ParentShift: Ten Universal Truths That Will Change the Way You Raise Your Kids

By Linda Hatfield, Ty Hatfield and Wendy Thomas Russell

• WINNER OF THE NAUTILUS BOOK AWARD, FOREWORD INDIES AWARD, INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS BOOK AWARD, READERS CHOICE AWARD, NATIONAL INDIE EXCELLENCE AWARD AND FAMILY CHOICE AWARD. FINALIST FOR THE WISHING SHELF AWARD, BEST BOOK AWARD AND NEXT GENERATION INDIE BOOK AWARD.

ParentShift: Ten Universal Truths That Will Change the Way You Raise

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brown Paper Press
• Release date: May 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9781941932117

Linda Hatfield

LINDA HATFIELD is a former elementary school teacher who has worked with parents and teachers for more than 35 years. In 1999, Linda and her husband, Ty, founded a parent-education program now known as Parenting from the Heart.

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Praise for ParentShift

"Linda and Ty Hatfield’s heart-centered approach, presented in this book with Wendy Thomas Russell, helps parents develop the skills to move beyond punishment and rewards, sidestep power struggles, and strengthen the parent-child relationship . . . Parent­Shift works because it changes the way you SEE your child. It should be on every family’s bookshelf."

—LAURA MARKHAM, author of Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids

A must-read for parents, caregivers and grandparents. The authors give practical, down-to-earth options for the everyday issues, conflicts, and roadblocks that we all experience, while helping our children become responsible, resilient, resourceful, compassionate human beings who know how to think—not just what to think.

—BARBARA COLOROSO, author of Kids Are Worth It!

"ParentShift exposes the fake news of the necessity to discipline and control children, and replaces it with the true news that children are harmed by domination and thrive on connection, unconditional love, and respect. While quoting the work of many reputable authors and researchers of the last fifty years, the authors provide parents an incredibly powerful and clear system to shift their way of being from gut reactors to intelligent responders and from getting compliance in the moment to ensuring the child unfolds into a highly self-esteemed, self-reliant, loving, and thriving person."

—NAOMI ALDORT, author of Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves

"If you want a deeply connected, heart-centered relationship with your child, you owe it to yourself to learn from these masters. ParentShift is one of the most comprehensive and time-tested parenting books around. If you have only one parenting book in your library, this should be the one."

—VICKIE FALCONE, author of Buddha Never Raised Kids & Jesus Didn’t Drive Carpool

"The best thing about ParentShift is the enduring focus on how it’s actually the adults behavior, rather than the child’s, that is most predictive of healthy development. We must grow ourselves before we grow our children. Brilliant!"

—VANESSA LAPOINTE, author of Discipline Without Damage

I’m delighted to endorse a book so thoroughly devoted to a win-win approach to parenting, one that takes the needs of both parents and children into consideration. You’ll find loads of tips, charts, examples, and brief assignments along with easy-to-read text written with empathy and good humor. Here are some of the best tools available to help you build the best possible, mutually respectful, and loving, life-long relationships with your kids.

—JANE BLUESTEIN, author of The Parent’s Little Book of Lists

"Parenting without punishment, threats, rewards, or bribery seemed like a fantasy until Wendy Thomas Russell enrolled in Ty and Linda Hatfield’s Parenting from the Heart course, which draws from Adlerian psychology and its offshoots. In ParentShift—an upbeat, modern guide with classic roots—the coauthors give parents a loving alternative . . . ParentShift presents a thorough set of adaptable ideas. Here, thoughtful parenting comes down to being willing to grow and change right alongside children."

—Foreword Reviews

A beautiful manual for parents who desire positive change in the parent-child relationship. The depth and scope of this work is profound, vast, and life-changing. Not to be read only once, a resource like this provides valuable support throughout time.

— LYNETTE ANDERSON, director of Hilltop Preschool, Huntington Beach

PARENTSHIFT

©

2019

by Linda & Ty Hatfield and Wendy Thomas Russell.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or book reviews. For information, contact the publisher at www.brownpaperpress.com or at the address below:

Brown Paper Press

6475

E. Pacific Coast Highway, #

329

Long Beach, CA

90803

FIRST EDITION

Designed by Alban Fischer and Gary Rosenberg

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019900772

ISBN: 978-1-941932-10-0 (print)

978-1-941932-11-7 (ebook)

For our children—

Kristen, Kari, Kelly, and Maxine

Contents

Introduction

PART ONE

1. Beyond Rewards and Punishments

2. Parenting with the End in Mind

Part Two

3. Universal Truth No. 1: All Children Have Emotional Needs

4. Universal Truth No. 2: All Children Have Innate, Neurological Responses to Stress

5. Universal Truth No. 3: All Children Must Express Their Feelings

6. Universal Truth No. 4: All Children Go Through Developmental Stages

7. Universal Truth No. 5: All Children Are Born with Unique Temperaments

8. Universal Truth No. 6: All Children Model Their Primary Caregivers

9. Universal Truth No. 7: All Children Need Opportunities to Solve Their Own Problems

10. Universal Truth No. 8: All Children Need Caregivers Who Honor Personal Boundaries

11. Universal Truth No. 9: All Children Need Age-Appropriate Limits on Their Behavior

12. Universal Truth No. 10: All Children Move Through and Between Four Levels of Discouragement in Response to Unmet Needs

Part Three

13. The ParentShift Solutions Process

Appendix A. Add Fun to the Mundane (No Batteries Included!)

Appendix B. Age-Appropriate Responsibilities

Appendix C. Commonly Overlooked Developmental Behaviors and Characteristics of Children Ages Eighteen Months to Eighteen Years

References

About the Authors

Introduction

I met Ty Hatfield twenty years ago. He was a police officer, and I was a journalist covering the court system in Long Beach, California. Ty was well known in the newsroom as a mild-mannered, thoughtful cop especially skilled at dealing with juveniles, whom he treated with an unusual degree of patience and compassion. He’s one of the good ones, I remember thinking.

Six years later, when I became a parent, Ty invited me to enroll in a parenting class he had launched with his wife. I politely declined. In my world, the phrase parenting class most often was preceded by court-ordered. I knew I wasn’t perfect, but I didn’t think I was a bad parent—much less a criminally bad one.

A few years later, when my daughter, Maxine, was three, Ty again invited me to join the class. I’ll keep it in mind, I told him. And then I didn’t. I was certain my husband, Charlie, and I were doing fine on our own. And, deep down, I still believed most parenting classes were for child-abusing misfits.

Then, something happened. When Maxine was going on five, I started to notice that some of the disciplinary methods we’d been using with decent success—stern warnings, sticking to our guns, raising our voices, timeouts, taking her toys away, and so on—were falling flat. The tantrums, which we’d believed to be a toddler thing, had become more frequent and intense. Power struggles were on the rise. I wasn’t enjoying my kid as much as I had before, and my husband and I seemed often to disagree on the basics: What was an appropriate response to her meltdowns, and what wasn’t? What constituted undermining each other, and what didn’t? When, one day, I found myself in my kitchen, listening to Maxine wail in her bedroom and staring at the stack of Barbies I’d taken away from her because she’d refused to stay in timeout for the allotted four minutes, I started feeling anxious. Is this really how parenthood is supposed to be? I wondered. Am I missing something?

That’s when I called Ty.

We’re ready, I told him.

Generally speaking, people don’t change their beliefs or behaviors until they become personally unsatisfied with said beliefs or behaviors. I’d reached that point.

Hopefully, I told Charlie, we’ll pick up some new tools.

Now, looking back on that first day in class, it’s impossible to explain the veritable fireworks display that Ty and Linda set off in my brain. The buzz stayed with me for hours, weeks, years. It’s with me today.

What I found in that room was an entirely new approach to parenting, backed up by science, research, and facts. Sitting there, among a handful of other parents—not one of them a hardened criminal—I suddenly saw the big picture. How everything fit together. Linda and Ty didn’t just offer a few new tools; they provided an entirely new toolbox—one that was organized so well, so thoroughly, and so completely that I was guaranteed a solution to almost any problem.

The Hatfields have spent their adult lives exploring the fundamentals of successful parenting—Ty as cop and father, and Linda as an elementary school teacher and mother. They started their company, Parenting from the Heart, in

1999

and have since ushered hundreds of parents through some of those families’ most difficult times. Their program is a carefully constructed latticework of knowledge and advice inspired by the work and wisdom of the greatest parenting experts of our time—many of whom you will meet in the pages of this book.

To be clear, though, the Hatfields’ mission is not to forge a brand-new path; a new path has already been forged. It is to translate what we know to be true and package it in a way that can be quickly understood and easily applied to the lives of modern parents. Unless we make the new path more visible and accessible to all, it will continue to be the road less taken.

The Hatfields know, as we all know, that parenting can be a messy place. They know that every child is unique: what’s best for one may not be best for another. And they know, because they raised three daughters, that a parenting philosophy is only worthwhile if it comes with a matching skill set.

Telling parents what not to do is useless, Linda says. "They need to be given actionable steps, and they need to see real progress in real time."

That’s where the Hatfields excel.

You know how certain major events become dividing lines in your life? Lines that separate before and after? There’s before you get married, and after; before you have a child, and after. For me, that parenting class was a dividing line. There was my life before the Hatfields, and my life after.

Following that eighteen-hour class, I stopped settling for a frustratingly archaic parenting model based on countless child-rearing myths I’d assumed were true, and I stepped into a shiny new parenting style the Hatfields call heart-centered. That shift—my own personal ParentShift, if you will—has made all the difference.

In this book, you will learn, as I learned, how to:

• Solve any behavioral problem without punishments, reward, threats, or bribery—and feel great doing it.

• Set age-appropriate limits for your child—and stick to them.

• Reflect on what’s going on in your child’s brain (and yours!) during your family’s most unpleasant emotional moments—and how to move on without wrecking relationships.

• Minimize sibling rivalry and arguments, and set the stage for deep, long-lasting friendships between your children.

• Develop a healthy, consistent parenting philosophy that will take you through the toddler years, early childhood, high school, and beyond.

• Bring calm, confidence, and consistency to your parenting style.

• Get you and your parenting partner on the same page.

• Identify the ways your child’s unique temperament and developmental stage affects his behavior—and discover ways to complement that nature rather than fight it.

• Understand how being a good parent lines up with being a good person, and how improving your parenting also improves your life.

• Prepare your child to meet the challenges of life, deepen the parent-child relationship, preserve your child’s self-esteem, and so much more.

In

2015

, I published a book that had taken me five years to write. I swore I’d never do it again—so slow was my pace. Instead, I cofounded a small publishing house. I figured I could stay in the world of books without having to write them.

But this project, a project that can only be described as Ty and Linda Hatfield’s life’s work, felt inevitable. How could I have a life-changing experience, an experience that a majority of Americans have been raised to resist, and not write about it? How could I not try to persuade my friends and family and complete strangers I’ll never meet to challenge their assumptions and break with the status quo?

How could I not write this book?

Ty and Linda, like so many other skilled parenting coaches throughout America, have changed thousands of lives and families. They have trained hundreds of teachers, principals, pediatricians, therapists, psychologists, mothers, and fathers. Sometimes the people who turn to them for advice just need a few key tweaks to their parenting approaches; other times they need massive overhauls. Not all parents stick around. Some can’t abide the sea change. They become skeptical and defensive; they feel overwhelmed. I get it. The whole notion of taking away punishments, threats, bribery, and rewards can send a reverberating shiver down the spines of parents who count on such tactics to get through those painfully sticky patches. It can even be triggering. Oftentimes, parents assume that no punishments equals no limits or boundaries. This is understandable, but completely untrue. By learning to set, assert, and uphold our boundaries and limits without punishment or rewards, we gain cooperation, reduce stress, strengthen our relationships, and treat our children with the respect they deserve.

It is never—ever—too late to change your parenting style. (Seriously!) And we highly recommend reading this book in tandem with your spouse, partner, co-parent, or even your friends. There are plenty of natural conversation starters, and our ParentShift Assignments offer opportunities to reflect on your own upbringing, observe your parenting style, and put new principles into practice. You need not agree with your co-parent on everything, of course. But having open discussions about your parenting style can alleviate tremendous stress on you—and, more important, your child. If you, like so many of us, at times find yourself in conflict with someone over child-rearing decisions, read this book together. It may just save your relationship.

One last thing: Although ParentShift is written in my voice, the wisdom and advice comes straight from the Hatfields. They have been endlessly generous in sharing their stage with me, and it is one of the great honors of my life to be standing alongside them, helping deliver their message to you.

—Wendy Thomas Russell

PART ONE

1. Beyond Rewards and Punishments

In the early years of the twentieth century, an Austrian doctor and psychotherapist named Alfred Adler hypothesized that personality disorders, criminal behavior, high divorce rates, and other types of adult suffering could be traced directly back to childhood experience.

He theorized that the emotional needs of children—their need for acceptance, respect, and significance—were as important as their physical needs but were constantly being undermined by permissive parents, on the one hand, and punitive parents, on the other. When children whine, hit, withdraw, refuse to cooperate, break the rules, or engage in power struggles, he said, they are not trying to be defiant or selfish or disrespectful; they have legitimate emotional needs that are being ignored. Lacking the maturity, language, or skill set to state their needs clearly, they rely on the most effective mode of communication they have: their behavior.

It’s up to parents, Adler said, to respond not to the behavior itself—which is just a messenger—but to the needs and feelings beneath the behavior.

Adler’s work was so important and influential that he now has an entire branch of psychology named after him (Adlerian), but it was his protégé, Rudolf Dreikurs, who popularized Adler’s message. A psychiatrist and educator whose writing has inspired hundreds of parenting education programs the world over, Dreikurs expanded on his mentor’s research, developing a system of techniques that would allow parents to live the Adlerian principles.

In doing so, Dreikurs became one of the very first parenting authorities to put his foot down on punishments (or consequences, as they often are euphemistically called today) and rewards—both of which he deemed ineffective, disrespectful, and deeply damaging to the parent-child relationship.

Punishment: A penalty imposed on a child in response to unacceptable behavior, usually with the goal of changing future behavior. Common punishments include timeouts, revoking privileges, confiscating possessions, docking allowances, imposing extra chores, threatening, shaming, yelling, tough love, and spanking.

Reward: A thing given to a child to reinforce desired behavior. Common rewards include stickers, treats, toys, extra screen time, outings, praise, and special privileges.

Dreikurs’s

1964

groundbreaking book, Children: The Challenge, included a chapter called The Fallacy of Punishment and Reward. Neither, he wrote, are likely to breed cooperation or psychological health because both are based on a system of control that treats children’s emotional needs with contempt. Punishment, particularly, he said, focuses entirely on the child’s outward behavior—killing the messenger, as it were. As a result, children often wind up feeling even more discouraged than they did before. And those feelings? They provoke the very behavior parents seek to end, and worse.

The proper way of training children, Dreikurs wrote, is identical with the proper way of treating fellow human beings. The subtext: If you don’t punish your friends, don’t punish your kids.

It was all quite racy at the time.

Yet, the core thesis espoused by Adler and Dreikurs has stood the test of time. In the last century, countless research studies, as well as scientific data gleaned only through modern technology, have reinforced the link between unmet emotional needs in childhood and both short-term behavioral challenges and long-term mental health problems.

Punishments and rewards are just two of the many frustratingly popular parenting tactics proven to work against those needs, driving children to behave worse and cooperate less. Ironically, this worse behavior only leads parents to employ ineffective tactics with more frequency and intensity, believing—as many do—that it is the child who is the problem, when in reality it is the parenting style. This vicious cycle threatens to sabotage the hopes, dreams, and goals of countless mothers and fathers when, all the while, an alternative parenting style—one that promises a respite to exhausted parents and a brighter future for their children—rests in plain view.

The Big Picture

When we—Ty, Linda, and I—became parents, we’d never heard of Alfred Adler or Rudolph Dreikurs. We’d not read the work of Dorothy Walter Baruch or Dorothy Corkille Briggs or Alfie Kohn or Daniel J. Siegel or any of the extraordinary parenting writers and experts you’ll meet in the next few hundred pages. Even if we had, though, we could easily have lost sight of the big picture: The majority of the world’s most reputable experts do not espouse unique and compartmentalized views on parenting. In fact, with few exceptions, they espoused much the same view—but through different lenses.

Baruch (New Way in Discipline,

1949

) wrote about how behavioral problems are rooted in emotional hunger. Briggs (Your Child’s Self-Esteem,

1975

) wrote about the vital importance of preserving children’s feelings of self-worth. Kohn (Punished by Rewards,

1993

) shined a light on the detriments of extrinsic motivation. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson (The Whole-Brain Child,

2011

) wrote about children’s neurological reactions to stress and how different modes of discipline affect the developing mind.

Thomas Gordon (PET: Parent Effectiveness Training,

1970

) was all about limit-setting and conflict resolution. Naomi Aldort (Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves,

2006

) taught parents how to support rather than shame children as they expressed their strong emotions. Lawrence J. Cohen (Playful Parenting,

2001

) focused on the healing power of play. Kathryn J. Kvols (Redirecting Children’s Behavior,

1993

) demonstrated that the key to cooperation is calm, confident, and empowering parents. Barbara Coloroso (Kids Are Worth It!,

2010

) offered techniques that encourage children to develop inner discipline. Laura Markham (Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids,

2012

) offered real-world advice on how to self-regulate, foster the parent-child connection, and become a coach for children—rather than a controller.

Haim Ginott (Between Parent and Child,

1965

) was an expert at communicating with children, and his famous students, Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish (How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk,

1980

) illustrated, in cartoon form, how to empathize with kids.

Psychologist Gordon Neufeld and physician Gabor Maté (Hold On to Your Kids,

2004

) wrote about the dangers that result when children disconnect from their parents too soon and turn to their peers instead.

Fred Rogers (Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,

1968

–

2001

), a child-whisperer in every sense of the word, showed instinctively how unconditional love and an empathetic style of communication can win the hearts and minds of children and adults alike.

And so on and so on and so on.

We assumed, as Briggs once observed, that we were qualified to be parents because we are parents. It didn’t occur to us that going with our guts might be an unreliable compass at times. We didn’t realize that we needed to be great students before we could be great parents.

It is such a relief, though, to know that each of these teachers and experts, down to the great Mr. Rogers, all share the same general philosophy. Yes, they each have contributed original research and have expanded on topics according to their unique expertise. But all support the same style of child-rearing—a style we call heart-centered.

For nearly a century, all of these vibrant and important voices have been pushing one main message—a message about children and child-rearing that could change our world. If only parents were willing to listen.

Goldilocks and the Three Parenting Styles

Most child-development educators recognize three main parenting styles: one in which parents set unreasonably high expectations for their kids and give low emotional support (controlling), one in which parents set low expectations and offer high and unhealthy emotional support (permissive), and one in which parents set reasonably high expectations and offer high and healthy emotional support (heart-centered).

Although there are many significant differences among the three parenting styles—and we will delve more deeply into each of them in the next chapter—one of the most crucial is that heart-centered is the only method to promote a win-win approach to problem-solving. In both of the other models, someone’s voice drowns out the other.

By win-win, we mean that both parent and child reach a collaborative agreement that makes both sides happy. This is not the same as a compromise because, in a compromise, each party gives in or gives up something, and no one is necessarily happy. Win-win agreements take more time but are well worth the effort.

Let’s take an example. A father asks his son to take out the trash. The son, who is watching TV, says, No!

• In controlling mode, Dad says, Do it now, or I’m not taking you to soccer practice, manipulating the child into taking out the trash. The child abides. (Kid loses; Dad wins.)

• In permissive mode, Dad says, Geez, fine, and takes out the trash himself. The child continues to watch TV. (Kid wins; Dad loses.)

• In heart-centered mode, Dad pauses, takes a few breaths, waits for a commercial, and says, It sounds like you are feeling irritated that I asked you to take out the trash while you are still watching your show. Maybe this is not a good time for you. When would you be willing to take out the trash? After a brief back-and-forth, the child agrees to take out the trash as soon as he’s done with his TV show. (Kid wins because he gets to continue watching his TV show; Dad wins because his son takes out the trash.)

To some, the third scenario surely will seem like a fantasy. Pie in the sky. In the Hatfields’ Parenting from the Heart classes, parents often present two arguments. The first is that bribery, rewards, threats, and punishments are sometimes necessary to get children to do what needs to be done. The second is that allowing children to refuse our requests or demands is tantamount to losing their respect; the more lightly we tread around children’s feelings, the less effective we become as parents.

Both arguments are understandable. Many of us have been raised to believe that effective parenting demands that we overpower our kids from time to time, that our children’s respect for us hinges on our ability to maintain the upper hand.

But what happens when we have the courage to reject that belief as the modern myth that it is and accept a different view? What happens when we acknowledge that our influence on our children is only as strong as our relationship with them? Overpower the child, and the relationship suffers. Work with the child—as one would work with, say, a trusted coworker—and the relationship blossoms.

Often, controlling parents read heart-centered parenting as too permissive, while permissive parents read heart-centered parenting as too controlling. In reality, both views reveal inherent biases, not truth.

The win-win approach that forms the foundation of heart-centered parenting hits that just right sweet spot where parents are respected and so are kids, where mutual agreements are created around limits, and where children’s emotional needs are both considered and prioritized.

In their classes, Ty and Linda find that parents who initially view heart-centered parenting as unrealistic, or even undesirable, soon come to realize that those views were shaped not by logic or evidence, but by fear. As soon as they open their minds, they find they understand their children better than they ever could have dreamed. They suddenly grasp why some tactics bring them so much consistent success and get to pat themselves on the backs for their natural gifts in certain areas. At the same time, they get to see where there’s room for improvement and why some tactics consistently make things worse.

By showing you the big picture, we hope to show you that parenthood need not be a guessing game or a free-for-all or an exhausting trudge toward an uncertain future.

Out with the Old, In with the New

Before the days of Adler and Dreikurs, objectively speaking, there was so little known about how different types of parenting affected children. That is no longer the case.

Today, we can say definitively, for instance, that both old paradigm parenting styles—controlling and permissive—are harmful to children and lead to negative behavior. We know that parents who empathize with their children’s feelings—rather than coerce, manipulate, or scare them into obedience—build stronger, kinder, more resilient kids with fewer psychological problems. We know that respectful communication and reasonable expectations are hallmarks of happy families. We know the emotional needs of children cannot be denied without severe repercussions. And we know that the quality of the relationship a child shares with her parents, whether she’s six or sixteen, acts as a shield to the cruel realities of the outside world.

We also know, with scientific certainty, that when used consistently and over a period of time, punishment damages the parent-child relationship and undermines children’s self-esteem like nothing else.

In his important book, Between Parent & Child, famed child psychologist Haim Ginott did not mince words. Punishment is archaic, he said. That was

1965

.

To be sure, the breadth of knowledge we possess today when it comes to child-rearing is staggering and inspiring. It used to be that parents simply mimicked what their own parents did (or made a

180

-degree turn and did exactly what their parents didn’t do!). But today is different. Or it could be.

In a recent interview, we asked Dr. Daniel Siegel, one of the world’s most preeminent neuroscientists, whether it’s true that human beings have finally got parenting down to a science.

Oh, yes, Siegel answered. Definitely.

the ParentShift Solutions Process

Often when people hear about parenting styles free of punishments, the first thing they say is: "Fine, but what do we do instead?" It’s a great question, and we have the answer—lots of answers, actually. Heart-centered parenting is, above all, practical. We don’t offer you vague information and expect you to magically apply it to what’s going on in your kitchen every morning. On the contrary.

The ParentShift Solutions Process, which you will find in Part Three, is a formula of sorts—a fourteen-question inquiry designed to guide your response to challenging behavior without using punishment, threats, rewards, or bribery—or, alternatively, giving in to your child’s every whim. The ParentShift Solutions Process is designed to key you into what’s causing your child’s challenging behavior, so that you can identify the best tools to wield as you move through each problem.

To be fair, not all problems have perfect solutions. Sometimes a child’s age or stage is responsible for the behavior; sometimes the child’s temperament is to blame. Not all of your child’s irritating behavior can be prevented or fixed. But that doesn’t make the process any less important. Because while our parenting choices may not always be able to make things better,

Reviews for ParentShift

[rosecityreader · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

ParentShift offers a paradigm shift for parents looking for a different parenting style for raising kids. The authors looked at how American parents usually fall into two categories -- controlling or permissive. Controlling parents tend to set too many limits, place unreasonably high expectations, and fail to demonstrate enough empathy with their kids. Permissive parents go the other way by tending to be weak limit and boundary setters, expecting too little, and being empathetic to the fault of treating their children’s problems as their own.This book teaches a distinct parenting style that the authors describe as heart-centered. Heart-centered parents set strong limits and boundaries, know how to genuinely empathize with their kids, and have high and reasonable expectations of them. The authors show how these skills are associated with children who are kind, confident, compassionate, capable, resilient, and healthy.They also explain why most adults need to learn this parenting style because most were not raised in a heart-centered way themselves. That’s why they describe it as a paradigm shift and call the book ParentShift.The book is structured as a practical guidebook, with explanations and common-sense exercises for how to apply the lessons in real life. It is not aimed at solving one particular problem or navigating one particular age. In fact, much of the book’s advice applies to getting along with adults as much as it does with parenting. ParentShift aims to help parents identify and address virtually any challenge at any age, although it probably would be most helpful for parents, grandparents, caregivers, and teachers of children around age three to five.