Transforming the Difficult Child: The Nurtured Heart Approach / Edition 3

I have a very intense 4 year old who has been very challenging since he was 18 months. I kept waiting for the "stage" to pass, but it hasn't. I have read many parenting books ranging from The Suppernanny, to Alfie Kohn's Unconditional Parenting. Nothing seemed to work. Maybe the methods written about in these other books would work on most children, but they certainly did not for my child. My son's pediatrician recommended a counselor who specialized the The Nurtured Heart Approach, so I purchased this book to see what it was about. I started implementing the ideas, and a few days later started to see improvement. I felt a little bit silly using the phases recommended in the book, but I kept at it. My husband told me he was just about to ask me "What book are you reading now?", but then he realized it was working, and he is now using the ideas. It's been 6 weeks now, and things are still going well. Before we started, our son was spitting in our faces a few times daily, and that has completely stopped! We couldn't get him to take a time out without rebellion including destructive behavior, and now he willingly takes the short time outs that are recommended. It is just enough to defuse the angry moods he get in. He seems to just eat up the positive recognition, and it seems his self esteem is greater. I feel you have to continually work at applying the ideas. In my case if I let up I can get behind the 8 ball and things go downhill. I re-read parts of the book daily to refresh myself on the content, and also for motivation. I would recommend this book to anybody who wants to use a positive approach to change their child's difficult behavior into "I'm proud of myself" behavior.

My husband and I were desperate to find an approach that worked for our 'high energy' 6 year old boy. No form of discipline whatsoever would make him listen to us or follow rules. He had always been a handful but somehow things had gone from bad to worse. This book transformed my son into a well behaved, considerate boy who LISTENED to his parents I would consider that a miracle and I am eternally greatful. BUY IT.

The 'NURTURED HEART APPROACH' is an extremely valuable and imperative tool in helping us learn how to help our children live their best lives, enabling them to grow into adulthood with the confidence they need to succeed. In addition, reading this book also took me one step further. As a natural consequence, I reflected on how 'I' was raised...... my parents and teachers ruled by demeaning and angry comments in their well-intentioned efforts to teach me the right way 'to be' in this world. I believe that if my teachers and parents had only known and used the life affirming techniques described in Mr. Glasser's book, that I would have been 'spared' the negative impact to my self-esteem and would not have made the wrong choices during my early adult life that were a direct result of not feeling good about myself. The Nurtured Heart Approach has far reaching, generational implications: As we are raised, so we raise our children, and so our children raise their children, and on and on.

Try Ross Greene's THE EXPLOSIVE CHILD. This book is selling snake oil. The underlying ideas that work have been around for a long time. And the authors don't cite a shred of attribution or research. They don't even have an index. They give a 5 day training and then 'certified' people go out and give workshops, with no followup. Telling parents that they can ' be their child's therapist' 'pg 40' and that and that people 'turned things around in only a month' 'pg 3'is just plain cruel. And on pg. 264 they recommend a forced time- out where you calmly put a child who is completely out of control in a chair, stand behind him or her and hold their crossed arms accross their chest while they struggle. All the time in stoic silence. This book completely ignores the fact that the cycle of 'gotcha' is a habit that has been formed by both sides. Since they don't appear to bother with follow up statistics, there is no way to find out how many parents just go into a deeper cycle of failure after trying this with these unrealistic expectations. ...no need to buy this poorly written book. Like most self-published books, is badly in need of an editor

We cannot recommend highly enough the Nurtured Heart Approach to working with children with ADD, ADHD and non-traditional learning styles. The Nurtured Heart Approach works with the child's natural strengths and provides positive, proactive methods for transforming your child. This philosophy is the foundation of our own unique approach called Celebrate!ADHD...in which we restore a child's confidence, purpose and joy by focusing on the child's natural gifts, talents and passions. www.celebrateADHD.com We owe a debt of gratitude to Howie Glasser and urge you to pick up this book and visit his web forums for additional support.