How do you help your child open up to you? With so little time in a busy day, how can a parent find that elusive "quality" time? What discipline techniques work for young children, and why?An empowering book that emphasizes real-life parenting situations and practical, compassionate solutions, Parenting by Heart is filled with specific advice tried by thousands of families. Showing what actually works rather than what theoretically "should" work, here are hundreds of step-by-step, tested solutions that will help make parents feel more confident about how to instill values, be in charge, and stay connected with today's kids in these modern and often difficult times. Based around a long-standing series of parenting workshops, Parenting by Heart aims to debunk the most common--and damaging--myths of parenthood and replace them with a flexible set of solutions that can be easily adapted to different situations. Author Ron Taffel offers a variety of innovative ideas that can change frustrating experiences for the better while relieving parents of much of the guilt we carry. The book is based on short chapters that blow away our standard myths about "in-charge parents," "over-involved mothers and under-involved fathers," and consistently reliable methods of discipline. Rather than simply contradicting them, Taffel explains how these ideas developed and how they can be changed for the better. He describes the important roles of "Parent Protector," "Parent Chum," and "Parent Realist" and outlines the different ages that require different styles of parenting. The book is full of lively examples and basic concepts, so you'll have plenty of new ideas to replace the tired myths. Whether Taffel is elaborating on the idea that no good discipline method is effective for more than a few days or reminiscing about bribing his daughter with cookies, the points raised in his work are refreshing and reassuring. This is one parenting book that works equally well for teens and toddlers. --Jill Lightner "This book stands out from the crowd." -- - Parenting Magazine Ron Taffel, Ph.D. , wrote the monthly column The Confident Parent for Rosie Magazine and is Director of Family Treatment at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy in New York. He has been in family and child practice for over twenty years, has given hundreds of parenting workshops around the country, and has appeared as a parenting expert on national television and radio.