Zip Up Your Lips: A Parent's Guide to Brief and Effective Communication

I found this book to be a concise, easy read. What I liked most about this book is there is practical information for each stage of a child's life. At the end of the chapter is examples for pre-schoolers, kids, teens, and sometimes even adults. This book can be referred to during all stages of a childs life. I wish I would have found it before my kids were 10 and 13!

I read this book and saw both my wife and myself in the book, and reserved expressing my opinion until my wife read the book.Well, three months later she did after an argument with our almost 11-year old daughter. I said to my wife, please read "Zip Your Lips;" she called me a couple of hours later and thanked me over and over for forcing her to read the book.I found the book to provide some great suggestions, while at the same time, reassuring myself that my often "passive" disciplinary techniques are reinforced by professional thought.

This book is a fantastic resource for parents, full of good advice presented in a convincing and humorous way. As a pastor, I am ordering copies for each family in our Sunday School and plan to present one to each set of expecting parents.

Unlike so many other books today, finally a guide to parenting with no extra fat. The essentials are conveyed clearly, and the reader is uplifted, and urged to make a positive impact. The book is not only a guide to communicating with children, but also an atlas to efficacy in all types of human interaction.

This book takes as its central premise an idea that sounds so simple and makes so much sense that it's amazing it hasn't been said before: if you want your children to respect you and heed your words, don't hector them with idle threats and don't use many words where few will do.A mother tells her daughter to pick up her socks. The daughter ignores her. The mother asks again. And again and again, eventually giving up and picking the socks up herself. If this scenario sounds familiar, you need Zip Your Lip, which offers concrete, plain-language strategies for bridging the communication gaps that inevitably make themselves known to parents with teen-agers. It's simple economics, really -- the less you say, the more valuable each word. And the proof that the technique is effective lies in the real-life examples that pepper the book, many from the authors' combined 50 years of treating children (and their parents), as psychiatrist and social worker.For the sake of full disclosure, the authors of this book are my aunt and uncle. But that doesn't obscure the fact that this book belongs on the shelf of anyone seeking to communicate more effectively and meaningfully. With their children, with their parents -- really, with anyone.