Business Book Summaries

The Big Idea
With more than three million copies sold, Dare to Discipline is “a book about children and those who love them.” Revised and expanded to address parenting in today’s modern context, The New Dare to Discipline is nevertheless based on timeless and proven principles.

This book shows parents how loving discipline works and discusses methods by which it can be accomplished. Says author Dr. James Dobson, “Children thrive best in an atmosphere of genuine love, undergirded by reasonable, consistent discipline.”

Why You Need This Book
This book will teach every parent how children should be raised and what children really need from their parents. This is a book about children and those who love them.

The Challenge
Much has been written about the dangers of harsh, oppressive, unloving discipline; these warnings are valid and should be heeded. Many well-meaning specialists have waved the banner of tolerance, but have offered no solution for defiance.

They have stressed the importance of parental understanding of the child. The term “discipline” is not limited to the context of confrontation. Children also need to be taught self-discipline and responsible behavior.

They need assistance in learning how to handle the challenges and obligations of living. They must learn the art of self-control. They should be equipped with the personal strength needed to meet the demands imposed on them by their schools, peer groups, and later adult responsibilities.

When properly applied, loving discipline works! It stimulates tender affection, made possible by mutual respect between a parent and a child.

It bridges the gap which otherwise separates family members who should love and trust each other. It encourages a child to respect other people and live as a responsible, constructive citizen.

In short, one must dare to discipline in an environment of unmitigated love.

Common Sense and Your Child
Here are the tenets of commonsense child rearing:

Developing respect for parents is the critical factor in child management. It is imperative that a child learns to respect his parents – not to satisfy their egos, but because his relationship with them provides the basis for his later attitude toward all other people.

If you want your child to accept your values when he reaches his teen years, then you must be worthy of his respect during his younger days. When a child can successfully defy his parents during his first fifteen years, laughing in their faces and stubbornly flouting their authority, he develops a natural contempt for them.

The best opportunity to communicate often occurs after a disciplinary event. Nothing brings a parent and child closer together than for the mother or father to win decisively after being defiantly challenged. Parents should not dread or shrink back from confrontations with their children.

Control without nagging (it is possible). Yelling and nagging at children can become a habit, and an ineffectual one at that! Have you ever screamed at your child, “This is the last time I’m telling you for the last time!”

Parents often use anger to get action instead of using action to get action. It is exhausting and it doesn’t work! Trying to control children by screaming is as utterly futile as trying to steer a car by honking the horn.

Don’t saturate the child with materialism. Pleasure occurs when an intense need is satisfied. If there is no need, there is no pleasure. If you never allow a child to want something, he never enjoys the pleasure of receiving it.

Show your child the thrill of temporary deprivation; it’s more fun and much less expensive.

Establish a balance between love and discipline. We come now to the foundational understanding on which the entire parent-child relationship rests. The “middle ground” of love and control must be sought if we are too produce healthy, responsible children.

The Miracle Tools
Rewards must be granted quickly. If the maximum effectiveness is to be obtained from a reward, it should be offered shortly after the desirable behavior has occurred. Parents often make the mistake of offering long-range rewards to children, but their successes are few.

Rewards need not be material in nature. Anything that is considered desirable to an individual can serve as reinforcement for his behavior. Children and adults of all ages seek constant satisfaction of their emotional needs, including the desire for love, social acceptance, and self-respect. Additionally, they hope to find excitement, intellectual stimulation, entertainment, and pleasure.

Almost any behavior that is learned through reinforcement can be eliminated if the reward is withheld long enough. It is an established fact that unreinforced behavior will eventually disappear. This process, called extinction by psychologists, can be very useful to parents and teachers who want to alter the behavior of children. Parents and teachers are also vulnerable to reinforcement. The point is simple: Parents should be aware of their own reactions to reinforcement and make certain they are in control of the learning situation.

Parents often reinforce undesirable behavior and weaken behavior they value. Parents must be careful about the behaviors they allow to succeed. They must exercise self-discipline and patience to ensure that the tools of reinforcement and extinction are being used to encourage responsible and mature behavior.

The Barriers to Learning

THE LATE BLOOMER
The self-image is amazingly simple to damage but exceedingly difficult to reconstruct. The emotional pressure is often unresolvable. There is no rationalization he can give parents and teachers to explain his perceived failure. His self-concept is often wounded by this tension, and his personality will probably reflect the experience well into adult life.

The solution for late bloomers is relatively simple: instead of scheduling the child’s entrance into the first grade according to his age, the optimal timetable should be determined by neurological, psychological, social and pediatric variables.

THE SLOW LEARNER
The “slow learner” is another youngster likely to have great trouble with academic discipline, resulting from his inability to learn as quickly as his peers. The slow learner is unlike the late bloomer in one major respect: time will not resolve his deficiency.

Since retention and summer school do not solve the problem of the slow learner, we are faced with the obvious question: What can be done for these children? Listed below are the steps that could tip the scales in favor of this vast number of youngsters:

Nearly every child can learn to read, but many children have difficulty if taught only in large groups.

The slow learned should be shielded from the devastation of failure. Remember that success breeds success.  If adults in his life show confidence in him, he will more likely have confidence in himself.

THE UNDERACHIEVER
The underachiever is a student who is unsuccessful in school despite his ability to do the work. In recent years, underachievers have attained a rather high profile, thanks to Bart Simpson’s self-proclaimed “UNDERACHIEVER, AND PROUD OF IT!”. Despite this dubious publicity, underachievers are less understood (and more numerous) than either slow learners or late bloomers.

The typical parent reacts one of three ways to their underachieving child:

The first reaction is treating the problem as though it resulted from sheer stubbornness.

The second approach is to offer the child a long-range bribe.

The third parental reaction is to say, “He’s got to learn responsibility sometime!”

Children and adolescents, like people of all ages, want to be responsible. The ones who fail in school are often the most miserable, but they lack the self-discipline to overcome their own inertia.

A Moment for Mom
Here are some simple suggestions designed to help moms answer that exasperated question:

Reserve some time for yourself. The first principle of mental health is to learn to accept the inevitable.

Don’t deal with big problems late at night. Fatigue does some strange things to human perception.

Try making a list. You leave a record of accomplishments by crossing tasks off the list as they are completed.

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