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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Introduction: Why?

CHAPTER ONE First Years

Baby and the 3Rs: 0–1

Toddler and the Terrible Twos: 1–3

Some Techniques

CHAPTER TWO Preschool

Rising Five: 3–5

CHAPTER THREE More Techniques

CHAPTER FOUR School

Starting School: 5–8

Big Fish in a Little Pond: 9–11

CHAPTER FIVE Factors Affecting Behaviour

Stress Factors

Siblings

CHAPTER SIX Difficult Children

Turning around a Difficult Child

Maintaining Control

Reforming Siblings

CHAPTER SEVEN Not Your Own

Step-parents

Acting Parents

Teachers

Others who Look after Children

CHAPTER EIGHT Other Factors

Diet

Special Needs

CHAPTER NINE Metamorphosis

Pre-teen and Early Teen: 11–15

Older Teen: 15–18

CHAPTER TEN Grown Up

Young Adults

Conclusion

Remember

Index

Introduction: Why?

Why another book on child rearing? The idea came from my readers. After the publication of my fostering memoirs I received thousands of emails from parents and childcare workers around the world. They sent their love and best wishes for the children I had written about, and also praised me for the way I had managed the children’s often very difficult behaviour:

I tried that method and it worked …

What a good idea …

My son used to be very controlling so I handled it as you did and (amazingly) he stopped.

I’d never thought of dealing with my daughter’s tantrums that way before …

I now talk to my children rather than at them.

You should write a book!

Their comments made me realise that the techniques I use for successfully changing children’s unacceptable behaviour were not universally known – indeed far from it. I wasn’t sure I knew what I did, only that it worked. So I began analysing how I approached guiding, disciplining and modifying children’s behaviour, the psychology that lay behind my techniques and why they worked. This book is the result.

As a parent you want the best for your child: you want them to be a happy, self-assured individual who can fit confidently into society. As a parent you are responsible for making that happen. There will be others involved in forming your child – teachers, siblings, friends, relatives, etc. – who will have some influence on your child, but ultimately your son or daughter will be the product of your parenting, good and bad.

I often feel it is a great pity that, as parents, we are not given training in the job of child rearing. No other profession would unleash an employee on a job without basic training and on-going monitoring, but when we become parents, the baby is put into our arms and, apart from a few words of encouragement from a kindly midwife and weekly trips to the clinic to weigh the baby, we’re left to get on with it. We’re supposed to know what to do, having somehow absorbed along the way the contents of volumes of baby and child-rearing manuals, and the accumulated knowledge of a century of child psychologists. The most important job in the world is left to ‘instinct', without a single course on the techniques of child rearing. Little wonder we quickly feel inadequate when baby doesn’t do as expected. And why should he? He relies solely on us, and yet we don’t always know what to do.

Unlike parents, as a foster carer I receive regular training in all aspects of child development, including teaching children how to behave correctly. My 3Rs technique is based on this training and on years and years of experience – I’ve had plenty of children to practise on during my fostering career! The 3Rs are Request, Repeat and Reassure. The technique is incredibly easy and successful, and can be applied to all ages.

If you have older children, I suggest you still start at the beginning of this book. Read about the 3Rs in relation to the early years, where I explain the basis of the technique, so that you can see where its roots lie and learn the principles. Once you know these, you can use the 3Rs with children of any age to bring them up to be contented and well behaved.

The 3Rs = success.

Note: the term ‘parent’ as used in this book includes the person who performs that role and is the child’s main care-giver.

CHAPTER ONE First Years
Baby and the 3Rs: 0–1

In the last fifty years advice on looking after baby has altered dramatically, and has almost gone full circle – from the 1950s strict routines of four-hourly feeds and plenty of fresh air, through Dr Spock’s liberation of the 1960s where mum and baby knew best, to the 1970s embrace with the ‘tribal’ approach, where baby spent all day in a sling strapped to one of its parents and all night in their bed. Recently there has been a move back to the stricter routine, as many mothers return to work and exhausted parents grapple with feeding on demand and the following day’s hectic work schedule.

This book is concerned with children’s behaviour, so I shall not be discussing the pros and cons of different baby-rearing regimes, nor the basics of looking after baby, for example feeding and bathing. There are already thousands of books on the market that do this, and most parents will find they adapt an approach which best suits their lifestyle. However, a working routine is an intrinsic and important part of the 3Rs and successfully raising a contented baby comes down to how you deal with two things: sleep and crying.

Sleep

Sleep takes on a whole new meaning with the arrival of a baby, simply because babies don’t. Well, they do, but not necessarily when the parents need to sleep, which is at night, and preferably for seven unbroken hours. A newborn baby can’t sleep through the night, as it can’t hold enough food in its tiny stomach. So nature has built in a fail-safe way of making sure baby is fed: mouth wide open, it screams the house down. This hunger cry is not the cry of a child who has hurt itself and needs comforting but nature’s inbuilt response to hunger, which guarantees that baby can’t be ignored, is fed and therefore survives and thrives. We have to accept that babies cry when they need feeding.

But why is baby still crying when it has been fed and changed? Good question. While baby manuals and child psychologists offer a wealth of possibilities for a baby not settling – from the trauma of birth to sheer bloody-mindedness – no one knows for sure. Other reasons may include being too warm, or cold, needing to be held, boredom, tiredness, thirst, colic and illness, but the end result is the same: crying.

Baby has just spent nine months tucked up snugly in a warm, wet womb, and no matter how pretty the nursery, it’s hardly a good substitute for this previous all-enveloping embrace – well, not to begin with at least. If baby is to settle when you put him to sleep or go back to sleep if he’s woken he will require a lot of reassuring. You will need to reassure baby that his needs will be met, as well as teaching him what you want in respect of routine, sleeping, etc. This can be achieved by using the 3Rs.