Top positive review
4.0 out of 5 starsWas not very useful with my teen, but surprise, surprise, worked like a charm for my 7 year old.
Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2017
I have a 15 year old daughter and while there are no major problems and we communicate very openly and honestly about everything, there are still moments where I feel that either I am treating things the right way or she is being rude. I bought the book hoping that it would greatly improve our already good rapport. This book is probably very helpful for parents who do not have an open line of communication with their teens, parents who are either too strict or too lenient or too afraid to have honest conversations with their kids. I did not find the book personally to be very helpful because my daughter has the maturity of a 25 year old and will laugh at some of the most of the tricks and tips described in this book. However, this did not turn out to be a complete waste because I started using some of the techniques with my spoiled little bratty 7 year old and it worked! An example: one evening he was majorly pissed because he could not get home in time to watch his TV show. So instead of trying to calm him down in a traditional way by telling him that it was not a huge deal, I used the fantasy strategy from the book and said "Wouldn't you wish the car could just fly and we would be home in a second?" Right away, his tears stopped and he said "Yeah, and I also wish that you could always go back and see the missed parts of your shows" to which I said "You know, someone thought about that and invented DVR, we don't have it at our house, but we can look into it, OK?" At that point, he was all smiles. One very important point I learned from the book, as parents, we tend to often disregard our kids feelings about what we perceive to be minor things such as missing a show, but to kids, these things are major. We can't expect them to yet understand that such small problem is nothing compared to major bad stuff that happens in the world.
