kids dont come with a manual book

Book Review: Kids Don’t Come With a Manual by Carole and Nadim Saad

19th April 2015 No Comments
kids dont come with a manual book
“Kids Don’t Come With a Manual is beautifully presented and really easy to read – a compendium of all the best advice from parenting research, based on the authors’ real-life experience. I love the Troubleshooting section at the back. It’s the book I would’ve liked when I was a parent” – Sue Palmer – Former Headteacher and Author of Toxic Childhood

I must admit its taken me a while to write this book review because I’m not a big fan of parenting manuals. I tend to read them and then do my own thing anyway. They can make you feel like a failure at parenting and i’m usually left with a sense of despondency. Kids Don’t Come With a Manual  is different to this because it demonstrates what you are currently doing, or what your partner is doing and then how to improve it. This is a real life, pragmatic approach which offers suggestions and gets you to think about how to present solutions to situations with your children in order to create a more harmonious life.

Once I read the book and trying out the techniques I really noticed the benefits of some of the approaches. It made me stop and think about how I was presenting my responses to the children and its made a really noticeable difference. I really like the idea of doing a bit of subtle coaching and problem when they are learning how to behave and deal with their emotions and thats something i’ve really gained from this book.

I think this is genuinely one of the best parenting manuals i’ve read; it doesn’t focus on tactic related to gender or age, it provides clear strategies based on real life scenarios and is no condescending. The format works very well and its easy to quickly dip into and absorb. I wouldn’t be surprised if this becomes one of those ‘classic’ parenting manuals for our generation.

In terms of its impact here in our house, there has been a noticeable change, the holidays were not quite a fraught as usual and I managed to get the children to do a lot more activities and take more responsibility for their actions. I’ve found some of the techniques very useful for speaking to the children as I do have a tendency to lack empathy and say ‘I told you so’. In taking a different approach I think I have improved my relationship with them. Thank you Carole and Nadim!

You can get hold of a copy at all the usual places and you can find loads more information and tips on the authors website.

Disclaimer: We were sent a review copy

Claire Walsh

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