Book Review: Children Are from Heaven: Positive Parenting Skills forRaising Cooperative, Confident, and Compassionate Children

I have finally gotten around to finishing this excellent book Children Are from Heaven: Positive Parenting Skills for Raising Cooperative, Confident, and Compassionate Children written by John Gray. John Gray is also famous for Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus books and seminars. 

The central premise of this book is that children respond better to positive reinforcements rather than punishments. The author says that children have innate desire to co-operate and please their parents. But, somewhere along the way, they go out of control. When they go out of control, they throw tantrums.

When children throw tantrums, parents respond in one of the two ways.

(1) Parents punish their children to break their will into compliance (hard-love parenting). Gray argues that while this may have worked in the past, it doesn't work in today's free society where the focus is on expression of feelings, emotions, and needs. Today's children are more sensitive and intelligent, therefore, fear-based punishment doesn't work. 

(2) Parents will cave in and will placate their children (soft-love parenting). When children gets their way, they demand more. They lose a sense of their true desires and wants. Eventually, parents will feel out of control themselves. 

Gray asserts that parents chose hard love or soft-love parenting approaches because they do not anything better.

Gray suggest a better way to parenting is the "love-based parenting" which accepts children's desires and negative emotions while still setting reasonable limits. Parents are urged to view a child's resistance as natural and healthy, and to listen, empathize and finally assert their authority firmly and unemotionally.


Five Messages of Positive Parenting that will facilitate love-based parenting are:

It's okay to be different.

It's okay to make mistakes.

It's okay to express negative emotions.

It's okay to want more.

It's okay to say no, but remember mom and dad are the bosses.

One of my biggest takeaways from this book is the concept of a timeout. Until now, I had no idea how to give a timeout or its purpose and why it works.

According to Gray, children (especially young children before the age of 9) don't have fully developed brains to deal with negative emotions. They throw tantrums when they are overwhelmed with negative emotions and don't know how to flush them out. So, giving a timeout allows the child to experience those negative emotions and be in the touch of their self. When the timeout is complete, they are back to their own happy, little selves ready to co-operate and please their parents.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. There is a lot of good advice packed in this book and would highly recommend this book to parents with kids or soon-to-be parents.