Product Description

A vast readership awaits How to Negotiate with Kids. It addresses some of today's top parenting concerns: how to deal with a child who disagrees, how to avoid being either an ogre or a pushover, and-most of all-how to handle conflicts in ways that build lasting relationships with children.

Scott Brown, a founding member of the world-famous Harvard Negotiation Project, coauthor of Getting Together, and a father of four, has found that parents face the same dilemmas as negotiators everywhere. Now he has adapted his highly acclaimed techniques to teach parents how to:

* manage their own emotions and reactions during conflict
* manage their children's emotions and strengthen their emotional control
* listen in ways that will build understanding
* negotiate solutions to common problems
* teach their children to be problem solvers
* learn when not to negotiate
* discipline wisely

Personal anecdotes, stories from Brown's workshop families, and sample dialogues of "right" and "wrong" approaches make How to Negotiate with Kids an essential tool for parents who want to reduce conflict and strengthen their families in ways that will protect their children's emotional health and happiness.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1107747 in Books
• Published on: 2003-02-25
• Released on: 2003-02-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Brown, a founding member of the acclaimed Harvard Negotiation Project, brings his negotiating skills to the parenting arena. A parent of four himself, he realized that parents can apply the same negotiating skills used at work to their home life. Brown first explains the difference in negotiating styles, which can be summarized as "hard bargaining" and "accommodating." Put simply, the former want to lay down the rules while the latter may be too willing to give in to their children's demands. The key to using negotiation tactics successfully as a parent is to "balance coercion with persuasion." Toward that end, Brown advises parents to focus on the problem, not the child. He says, "Rather than turn on your children, turn to the issue.... One way to focus on the problem rather than on your child is to regard yourself as an observer of the dispute." Other useful tenets include working on solutions together, creating options rather than narrow choices and making rules rather than threats. Brown offers advice on related parenting issues such as discipline and listening; his suggestions on engaging kids in longer conversations without seeming to interrogate them are sound. Many hypothetical conversations-both productive and not-so productive ones-are included to illustrate the author's points. This is a first-rate advice book that parents with children of any age will find helpful.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Scott Brown is a negotiation expert and father of four children. After helping to launch the Harvard Negotiation Project, he spent ten years teaching, writing, and speaking about managing conflict and established the nonprofit Conflict Management Group to advise governments and nongovernment organizations on public conflicts worldwide.