8 Weeks to a Well-Behaved Child: A Failsafe Program for Toddlers Through Teens

If the title might seem to ask for a skeptical rejoinder, then don't judge too hastily. Windell ( Discipline: A Sourcebook of 50 Failsafe Techniques for Parents ), who has taught ``parent-training'' classes for a quarter century, here rejects some of the usual means of disciplining children--e.g., inducing fear as a primary motive--while affirming other techniques and making new and rational suggestions. Throughout, he emphasizes the importance of consistency as a tool for ushering change into a child's bad behavioral habits. Scheduling his strategies into a week-by-week series of courses, the author urges sufficient ``loving'' but insists ``love is not enough''; to augment that, he recommends respect, ``setting strict and firm limits,'' enforcing these, and yet also ``allowing for dissent and expression'' of children's emotions as adults move with them through a developmental process. Windell provides homework assignments at the close of chapters that ask parents to come to grips with the particulars of their situation in an objective fashion. And he certainly does not rule out punishment, but notes that it should be well-considered. His stories of fractious children (and dialogue) are likely to ease a reader's way. But as always, the proof is in the doing. (Jan.)