Just Tell Me What to Say - Review

Author: Betsy Brown Braun
225 pages
For parents of children aged 2-6
Indexed for ease in use as a reference.

In a sentence: A parenting book offering tips and scripts for answering children's questions.

The Nitty Gritty:

I have a six year old, a two year old, and an eleven month old, so most of what the book covered was familiar territory.  What I hoped to get out of reading it was some preparation and help for the Big Questions: sex, and death.  These topics have come up before, but I know they will be revisited and I wanted to be more prepared.  My philosophy with my children in general is to answer all questions truthfully and age appropriately.  The scripts offered for those big questions were very helpful.  The author covers many different aspects of death, much about it that I hadn't considered how to explain and I would otherwise have been at a loss to try to answer.  For this, it's invaluable.

I appreciated that the book offered not only the advice on what to say, but on how to say it.  I've realized now that I am weak on parts of this and had no clue, before reading, the importance of body language, just what to do and why.  I also really liked that she gives you the basic principles behind her advice, so that you can add these to your parenting tool-box.

I loved that there was a section on what to do if you don't know the answer, offering the solutions of suggesting to your child that we "go to the library", "Google", or ask someone who knows.  I enjoyed this for the very reason the book states it's a good thing: you empower your child by teaching them where to find the answers to things they don't know.

Some of the advice I disagreed with.   In an early section about the Four-Prong Plan for Discipline there is an example of a child who doesn't stop playing with the Legos and go wash up for dinner when told - the consequences offered all have to do with dinner, one of the suggested ones being that the child isn't allowed to eat dinner.  I absolutely, wholeheartedly disagree with making an issue of food.  Ever.  That's not to say they can eat whatever they want, but that I do not use food as motivation or consequence.  Offering food as a bribe or denial of it can set your child up for unhealthy attitudes about food, and I stay away from those extremes. 

In a section on behaviour in restaurants the author advises taking a misbehaving child out, and then returning to the restaurant without him or her for a meal the following day.  The return without the child on another day seemed unnecessarily punitive to me.  While advised as "logical" consequences, and she gave a good general description for the difference between "Natural" and "Logical" consequences, I found myself bothered by occasional areas like this where the consequence felt "overboard" and punitive rather than logical.

In comebacks for the public's rude judgement she offers: "Do you feel better now?" "Thank you for your opinion" and "You must remember what it's like to have a three-year-old.  Being a Mom is really hard work." Then throw up your hands and move away. 

Do we really even need to engage judgemental jerks when our child is melting down?  I'm thinking engaging in that kind of negative exchange, rather than making me feel better, would leave even more of a dark cloud over my head.  But then, it's not like we have to use every script that fits any situation.  It's a very easy book to take what serves you and leave the rest.  I loved the one just below those, under Learn this mantra:  "I don't know these people, and I will never see them again."  That ranks right up there with "This too shall pass" for all time great sanity-saving parenting mantras in my opinion.

All in all, I considered it worth the read, and will certainly find the scripts and tools very useful, but will be using my intuition and my own meter for what is loving and reasonable with my child in place of some of the recommended consequences.