Transforming the Difficult Child

Transforming the Difficult Child – Howard Glasser

Parents of intense, challenging children often find that conventional discipline methods, such as reasoning, warnings, lectures and time-outs, do not work and may even make things worse. Therapist Howard Glasser, writing with Jennifer Easley, developed a different approach after working with many such children. In Transforming the Difficult Child: The Nurtured Heart Approach, he explains how it can help.

Glasser observes that many intense children have learned that they receive the most energy, attention and emotional connection from adults when they misbehave. Without meaning to, parents and teachers reward negative behavior with big reactions, while good behavior goes largely unnoticed. The Nurtured Heart Approach reverses this pattern.

The approach rests on three main commitments. First, refuse to energize negativity: avoid giving lively attention, lectures or emotional reactions to problem behavior. Second, relentlessly energize success: notice and describe in detail the many things a child does right, including simply refraining from misbehavior, so that the child experiences their own goodness and success. Third, provide clear limits and consequences: enforce rules consistently with brief, unemotional resets, after which the child is immediately given new opportunities to succeed.

The book offers specific techniques for recognizing success, a credit system to reinforce positive behavior, guidance for using the approach in schools, and stories of children and families who have benefited.

Practical and hopeful, Transforming the Difficult Child is a helpful resource for parents, teachers and therapists working with intense children, including those with attention or behavioral difficulties. It is not a substitute for professional assessment and treatment where needed.