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How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk, by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. Stack Overflow co-founder Jeff Atwood recommends this book on hi
by devinplatt 5y ago
How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk, by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish.
Stack Overflow co-founder Jeff Atwood recommends this book on his Coding Horror blog[0]. I don't have children, but his statement that a book on talking with children "improved [his] interactions with all human beings from age 2 to 99" intrigued me enough to get the book.
I feel that out of any book I've read, this is the one that's affected my actual behavior the most. The book features a lot of examples that help the reader to internalize the lessons. Also, the lessons are so broadly applicable that you can likely apply them immediately in your life.
It was honestly really amazing to read some pages of the book one night, find an opportunity to apply a lesson from it in a situation the next day, and then see immediate results when the conversation would go in positive direction that I maybe would have screwed up otherwise.
[0]: https://blog.codinghorror.com/how-to-talk-to-human-beings/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/how-to-talk-to-human-beings/
- flakiness 5y agoI think it's worth pointing out that practicing this is hard, at least tome me. Being humorous/funny is one of the points in the book (IIRC), but being funny is often tough when you're angry, frustrated or just tired. So I agreed that piece-by-piece reading and re-reading help. These tips aren't easy to stick. As a companion, some parenting books like Positive Discipline [1] might be worth a quick glance. These parenting books have certain similarities with "How to Talk" and some other books in this thread, like "Crucial Conversation". It's eye-opening. (And I realized that this reply matches a typical anti-pattern called "too much speak". It's hard to put it in practice!) [1] https://www.amazon.com/Positive-Discipline-Self-Discipline-Responsibility-Problem-Solving/dp/0345487672 https://www.amazon.com/Positive-Discipline-Self-Discipline-R...
- jvvw 5y agoI've read it twice and don't remember anything about humour (which doesn't mean that it isn't mentioned, but definitely not a key part!)