I bought this book off Kelly and my sister read it and shared it with me while she was here- bless her cause I'm too tired to read at the moment! So based on excellent summaries and my snippets of reading I think it's a great book... overall.

I am HUGELY disappointed however with the "All about discipline" chapter. Can everyone please tear it out and disregard it?! I think the science it's based on is flawed (in actual fact I think most of this chapter is based on the author's experience and not science at all)... children appear to respond to rewards and punishments but it's not actually a good outcome as you are teaching them to be controlled by outside stimulus rather than learning right from wrong for themselves so they can apply it to all situations even when you're not there. And I hate sticker charts with a passion! The judgements implied in this chapter can be dangeous- deciding when your child has 'calculated [their] hurting or spoiling' can be difficult and you need to be mindful that they may not have been as calculating as you think, or they may have had their reasons which to them justify the actions so it's better to find these out rather than label them as naughty.

I'd really recommend replacing this chapter with Louise Porter's "Children are people too"... she uses her research as a child pysch to explain how rewards and punishments (including smacking, time out etc) DON'T work and she offers heaps of great suggestios for dealing with inconsiderate beahvaviour and teaching children emotional control.