Imagine suddenly looking at behavior differently. When parents learn to replace rewards and punishment with problem solving, fairness, and logic, something amazing happens. Parenting gets easier and children become cooperative and respectful. In Confident Parents, Remarkable Kids: 8 Principles for Raising Kids You’ll Love to Live With (AdamsMedia, 2008), Bonnie Harris has distilled her groundbreaking work on understanding child behavior into eight key principles together with practical strategies parents can use to navigate through everyday challenges. What’s different here is a fundamental shift in how Bonnie approaches parenting. She emphasizes the parent’s role in self-discipline—staying calm and looking at the child’s behavior as a signal to a deeper meaning rather than a conviction. Misbehavior is the child’s only way to tell parents she is having a problem, not being a problem. Once parents learn how to decode this behavioral language, the rest is a joy.
