no parent is perfect, we all have strengths and weaknesses.The author has written a fantastic book on the subject of raising emotionally healthy, confident and productive children. Children learn from example and learn to accept themselves in the same light they are accepted by their parents. While some advice in the book may seem more like everyday common sense to some, as a counsellor, I can assure you that good old-fashioned common sense is not necessarily a natural part of every parent's psychological make-up. If that was true, we would not have the number of parental child abuse cases we have today.This book is highly recommended to every parent who wants to improve their parenting skills. No matter how experienced one is, as a parent we can never know enough - our children's future and the choices they make as an adult will, in part, depend on the lessons learned and experiences encountered as a child.

All parents-to-be should read Parents in Charge. So many people parent like their parents parented them. It is absolutely possible to do a better job and get more fulfillment from parenting than your parents did -- and Parents in Charge shows you how. Dr. Chidekel's book is full of anecdotes that drive home the point. It's enlightening, sensible, sound, positive and fun. There really is no more important job in the world than parenting and it's great that this book delivers the why-to along with the how-to.

I am not a fan of self-help books on how to be a parent. I rarely feel I get useful advice. This book is the exception. I could not put it down. I have a very 2 year-old daughter, and after trying a few of the authors techniques, my husband and I already see a vast improvement in our relationship to our daughter. The author's advice on proper use of time-outs, the use of "no", the use of "please" make sense and seem to be working. I will recommend it to all new parents, and those with children under the age of 10.