I Brake for Meltdowns: How to Handle the Most Exasperating Behavior of Your 2- To 5-Year-Old

by Michelle Nicholasen and Barbara O'Neal

Book Overview

Any parent of a toddler knows the drill: you're having a nice day with your child, then suddenly-meltdown How to react? Or not react? I Brake for Meltdowns offers parents welcome relief: an annotated listing of all the exasperating things little kids do and step-by-step advice on how to handle each situation. From "Public Meltdowns" to "In Search of Sleep" to "Dinner Disasters," this book covers every bugaboo by category-including biting,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0738211672
• ISBN13: 9780738211671
• Release Date: July 2008
• Publisher: Da Capo Lifelong Books
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Practical and easy reading

I found this book to be very practical and realistic. You can tell that the writers have real life experience. You can easily find the behaviors/ situations that apply to you and skip the ones that you don't need. Good buy for parents of toddlers.

Great resource for new parents; great reminders & tools for experienced parents.

Highly recommend! As a mom of 4 children aged 11 down to 2, it's not often that I have time to pick up a parenting book anymore. But this great book kept me reading & gave me some helpful new parenting tools for my arsenal. It would be a wonderful resource for new parents, too. Targeted to common parenting challenges -- e.g., pushing, mean & angry talking, refusing to stay at the dinner table -- the book suggests very specific words & actions parents can use with young children for each particular issue -- with a loving, respectful, but firm tone that most of us aspire to, but don't always achieve. So busy parents can flip right to the problem at hand for a quick refresher on an ideal response, or for another approach to try when you're stuck in a parenting rut. The authors include lots of examples & solutions from their own experience that really ring true & make this a much more practical & helpful resource than most of the parenting books I've consulted over the years.

An indispensable go-to guide for answers to common parenting conundrums

In addition to its ultra-helpful table of contents organized by situation ("Won't let you leave the bedroom;" "Ignores you or others;" "Won't get fingernails clipped"...), I was delighted to see that I Brake for Meltdowns also includes a range of "What Ifs" covering some of the many possible curveball responses that kids come up with (because, at least in my experience, the absurdly neat child-response scenarios in many other parenting advice books often read like fairy tales. Or some serious wishful thinking). The authors have a clear respect for children. Unlike many advice books which are focused solely on using Skinnerian discipline to control behavior, IBfM offers insight into children's motivations and developmental stages along with advice on how parents can help children learn to be pleasant, civilized people. And the authors' down-to-earth, been-there-done-that tone about the sometimes maddening business of childrearing makes it a companionable read.

Outstanding

The previous review is right, this book, which I happened upon in a local bookstore is WONDERFUL! I sat down in the store to look at it real quick and after 30 seconds I decided to buy it. The BEST part of this book is the table of contents, pick the problem/s you are having with your child, "Child not hugging grandparents", go to that section and there is the problem, and the solution, even better, if that solution doesn't work, they offer another solution and often times even a third. This book is so easy to move around in and the advice is right there, you don't have to read page after page to get what you are looking for. If you are having any frustrations with your kids, buy this book, it is worth every penny.

Finally, A book I can reach for!!

Wow, wow, wow! Finally a parenting book I can relate to! As the mother of one three year old boy and an avid reader, I find myself reading a lot of parenting books. So far I haven't found one that I could really get on board with (and I have read a LOT of them!). This one finally changed that for me. This book is great! Not too "crunchy", not too old school, just sane parenting advice. I love the way the book is organized with an index AND a table of contents to help me find exactly the situation I need help with at the time. I also love the feel and the look of the book (as a book lover, paper texture and feel is important to me). This is a fantastic book for those of us searching for a way to deal with our dear children in an effective and reasonable way. Five stars!