Parenting styles, looking for books

Mrs. Hungary and I are looking for the names different parenting styles.

We have two kids.  Going in to the first it was recommended we read books about "Love and Logic Parenting".  I found the examples in the books overly simplistic, but liked the method.  We followed said parenting style with the eldest Hungarling and it was PERFECT.  We could redirect unhealthy behavior, use energy drains to discourage unwanted behavior... easy money (and we do recommend if you're looking for ideas).

The second kid, though?  Not effective at all.  We need to try something else.

So what books did you read and which parenting styles did you find helpful for your kids?

Think:  Strong willed kid (boy, 5), who doesn't give a crap if he has to refill your energy by doing chores/have stuff taken away/etc 

Following along to see what is reccomended.

We're a big fan of Emily Oster's data driven approach to parenting, but I don't think that's entirely what you're looking for here. 

In reply to Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) :

Our first was one of those.  Almost nothing was effective.  Even at 5 years old she was perfectly capable of having an internal debate about the risk / reward of a given action, deciding it was worth taking the punishment, and proceeding however she wanted.  We never did figure it out.  We were just lucky enough that her self-preservation instinct was strong enough to prevent her from doing anything monumentally stupid.

In reply to Duke :

Dude, that is it.  It frustrates the crap out of me because I'm looking at little me being me!!

But yeah, if we say "dude, all this interrupting our conversation to talk about Paw Patrol is really draining our energy.  If you don't stop, you're going to have to do a load of laundry to help refill it."

The kid will stop a second to consider, interrupt again, and then will walk on over to the washing machine talking paw patrol the whole way 

CrustyRedXpress said:

Following along to see what is reccomended.

We're a big fan of Emily Oster's data driven approach to parenting, but I don't think that's entirely what you're looking for here. 

Hey, we'll check it out.  You never know 

Thanks!

Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Duke :

But yeah, if we say "dude, all this interrupting our conversation to talk about Paw Patrol is really draining our energy.  If you don't stop, you're going to have to do a load of laundry to help refill it."

The kid will stop a second to consider, interrupt again, and then will walk on over to the washing machine talking paw patrol the whole way 

I mean... I'm not a parent, but the solution to this seems pretty obvious.

Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Duke :

But yeah, if we say "dude, all this interrupting our conversation to talk about Paw Patrol is really draining our energy.  If you don't stop, you're going to have to do a load of laundry to help refill it."

The kid will stop a second to consider, interrupt again, and then will walk on over to the washing machine talking paw patrol the whole way 

Seems to me that what you really did was you gave him a choice to either stop, or to do laundry and he doesn't have to stop. And he chose the don't stop choice. You can't get mad if you give him a choice and he takes one of the choices that you gave him.

I would have said "I am talking to mommy right now. It is 3:27, I will talk to you in 12 minutes when I am done. Let me know when it is time."  That not only tells him what you expect, but also gets him to practice his addition and time-telling skills. Win-win.

If he ignores you and still interrupts, then it is 3:28 and 12 minutes. Next it is 3:29 and 15 minutes. Never let him win.

I find kids are a lot like racing cars. Enter into the situation gently and slow, midway through see how you are doing, If all is going well hammer down. When in doubt, flat out. Spinning ain't winning. You can never have enough power. Turn off the nannies. Never lose your grip

Bill, the fact that the first kid and that book worked is a coincidence. There is no book for kids. Our daughter is like S, but more screaming and mean. All the parents that tell you to "try ____" didn't have a kid with these personalities. We've tried all the things and none of it works and none of it matters. Our kid is nice to others and a good person.  She's caring and kind out in the world. It spills over sometimes (regularly) and she takes it out on us. That's our job and a lot of those behaviors will serve them very well as adults. 

Mezzanine is correct - there is no book for kids. Well, there might be, but it would only work for one particular parental personality/capability when dealing with one particular kid personality/capability. And all parents and all kids are unique.

Having been through a couple kids and now with a couple grandkids, I have found the following works the best:

     1)  Let the kids know you love them no matter what. You might be disappointed, upset, hurt, frustrated, or confused by what they do, but you still let them know you love them.

     2) Be consistent in your expectations. One of my kids put it this way when talking about what they expected from their kids:

            a) Show compassion & respect to all living beings

            b) Show good sportsmanship in all areas of life and are motivated to keep trying after failing

            c) Follow rules & instructions - questioning authority is acceptable after tasks are complete but must be done respectfully & thoughtfully

     3) Be creative in ideas to deal with behavior and situations when kids don't meet the expectations. Each kid/parent combination is unique and will have unique techniques that work or not.  With a door-slamming pre-teen that valued privacy our answer was to threaten to remove the bedroom door. It worked in that case. It would not work if the kid had no expectation or concern about privacy or if we were not prepared to follow through.  If plan A doesn't work, try plan B, or C, or D.  Find out what motivates their behavior, good and bad.

And don't forget that parents and kids have existed for thousands of years - and the kids almost always turn out well if you care enough about them to keep trying. So keep trying.

We have 4 kids between us so hopefully we've been reasonably successful.  
 

The "modern" idea of parenting (Dr. Spock with his "treat children like small adults." Parenting method is (in my opinion) wildly misguided.  
 

Parents and children aren't supposed to be close friends.  Our job as parents is to raise happy/well adjusted/successful adults.  Getting from larval  newborns to fully sentient adults is a massive job.  
 

So sometimes we parents have to be firm, even hard.   The kids might not like it, but that's alright, our job isn't to be liked it's to raise good kids.

Good morning everyone!  I'm just sitting down with my coffee, so if I miss someone or something I have my excuses lined up

Yourself:  With regards to your first post;  You're 100% right, and the book goes over that a bit.  You're giving them a choice so you have to accept it as much as they do.  Much like the examples in  the book, my example was a bit oversimplified and it's not the route we always take (depending on the intensity of the interruptions, importance of the conversation, parents' irritation levels, etc). 

To me, though, it's baffling that a 5-year old would ever pick the laundry choice (hence this thread).  Depending on the severity of the situation (or how irritated we are) the kid could be responsible for the whole shebang (from washing to the folding) and he'll still pick it like it's nothin to him and carry on with whatever he's doing afterwards. I hate laundry...  (or conversely, it could just be "hey, I know you can hear us talking.  You need to wait until...)

Reading your second post, we have a lot in common and those three rules are basically the foundation of how we try to parent.  With regards to the third one, that variety is what we're looking for.  We dont want this kid using up our parenting ideas quicker than we can come up with them

Counting Crowbars:  Yeah, we tend to take the same approach (enter slow, see how we're doing).  The part about "spinning aint winning" and "never lose our grip" is what we're trying to lean forward on here.  Outsiders say our kids are well behaved but we want it to stay that way.  As Mrs. Hungary and I look forward we can see that the tools we got in our box might not be enough to tackle this endurance race as we feel like we're using ALL of them a lot of the time.  We're hoping to get some new tools to try out before they're "needed" so we can see this thing to the finish line successfully.

Mezzanine:  That reminds me of the best advice I ever got.  When we were pregnant with our first everyone gave us the "sleep when the baby sleeps" bull.  But one day my boss pulled me aside and said "listen man, when we were expecting our first everyone had advice on what to do, and to me it seemed like that stuff worked great for them.  But in parenting I've learned that every kid is different and while that stuff IS great for them, it didnt always work for me.  So take it into consideration, try it if you think it fits, but dont go in thinking that 100% of that crap is going to work for you".  
 
I know we got lucky with the first and the book was could have been a coincidence, but reading it gave us a very useful set of tools.  Much like how Carroll Smith's "to win" series didn't fix any issues with my specific car, it did give me a deeper understanding concerning my automotive knowledge and effectively made me a far better mechanic.  I'm looking for a variety of ideas (through books) to help us be better parents (books specifically because the signal to noise ratio on the internet isn't always clear, and shipping an english book from ".de" addresses is easy and cheap).

KyAllroad:  I dont think I've read Dr. Spock, but I'll look into it because you've piqued my curiosity.


Everyone:  Just wanted to say thanks and that if anyone had more ideas they wanted to share, please do.  By the sound of it, our parenting fundamentals is consistent with the advice in this thread (and that's reassuring).  Like KY said, this is a massive undertaking and Mrs. Hungary and I are always looking for ways we can improve.

Applied Behavior Analysis based stuff may help.   Its the only thing I know of that is empirically shown to change behaviors.  My wife has a Masters in that field and works with kids that are worse than your young'un and has gotten them to turn around.

Yourself hit the nail on the head though with the choices comment.

Let me suggest a shotgun approach. No, not aimed at the kids, just for the search for a book that matches your parenting style and your kids personality. 

There are thousands of parenting books, the trick is to find one that resonates without spending your race car fund looking for it.  My favorite free book site is archive.org. Almost 10,000 books on parenting, most free for limited download. You won`t find the latest fads, and most of the books are from the 1950s and up (yes, they do have Dr. Spock that a lot of us boomers were raised by), but if you are looking for ideas to try there are plenty. 

Once you find something you like for raising kids, archive.org is a huge rabbit hole that I have spent hours on looking up car books, science fiction, history of mathematics, etc. And they also have music, and the Wayback Machine which is an archive of 591 billion (yes Billion) web pages from days gone by.

Have fun!

Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) said:

To me, though, it's baffling that a 5-year old would ever pick the laundry choice (hence this thread).  Depending on the severity of the situation (or how irritated we are) the kid could be responsible for the whole shebang (from washing to the folding) and he'll still pick it like it's nothin to him and carry on with whatever he's doing afterwards. I hate laundry...  (or conversely, it could just be "hey, I know you can hear us talking.  You need to wait until...)

Not a parent, but I understand where that kid is coming from. It's something we all do. Ever held a woman's purse while she shopped because you liked spending time with her?

Your kid has a social desire to socialize with people he likes and communicate about the thing that excites him. That's a big deal. Doing a small chore is a small price to pay. It's *especially* a small price to pay because he can do that chore *while* doing the thing that he wants.

To be a bit crude, if your wife offered you hot nookie if you did the laundry, you'd get that done quick. If she offered to give you a BJ while you folded laundry, you'd probably fold laundry with a smile on your face.

Less crude: if Stirling Moss came in and would regale you with stories of his life experiences and give you driving tips while you did laundry... you'd do laundry.

The choice would be easy, and you hate laundry more than your kid does.

So... again, not a parent, but... First thing I'd do is be thankful the kid is this clever and capable of weighing the cost/benefit of choices. This means your kid is (relatively) rational and so can be reasoned and negotiated with. From there, you can go for negative reinforcement or positive reinforcement. You can either take away something of greater value, impose a greater cost, or offer a greater reward for delaying the behavior. Or take advantage of the behavior to get the kid to do more chores.

I suspect a kid this clever is probably going to figure out how to circumvent "punishments" or turn them to his advantage (or require you to resort to unfair and onerous punishments that you'll both resent). I'd probably try to offer the kid a stronger reward *and* get him to do more chores. Do like Yourself suggested and have him wait for a set period of time while you recharge, with the understanding that, once you do that, you'll be able to give him more attention and have an engaged conversation. Bonus points to get him to do a chore while you have the conversation.

Look on the brite side. Kinda sucks while he's 5 and the most he can be interested in is Paw Patrol, but if you're smart now, you're likely to have a more enjoyable kid to hang out with as he gets older. By the time he's 10, you should be able to get him to discuss Star Wars (or some other age-appropriate piece of media you like) while fetching and handing you tools when you're wrenching on cars or doing home repairs.

In reply to Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) :

Also... not a parent, but... I did teach 4-8th grade for several years.

Precocious and clever kids like this can be a bit irksome, but far less annoying than most. Usually it's the frustration of them being too clever to really punish much because they've learned really well when they can and can't push it and how to walk it back. They know better than to fight you and challenge you strait on. They were some of my favorite kids to teach.

Montessori might be a really good fit for this kid.

Edit: We had a family trio that your situation reminds me a lot of.

Eldest was a very boyish boy. Most prone to outbursts and "trouble" of the three. He was also one of the simplest and most direct to deal with. He knew when his behavior was wrong and it would just be like, "You messed up. Go sit your punishment," and he'd go do it very matter-of-fact. Best way to head off trouble was to get him moving to proactively burn up his energy before it bubbled over.

Second reminds me a lot of your elder. She was the easiest to deal with and sort of the theoretical "model student". Relatively quiet, easy-going, simply agreeable.

The youngest reminds me of your younger. Oh my lord was she clever. Both maddeningly and impressively. Things was, you almost didn't need to manage her because she was going to manage herself... and everyone around her. Whatever it was she ultimately wanted to do, she'd navigate the situation to make it work for her. When she started to misstep, you could basically give her a look, she'd smile puckishly, back off, plan, and change tactics.

Having dealt with her, the advice I'd give is, don't fight it. Trying to stop her from achieving her goal would have been a losing proposition. Frankly, what she wanted wasn't ever really a problem. All you had to do was sort of set some guardrails and boundaries, make it clear where the hard lines you wouldn't compromise were, and then she'd figure out what was best for herself.

Eldest and youngest both medaled at the California State Science Fair. Eldest took a 1st place for Junior High one year. Youngest won a special award or scholarship thing for promising young women in STEM.

Lots of opinions here but the for sure fact is that kids really are like crayons -- TONS of different colors in the box. 

My .02: We go with a connective style. That is to say we go with the philosophy that obedience comes either from relationship or fear. There's a lot to it, probably the most visible part is that we don't punish, not even a little if we can help it (you can still go to the park after throwing your food because there's no direct natural consequence, other than if you take too long to clean it up I guess) -- and if there's a lot of disobedience it's probably related to a break in the relationship between parent/child.

 We have a Highly Sensitive Child so it's the hardest thing in the world, but it "works". Janet Lansbury is a good resource for this style, No Bad Kids and Elevating Childcare are two books of hers. Definitely not how I was raised.

Only thing is that they say if you don't go for it whole hog, don't bother. If you ever rely on fear, the connection/relationship part is undermined, so you're just going to make yourself mad. 

So you say you have a 'strong willed child'... Have you looked into any of the books with that exact phrase in the title? I don't know which one(s) might resonate with you and your kid, because I'm not you, and don't have your kid... Not to mention, I am generally a 'parenting book' pessimist.

My parenting style depends on the kid, and figuring it out is necessarily a circular process. Each parent and kid are different, so the parenting style of every parent toward each of their kids will necessarily be different as well. And that's ok. The more the parent needs to adapt away from their natural parenting style though, the more challenging it will be. It's kind of like the 'love languages' stuff, but with more variables and only one side doing all the work. On top of that, it's in a constant state of change, because kids are too. Anything that makes it sound simple or easy is lying.

Expressing unconditional love, behavior modeling, emotion coaching, the power to choose, freedom with boundaries, natural consequences, honesty and finding 'currencies' are at the core of each of my parenting styles though. Every kid needs those. 

Mayday!  Mayday!

NEVER go head-to-head with a strong willed kid. They are stronger than you. You can see it in their eyes. The minute you threaten an ultimatum, they steel their jaw and get a look that says "Today is a good day to die". 
 

I have 4 strong willed kids. I'm really tired. 

Dr Spock is considered modern??  His book was written in 1946!

No Bad Kids, by Janet Lansbury. It’s about helping your kids model appropriate behavior without resorting to sparking or punishment. Kids aren’t doing anything wrong when they “act up,” they just need help regulating their emotions and making sense of the world. It’s our job to guide them and teach them.
Siblings without rivalry - by the how to talk authors. Helps more specifically with sibling related issues.