1-2-3 Magic: Effective Discipline for Children 2-12
Posted on Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Product Description
Addressing the task of child discipline with humor and practicality, this time-tested program provides easy-to-follow steps for disciplining children ages two through 12 without yelling, arguing, or spanking. Parents learn to deal with the six kinds of testing and manipulation, and they discover the 10 steps for building self-esteem in children. This award-winning guide also teaches parents how to handle the disrespectful outbursts of children with reason, patience, and compassion.
There is nothing new in this book. If your kids are not doing what you say, you just count 1, 2 and on 3 you put your kid in time-out.
If you can’t figure this out for yourself or are not a very good parent to start with, this is your book. There must be better books on disipline, but I really haven’t looked. I just know that this book contains nothing new.
Oh yeah, on top of that, I have a hard time reading a book on disipline that mildly support spanking and the such. True, there is no outright acceptance of spanking by the author, but it seemed clear to me in reading 123 that the author did not really look down on spanking and may have even considered it a good form of disipline. But that is a side note. (There is useful information in the book, just nothing that makes it worth buying).
Rating: 1 / 5
I was very disappointed in this author. His approach to spanking is that spanking is a “parental temper tantrum” and parents who defend spanking should see a psychiatrist and be checked for anger management issues (his words). I found this absolutely ridiculous, inappropriate and demeaning. I am a Christian and a believer in “spare the rod and spoil the child”. Not everyone spanks their child out of anger. Some of us want them to grow up knowing there are immediate consequences to their actions. I was also disappointed in the theory that I should give a child three chances to do the same negative behavior. I would like my child to know that on the first time I say “no”, that’s what I mean. My children are complimented on their behavior and we do not have to tell them three times before they behave. They do not assume there will be three chances. The real world doesn’t give you three chances before there are consequences. I would not recommend this book to anyone who supports spanking or who wants their child to behave on the first time they are told “no”.
Rating: 1 / 5
I am still reading the book, but so far it has been a great learning experience.
Rating: 4 / 5
Hi, I am ten and I read this book in less than 2 hours. It was a very irritating book. The main idea is that children should do what their parents want all the time because “the parents are right”. Always. Yeah right, nobody is always right. In fact, the fact that the parents brought another kid into a world that already has too many people is proof that they are pretty stupid (ever hear of adopting?) Okay, another idea of the book is that certain behavior should be squashed as soon as possible. This is stupid because it trains children to follow everything somebody says, blindly. When they grow up what are they going to do? Conform to anything if the person starts counting? I wonder how many parents realize that they are brainWASHING their kids to be Pavlovian dogs. Another idea of this book is that there are such things as bad words. This is pretty stupid. A word is a word and people that react to “swears” are hypocrites. The same adults that tell a kid not to swear watch TV shows full of swears. It is STUPID!!! I live in a foster home. My last foster parent read this book and tried to do it on ME because I am “argumentative” and got mad about having a babysitter (what for? I know how to dial 911, won’t set a fire and can pretyt much do everything an adult can do included but not limited to driving)! So we would get in lots of arguments. But then I tried doing the same things to hear and counting when she was acting unreasonable (like telling me I am too young to read Steven King books). Now I am in a new foster home (it was like magic, that part) where they encourage me to debate. I am now in the gifted program at school too. Brainwashing your kids to do what you want without thinking is the same sort of belief system that let the Nazis get off the ground in 1939. And we all know how that ended! CHILDREN ARE SPONGES SO PLEASE TEACH YOURS TO LEARN TO THINK FOR THEMSELVES AND RESPCT YOU BECAUSE YOU ARE WORTH RESPECTING, NOT BECAUSE YOU ARE OLDER AND PHYSICALLY STRONGER. Unless of course you want your kid to be so susceptible to “training” that they have breast implants at my age. My advice to parents is instead of trying to make your kid perfect without fights ( part of being a parent IS debating and encouraging discussion not squashing it by counting) is to stop smothering/overpretecting your kids and letting them find out for themselves what happens when they mess up. If you warn them first but dont restrict them, they then respect you for two reasons; being able to give good advice AND having enough courage in their (the kids) strength and intelligence not to make decisions. The only time I think a parent should interfeer is when there kid might die otherwise. I think the reaosn we have less existentialists these days is because children are programmed. Its probably the same reason we have less geniuses.
Remember, have respect for your kid and their intelligence and they will have respect for you and yours.
Jacob, age 10 for Mrs Corners grade 9 class in T.O., Canada
Rating: 1 / 5
There are some big flaws in the pure “Obey now because I said so” approach.
It works for the young ones and then backfires with rebellion in the teen years. Even the youngsters though, what do these kids do when Mom is not there with the threat?
Think about how you dealt with your own parents discipline when you hit the teen years? I plead the 5th.
Think about how the 18 year olds behave when they first go off to college and Mom isn’t there? Just read the news every autum, they die from alcohol poisoning, or recently the Duke U. lacrosse athletes hired strippers to a party in 2006, insulted them and then had to fend off bogus rape law suits in 2007. These are not unusual stories, every fall something like this comes out, how can they reach adulthood and not know?
Also with all the scary news about pedophiles in respected positions like teacher, priest, coach, family friend etc, I don’t want a child that is overly obedient.
Also it teaches kids that it is OK to do the wrong thing if you are willing to go through the punishment, you just buy off or pay off your sin. My siblings, friends and I used to do this all the time.
I’ve noticed with my two kids, facing the fact of what they did is the hardest thing for them, we mostly use the discussion approach, even when they were very little, I’d physically stop them hitting or running in the street or whatever and point out the sad friend, or speeding cars etc. But man, they would NOT want to look in the face of the crying friend/sibling.
The discussion approach actually helps them to THINK, use their brains and find several ideas and choose solutions that will work for both parties.
The other thing about the Obey Now approach is that it damages the trust and relationship. Even today my parents and I don’t have that close of a relationship. They are nice enough people, but I don’t chat with them or hang out with them much. My kids also don’t care for either of the grandfathers, they prefer any other visitor.
Rating: 1 / 5