Covering a range of ages from toddler to teen the book will help parents to understand how the minds of children work and what makes them tick at each stage, helping parents to adopt a style of managing their child’s behaviour that will see them through many years to come. A certain way they hold their jaw, peer through their impossibly long eyelashes or throw their head back as they laugh. Perhaps you are not sure how to best support them in developing their reasoning and emotional skills.

This book is for anybody who spends time with children; whether they’re parents, child care professionals, teachers or grandparents. Sarah Ockwell-Smith utilizes neuroscience, the psychology of child development and real-world scenarios for a very informative guide. Family incomes and schedules are stretched to the breaking point by tutoring fees and athletic schedules.Finally, it doesn’t matter how old the children are – whether they’re babies, toddlers, tweens, teens and anything in between, this book will help! It has helped me understand what my own tween is starting to go through and to prepare me for the road ahead. Gentle Discipline is a world away from the punishments and rewards so often advocated and turns what many think about raising children on its head.

You could argue that there is little difference between an older tween and a teen, aside from the label. The in- between – or ‘tween’, as many refer to them – years of childhood are a unique period of development often overlooked. Action oriented and easy to understand, it's packed with sensitive yet sensible ways to turn quarreling siblings and frustrated parents into an open, communicative family. On the contrary – the tween years are some of the busiest developmentally and often the most challenging for many parents.Yet this drive to optimize performance has only resulted in skyrocketing rates of anxiety, depression, and even self-harm in America’s highest achieving schools. Smith has some good points: how the brain rewires itself during puberty, how tween behaviors that drive parents nuts aren't intentional, and about the "psi" method of gentle discipline/coaching based parenting. From an evolutionary perspective, fears and anxieties surrounding being left alone at night are entirely normal and actually important. They jam-pack their schedules with AP classes, fill every waking hour with resume-padding activities, and even sabotage relationships with friends to “get ahead.