The No-Cry Discipline Solution: Gentle Ways to Encourage Good Behavior Without Whining, Tantrums, and Tears: Foreword by Tim Seldin

We also posted an interview with Pantley. Here's our full review of the book: Public tantrums, hitting, biting, talking back... If this sounds like a typical day for you, then pick up The No-Cry Discipline Solution: Gentle Ways to Encourage Good Behavior Without Whining, Tantrums, and Tears, by parent educator, Elizabeth Pantley. After helping countless parents find ways to get their babies and toddlers to go to sleep without tears, Pantley turns her sites to a holistic, yet practical approach to parenting. First assuring readers that we are doing great if we feel good about our choices 70% of the time (phew!), Pantley then lifts a good deal of stress from our shoulders and provides a new perspective on the issues. According to Pantley, it is important to remember that no matter how embarrassing, upsetting, or stressful your child's behavior is, it is not about you. Ultimately, discipline problems boil down to your child's difficulty in controlling his or overwhelming emotions. Pantley then takes you step by step through how to plan ahead, address the underlying issues, and help your child cope so that you can guide your child in becoming a well-adjusted young person (and also enjoy parenting more). By using hundreds of test families, Pantley is able to find out which solutions really work for actual flesh and blood families. She finds results and then uses her theories to explain them, rather than developing abstract theories and expecting you to figure out how to apply them. If you've been reading up on parenting advice, many of the suggestions will be familiar--offering choices and redirecting a child's attention are not new techniques. However, there is some advice that was fresh for me. For example, if your child hurts someone else, focus initially on making the wounded party feel better, rather than provide your child with attention to reinforce the negative behavior. Most parents should find at least a couple of new ideas. Finally, Pantley provides examples of common discipline issues (won't take a bath, won't leave fun places, throws tantrums at stores, etc.) and suggestions about how to deal with each one. Pantley assembles all these supportive thoughts, well-researched techniques, and helpful ideas, in one reference and provides a framework for parenting with loving and respectful discipline. You can tell that Pantley really delights in being a mother, and that her love of parenting extends to the children and parents of the world, as well. She genuinely wants to help us find ways to share that joy. With so many negative stories in the news about parenting, it is refreshing to hear from an author who sees parenting as a pleasure and provides practical and uplifting advice so that we can spend less time fighting bad behavior and more time cherishing beautiful experiences.

I'm not often compelled to write a review, but I absolutely love this book. I've read a lot of books and articles on discipline, but I feel like I had a sort of break-through with my children after reading this one. I agree with the previous review which noted that the chapter on parental anger is perhaps the best part of the book. I honestly feel much more in control of my emotions and happier about parenting in general after reading this book. I am a big Elizabeth Pantley fan, but this book is my favorite of hers thus far.

Even the best mothers in the world have experienced her child's tantrum, public misbehaving or some other seemingly uncontrollable behavior problems. Elizabeth Pantley is a mother and an expert on raising children. In her latest book The No-Cry Discipline Solution, she shows us simple tricks that we can use every day to avoid behavioral problems and deal with them if they do appear. Pantley lets us see the world through our children's eyes and helps us understand why our children act the way they do. They do not throw tantrums because they hate us and want to make our lives miserable. They do it because they have limited capabilities of showing us their needs and understanding their own emotions. The author shows us how to avoid judging our child's behavior by our adult standards and seeing them from our grown-up perspective. Instead she shows children as innocent and often quite egocentric human beings who need a lot of direction and help to reach their full potential and become well- mannered and responsible adults themselves. The book is very warm and supportive. The author does not point fingers, she does not expect us to know everything right after the baby is born and, finally, she does not expect anyone to be perfect. The layout is very clear and helpful. The book is divided in short and comprehensive chapters that explain the children's behavior patterns and how to deal with them in the wisest and more efficient way. The author gives a lot of practical tips for many situations that we as parents may encounter. I found the book very helpful and encouraging. I have used it many times as a guide, and I'm sure it's going to be one of the books that is going to be passed from hand to hand and from one mother to another. Armchair Interviews says: This is a perfect and very concise source of knowledge for both new and more experienced parents.

Finally someone wrote a book about discipline in a way that doesn't proselytize or point fingers. It merely points out what we can do while loving our children to bits. Reading this book is like receiving a warm embrace from a dear friend. Elizabeth Pantley's tone is nonjudgmental, her approach down-to-earth. You will love it for its nurturing, honest flavor. The No-Cry Discipline Solution is a gift to every parent who suffers from guilt and shame for being (gasp!) human. --Christine Louise Hohlbaum, parenting humorist and author of Diary of a Mother: Parenting Stories and Other Stuff and Sahm I Am: Tales of a Stay-at-Home Mom in Europe.

While Pantley doesn't actually promise that there will be no crying, the discipline suggestions she offers are gentle and consistent. The recommendations are geared toward helping parents achieve positive behavior with their children, but Pantley also helps parents cope with their children's misbehavior. Pantley writes a lengthy chapter on anger management for parents, which is unique among the piles of other discipline books on the shelf. For the anger management chapter alone, this book is worth a read. Nothing routinely makes us angrier and grouchier than the objects of our greatest affection - our children. It's easy to see how the management of parental anger can both help parents cope and help them better manage their children's behavior. This book is brilliant in many respects. It offers parents a host of possible solutions to every problem rather than foisting a one-size-fits-all approach to the impossible task of discipline. To top it off, Pantley offers a summary of solutions to common discipline problems in an easy to look-up format in the back of the book. Parents will find this useful for those times when they worry that repeated, obnoxious behaviors will make them lose their minds. [...]