Screamfree parenting truly works!

books:


	• ScreamFree Parenting: The Revolutionary Approach to Raising Your Kids by Keeping Your Cool Hal Edward Runkel WaterBrook Press, 2007 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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The title says it all

Author Hal Runkel has hit upon an imaginative way to teach parenting: by stressing the need for parents to remain emotionally composed and self-controlled. If only all parents would see this light!

Hal Runkel is a marriage and family therapist with a particular interest in raising well-behaved children. Yet instead of focusing on how to achieve behavioral control of the kids, this book attempts to change the behavior of the adults in the household.

Every kid wants a "cool" parent, Runkel advises, yet the kind of "cool" that helps most is the kind that means calm, collected, and in control of his or her emotions.

Using witty chapter titles and insightful anecdotes (you'll enjoy the discussion about `judo parenting') Runkel essentially advises you as a parent to say what you mean-calmly-and mean what you say. He devotes a couple of chapters to the danger of threatening dire consequences without backing them up with actions, and the value of such consequences when they're actually imposed-by a calm parent.

What's new here is the packaging, not the theory, but Runkel's terms and descriptions are witty and fresh. Parents of young children or parents who feel like their children are `out of control' may especially enjoy this book.

NOTE: Together with wife Lisa, Dr. David Frisbie serves as executive director of The Center for Marriage & Family Studies in Del Mar, California. They have authored numerous articles and eight books about family life,including "Raising Great Kids On Your Own," and "Happily Remarried."

Armchair Interviews says: Solid, mainstream parenting advice, presented with a fresh twist.

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Screamfree parenting truly works!

Before I had children, I spoke in soft, lilting tones, rarely raising my voice above a lady-like whisper. The moment my children arrived on the scene, however, I witnessed how my vocal chords were suddenly in top form. It was alarming, really. Where did I gain my two-octave ability?

By yelling at my kids.

I swallowed hard. Yell? Scream? Pitch a fit? I'd done it like the best of them.

It is not comfortable to admit this to you, nor is it an unnatural tendency to want to be louder than they are. But, I realized I was not often modeling my best behavior. Nor was I truly getting what I wanted: self-directed children who are motivated by their own moral principles. I was getting deer-in-the-headlights glances and scurrying feet who did my will, but not for long.

Hal Edward Runkel, a family therapist from Atlanta, Georgia, provides a fabulous insight into how we can literally live screamfree. He doesn'T suggest we change our personalities. He does recommend morphing our anxious reactivity into more empowering means of communicating with our loved ones.

Hal's approach is so down-to-earth that you'll find yourself slapping your own head with a "Why didn't I think of that?" The book rests on three basic principles.

Parenting is about the parent, not the kids.

Calm down.

Grow up.

While these may seem oversimplistic, the premise is quite revolutionary. We've got Generation Y running about the office, expecting a large congratulations for actually showing up on time to work. Our kid-centric model of parenting has failed miserably. Humans raising other humans is challenging at best. If you don't care for your own reactions (the only ones you can control), how can you care for anyone else?

Another heartening suggestion - stop trying to control something you cannot. The only thing you can control is your reaction to things. Anxious reactivity informs a lot of our parenting. Give it up. Your children are not responsible for making you happy, but for finding their way in the world. They can't do that if they have to worry about you going ballistic, too.

Hal's hardest pill to swallow might be that we are the ones standing in the way of a powerful relationship with our kids. I'm guilty of it. You might be, too.

Halfway through the book, I decided to test out his theory. It's one thing to grin, nod and giggle from the comfort of your own post-kid-bedtime bed. It's an entirely other thing to actually put it to use.

I ordered a family-size vegetarian pizza for everyone. My daughter loves cheese pizza, but enjoys a dubious relationship to anything green. When it arrived, she wagged her tongue about like a canine happy to see his master. We opened the box, and her face fell like a soufflé at a children's birthday party.

"It's not cheese."

I suggested she pick off what she doesn't like, which she did, leaving her with a bare pizza. She cried, kicked the table and had a juicy tantrum, while I kept eating my pizza. I continued eating while she spewed out things such as "You're a terrible mother! You don't care if I starve!" and other thespian lines. I waited until she had finished, then quietly suggested we put parmasean cheese on it and place it back into the oven to melt.

Then a miracle happened.

She actually stopped crying.

"Okay," I heard her say. Containing my jaw in its socket, I did just that. She later scraped off the cheese, but ate the entire thing without complaint. My quiet, single octave voice created a calm she had not expected.

I tried it again with my son, who often vies to be heard by speaking louder and louder. I got quieter and quieter, asking him politely to tell me what he needed in a way I could hear him. He then agreed to brush his teeth on his own, discarding any struggle whatsoever.

My singing voice might suffer from this new screamfree practice, but my relationships certainly will not. Besides, who needs to replace the late Pavarotti? I'll leave that to the Italians to decide.

Christine Louise Hohlbaum, author of Diary of a Mother: Parenting Stories and Other Stuff and Sahm I Am: Tales of a Stay-at-Home Mom in Europe, lives in a screamfree house near Munich, Germany, with her husband and two children.

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Parents are facing the toughest challenge of their lives. They want to create a loving family environment filled with mutual respect and cooperation? but they find instead that human nature and the influence of our culture combine to produce an atmosphere of anxiety, exhaustion, and far too much screaming. Perhaps you can relate!

Whether you scream at your children or not, you no doubt feel anxious about them and their choices. You worry how they?ll turn out. Unfortunately for parents, many of the techniques some experts present only seem to make matters worse. Hal Edward Runkel has discovered why: Parents are spending far too much time orbiting their lives around their children. They need to return the focus to themselves. They need to grow up and calm down.

ScreamFree Parenting is about taming your reactive responses to your deep anxiety. Rather than learning new techniques, you?ll discover the liberating principles, based on scriptural truths, that are inspiring parents just like you to revolutionize their family life. Principles that will enable you to remain cool, calm, and connected with your children, no matter what.

Learn how to parent less out of your deepest fears and more out of the highest principles in ScreamFree Parenting.

Special edition distributed through Christian booksellers.

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