Book Review: "Parenting the Strong-Willed Child"

 

I recently read Parenting the Strong-Willed Child by Kevin Hinckley.  He is LDS and writes from that perspective.  Now let me clarify that I don't think I have a really strong-willed child, at least by the definition given in the book.  I have a few that love to push my husband and me...but doesn't every child do that at some point(s) in their lives?  While I found the book interesting, the title of the book isn't necessarily accurate.  It's more like a book about parenting in general with a few chapters on the challenges of parenting a strong-willed child. I won't try to summarize but here are some things I found interesting.

Mr. Hinckley suggests that we need to stop worrying about building up our children's self-esteem and instead focus on building divine esteem.  Our children need to be thinking about what God wants for them.  He suggests that our children shouldn't learn necessarily to be submissive to us but should learn to be submissive to God.  They should learn to follow the Lord and the things He tells them to do through the Spirit.  I have to say this is very challenging to learn and maybe more challenging to teach.  He says that we need to teach our children to be problem-solvers and include praying in learning how to solve problems.  He gives a four-step process to follow in helping our children become better problem-solvers.  I'm not sure how I'm going to remember those steps but I definitely would like to work on that.

He talked about parenting styles being a combination of three core factors:  anxiety, control, and nurturing.  Level of anxiety is shown by how calm you are when interacting with your children.  The greater the stress in your life, the more anxious you will be as a parent.  Control is seen in the rules and structure that define daily family living.  In high-control homes, rules are clear-cut and daily life is very organized. Nurturing is "the level of affection and positive interaction demonstrated by parents towards their kids."  Our parenting style (unless we consciously change it) is an extension of our personalities and how we were treated by our own parents.

He then goes through the different combinations of these factors and talks about how this affects our children.  For example, parents high in all three areas are overprotective parents and their children often have trouble becoming independent.  And so forth.  I don't know that I agree with his definitions.  For example, he calls parents who are low control, high affection, and low anxiety, "democratic parents."  What is the difference between that and "permissive parents"?  What if you're not really high or low in any one area but are more in the middle?  I find it difficult to classify my own parenting into any one stereotypical class and I suspect many, maybe even most, parents are a mix of several different types.

Continuing that idea, he talks about how we need to tailor our discipline according to what type our child is:  talker, doer, thinker, or planner.  Here again, I dislike trying to fit my child into a fairly narrow box.  More helpful is the idea that we should involve our children in establishing consequences for certain behavior.  I liked the sample conversations he gave between a parent and child illustrating this.  Here again, he gave a four-step process to follow in helping children evaluate what went wrong.

Towards the end of the book, he gets more specific to the title.  Here's his definition of a strong-willed child: 

• almost never accepts words like "impossible" or "it can't be done". 
• may argue the point into the ground just to see how far into the ground the point will go.
• considers rules to be more like guidelines.
• can turn what seems to be the smallest issue into a grand crusade or raging controversy. (p. 189-190)

He follows that up with some discussion on how to help that difficult child recognizing that sometimes nothing works and children will make some choices that will be painful for everyone.

This book tried to cover a lot of ground, maybe too much, but it's worth the read.