Product Description

A lifesaving handbook for parents of children who
are occasionally, or too often, "out of control"
Includes a bound-in twenty-minute DVD featuring
Dr. Kazdin and his staff illustrating key concepts of
the Kazdin Method
Most child-behavior books are filled with advice that
sounds reasonable, fits with what parents already
believe about child-rearing, and is—as Dr. Kazdin proves—
guaranteed to fail. The Kazdin Method for Parenting the
Defiant Child makes available to parents for the first time
Dr. Kazdin's proven program—one backed up by some of
the most long-term and respected research devoted to any
therapy for children.
Kazdin shatters decades' worth of accumulated myths
about tantrums, time-outs, punishments fitting the crime,
and much more.With the practicality of Ferber and the warmth
of Brazelton, Kazdin leads parents through every step of the
Kazdin Method in action—how to use tone of voice, when and
how to touch, how to lead your child in a "practice" session,
how to adjust your approach for different-age children, how to
involve siblings, and more.The program is temporary, but the
results are permanent—for very young children, adolescents,
and even beyond.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4197 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Kazdin, director of the Yale Parenting Center and Conduct Clinic as well as president of the American Psychological Association, claims his method works with no pills, no therapy and no contest of wills. Instead, Kazdin uses a practical, science-based method of dealing with behavioral problems in children that relies on positive reinforcement and a reward system. Kazdin doesn't dwell on the scientific research (it seems the reader must trust him on this), though he claims his method works about 80% of the time with serious problems and therefore should have even greater success with everyday behavior glitches. He outlines a plan to help parents focus on the positive opposite (in other words, what they want the child to do) and then takes them step-by-step through a process of praise and reward. Though Kazdin's approach seems complicated at first, his easygoing and often humorous tone gently guides readers through an array of problem scenarios, including bedtime, tantrums, grocery shopping with a younger child, getting ready for the school day and homework. The author promises long-lasting results for a temporary investment in his practical, positive method; parents may be well rewarded if they give it a try. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author
ALAN E. KAZDIN is John M. Musser Professor of Psychology at Yale University and director of Yale's Parenting Center and Child Conduct Clinic. He is 2008 president of the American Psychological Association and the author of many professional-audience books on child psychology and behavior published in dozens of countries. Kazdin lives in Hamden, Connecticut.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Your four-year-old's tantrums have become more frequent and intense; they
have started to dominate the life of your household. He's not just yelling and
screaming anymore — now he throws things, hits, and kicks, too. The
bedtime tantrum is the most predictable one, and the one that disrupts home
life the most, but he has also taken his show on the road. You've been late to
work recently because he melts down in the morning when you leave him at
daycare. After other spectacular public performances at the supermarket,
restaurants, and family gatherings, none of which you handled very well, you
are sure that others see you as an incompetent parent — and you are
starting to wonder if they might be right. And, deeper than that, it frightens
you to feel the situation slipping beyond your control. You're losing your
confidence that you can govern your child, your household, and when you
lose your temper, yourself.

***

You want your nine-year-old to work with you, not against you. You're not
asking for blind compliance, but more cooperation would be nice. Right now,
she seems to fight you every step of the way, from getting up for school in
the morning through homework and dinner and computer or TV time.
Sometimes she insists on complete freedom and autonomy; sometimes she
acts as if you have to do everything for her. She bickers incessantly with her
sister, too. Is it asking too much for you to have a little peace around the
house? You're tired of laying down the law, trying to understand her point of
view, and using every other strategy that hasn't worked. Frankly, you are fed
up with your own child. You find yourself wistfully wondering why you weren't
one of the lucky ones who got a nice, easy kid to raise.

***

Your thirteen-year-old gives you nothing but attitude. On a couple of
occasions, he has stolen something or committed an act of vandalism, the
most worrisome pieces of a larger pattern of defying authority. You tell
yourself that he's going through a phase, that he's just a normal
preadolescent, but you fear that he may be heading toward serious trouble.
You have tried to talk to him in every way you can think of — punishing,
explaining, begging, crying — but nothing works. Your spouse says you are
exaggerating, but you feel it's time to face the seriousness of what's
happening to your family. Your child has a good heart, but that doesn't keep
you from feeling always a little on edge, not knowing when the next crisis will
develop.

***

Should you be addressing these problems now, before they lead to more
serious ones? Or should you wait to see if a particular problem resolves
itself? Perhaps you've gone online, Googled "tantrum" or "defiant child," and
found that your child's behavior fits a dire-sounding label. Perhaps you're
more concerned than your spouse is, or vice versa, and it's becoming a bone
of contention between you — two devoted parents who find themselves
disagreeing about what's wrong, how serious it is, how to put it right, or
whether to try to fix it at all.
The tangle of confusion, frustration, fear, and anger inside you
turns spending time with your child into a wearisome, long-running
confrontation, even a chore that you secretly dread, and that feels very wrong
to you. You've become a character you don't really recognize, or recognize
all too well as the kind of parent you never wanted to be: a frequently irate,
sometimes out-of-control shouter who spends altogether too much time
ineffectively nagging, threatening, punishing, and even hitting the very child
you love as much as you have ever loved or could ever love anyone. You feel
off-balance, strange to yourself. You need a better way to be a parent, but
you haven't gotten much useful help from the models you may have turned
to: the way your parents, bless their hearts, did it; the many ways the child-
rearing manuals suggest you do it; the way Supernanny does it on TV. With
professional experts of all kinds promising that their way works, with friends
and friends of friends telling you stories about how so-and-so's kid was
turned around by a new parental strategy or miracle diet or whatever, it's hard
to figure out what actually will work for you and your child.

The Method

There is a way to establish what actually does work. It's called science. To
most people as they go about their daily lives, "science" means subjects
such as the discovery of water on Mars, how birds spread influenza, and
what trans fats do to our bodies. All of these are important and consistently
newsworthy, without doubt, but science has also been quietly pressing
forward in the effort to understand child development, child-rearing, parent-
child interaction, and all sorts of other matters that affect your child's social,
emotional, and behavioral adjustment.
Within the extensive research on human behavior in general, a
great deal tells us specifically about the behavior of children. You may be
surprised to hear that scientists have studied the most effective way to give a
command to a child, or that they have rigorously compared the effectiveness
of rewarding good behavior and punishing misbehavior. There are even studies
that tell us very specific things like, for instance, the most effective way to
speak to a child when asking her to do something she'd prefer not to do:
brush her teeth, wear a jacket, get off the phone, or go to bed on time.
Obviously, very few parents have the time or training to get up to speed on
the latest research in psychology, not to mention child development and
neurobiology and all the many related fields. But they can benefit profoundly
from what researchers have discovered.
In this book, I present a method for changing your child's behavior
that is based on good science — on what we currently know about children's
behavior from the results of sound, well-conducted studies. I do not offer
impressionistic beliefs or unsupported opinions about childhood. I'll be telling
you something about the research and basic principles that underlie this
approach, so you get a sense of why it works, but my emphasis will be on
what to do and how to do it.
One great virtue of the method is that the same principles and
techniques apply to the full range of situations for children and adolescents.
I'm talking about everything from the milestones of normal child
development — eating, toilet training, sleeping in one's own bed, not having
tantrums — all the way to potentially more serious behavior problems like
fighting or stealing. The method has been demonstrated to be effective even
in those more difficult situations in which there are other problems in the
home, such as when parents have physical or mental health problems, or
engage in drug use or domestic violence. As long as you are committed to
systematically taking this approach to changing the behavior of your child,
even an imperfect and partial application of the method produces results.
First, you must shift your own focus of attention. As parents we
tend to be experts on what we want our kids not to do. For example, I want
him to stop whining, talking back, and ignoring me. I will teach you to focus
more positively on what you do want your kids to do — When it's bedtime, I
want her to go directly, quickly, and quietly to bed — and give you the tools
to methodically reinforce that behavior until it replaces the behavior you don't
want.
You'll learn how to build up the behaviors you want: how often
your child must practice the good behavior in order for it to "take," how to set
up situations so that the behaviors you'd like to see are much more likely to
occur, how to create more chances to practice, how to praise most
effectively, how to set up and give rewards that work, how to get from the
desired behavior never happening to seeing it happen a lot, how to
troubleshoot and improve a program that's not working well enough. I will
have much to tell you about the details, because they can make all the
difference between success and failure.
When you commit to positively reinforcing the behavior you want,
you can be kinder to your child while being more systematic. We tend to fall
into a trap of believing that getting serious about behavior problems means
getting negative: more punishment, tougher standards, "zero tolerance." But
positive reinforcement requires a very different kind of effectiveness from a
parent: better praise, more purposeful rewards, greater attentiveness to a
child. It draws you and your child closer together as it makes you a more
effective parent.
Parents who use my method often find great relief in discovering
that getting down to business doesn't have to mean bearing down even
harder on their children. Being more effectively gentle and positive with your
child doesn't mean being spineless. The reverse, in fact, may be true. Flying
off the handle, perpetual anger, shouting, hitting — those are the truer signs
of a defeated, ineffective parent. Positive reinforcement tends to calm a
household because it offers clear, attainable objectives for parents and
children alike to aim for in shaping behavior.
My method does not require a lifelong commitment. The program
you'll set up for changing your child's behavior works like a frame you place
around a growing plant to train it up straight and healthy. The plant is better
behavior, and once it can stand on its own, you'll take dow...

Customer Reviews

Now I Know I Am Not Alone
This book helped me to know I am not the only parent with these challenges. The book is very current with situations (computers, cell phones, video games) that are hurdles for today's parents. Advice and strategies are given for pre-schoolers to teens. The book is thorough and even comes with a DVD to demonstrate Mr Kazdin's core method. I was satisfied with this purchase.

Excellent support of positive reinforcement in childrearing
This book is a great resource for parents who are struggling with a child's behavioral issue or are simply preparing themselves to better utilize the influence they have in directing their child's actions.

The Kazdin Method for Parenting the Defiant Child
I think this approach is a good one; well worth the read if you have a child in this category.