Taming the Spirited Child: Strategies for Parenting Challenging Children Without Breaking Their Spirits

Taming
This book is a good place to start when dealing with challenging kids. I would have liked a little more information and a little less acronyms.

Don't bother
This book isn't awful, but it is useless compared to Raising Your Spirited Child by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka. Some books, like Kurcinka's, are classics for a reason. Others, like Taming... are also-ran's. What little useful information Taming has seems "borrowed" from either Kurcinka's book or from Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish's How to Talk So Kids Will Listen, which is another excellent resource to consider before buying this one.

Strategies for dealing with difficult children
This was an excellent book, I like specific 1-2-3 type books, and this one really is a great help. I didn't agree 100% with the author on every thing, but everyone's entitled to their own opinion (for example I just don't see the value in encouraging a child to take out his frustrations on a pillow or other object; it still encourages a violent physical reaction to stress in my opinion). Having said that, his strategies work with our spirited grandchild. I wish I had had it to raise my own children, and they weren't in the category of spirited; it is just as valuable in general parenting. I am so glad the author explained the spirited child's thinking,he shares a lot of insight; and how to encourage him but not give him everything he demands. I felt better about my 'grandparenting' after I read the book. I was raised-as he described-the old way of expecting blind obedience (do it because I'm the father & I said so-). That is the only way I knew to parent & grandparent, but this book has changed my parenting style. I always worried about breaking their spirits. Now we have peace in our household when the grandchild comes, and I truly enjoy him for the wonderful unique gift from God that he is. I highly recommend this book to anyone with an intelligent spirited child. It really works.

Great Book Great Ideas
I absolutely loved this book. It had great ideas to deal with my son in very effective way. It is a great book to prepare your child for today's society!

Help those INDIVIDUAL kids!
This is a wonderful book for any parent whose child does not fit the 'off the shelf' package that all too many parenting books subscribe to. It encourages you to think more about the individual characteristics of your own child and to tailor-make the kind of strategies that might work best for your kid.

Some of the tips were truly insightful and I feel would also help us adults to think more about how and why our kids press our own buttons so easily.....Tips like simply acknowledging a feeling work so powerfully in our relationships with other adults (without trying to always 'make it better') yet just doing this with a child is something many of us balk at.

This book (and Asha Phillips 'Saying No') has helped us more than anything with our highly spirited little girl! Worth every penny paid. What would be excellent for future editions though, would be some kind of bullet-pointer at the beginning or end; better still, a cut out and keep/ stick on the fridge reminder in order to keep those helpful tips alive in your head, when 'the spirited one' is being particularly full-on....