GUEST REVIEW

The No-Cry Discipline Solution
by Elizabeth Pantley

McGraw Hill Publishing, 2007

ISBN-10: 0071471596
ISBN-13: 978-0071471596

The No-Cry Discipline Solution Book Review
Reviewed by Tera Schreiber

There comes a time in every parent’s life when a sweet and cooing child first hurls a bowl of oatmeal in defiance and frustration.  The parent has never before seen the skills of that child reach the point of purposeful misbehavior and the parent suddenly faces the inevitable need for discipline.  This need for discipline continues to plague parents, despite our best prayers and wishes, for what seems to be an eternity.  Hearing our anguished calls, Elizabeth Pantley has taken her “No-Cry” parenting philosophy made popular through The No-Cry Sleep Solution books, and honed in on the subject of discipline.

While Pantley doesn’t actually promise that there will be no crying, the discipline suggestions she offers are gentle and consistent.  The recommendations are geared toward helping parents achieve positive behavior with their children, but Pantley also helps parents cope with their children’s misbehavior.  Pantley writes a lengthy chapter on anger management for parents, which is unique among the piles of other discipline books on the shelf.  For the anger management chapter alone, this book is worth a read.  Nothing routinely makes us angrier and grouchier than the objects of our greatest affection – our children.  It’s easy to see how the management of parental anger can both help parents cope and help them better manage their children’s behavior. 

At the same time, Pantley cuts parents a break.  She encourages parents to be gentle with themselves by kicking to the curb guilty feelings of inadequacy and “banishes” myths such as, “Parents are totally responsible for their child’s behavior and actions.  Outstanding parenting means children will turn out well.”  Pantley gives parents permission to make mistakes while not even calling them mistakes, all the while encouraging gentle, firm discipline.

This book is brilliant in many respects. It offers parents a host of possible solutions to every problem rather than foisting a one-size-fits-all approach to the impossible task of discipline.  To top it off, Pantley offers a summary of solutions to common discipline problems in an easy to look-up format in the back of the book.  Parents will find this useful for those times when they worry that repeated, obnoxious behaviors will make them lose their minds.

The flexibility of the advice in this book supports parents with a variety of styles and philosophies.  One thing that Pantley will not support, however, is corporeal punishment.  She cites expert research that finds spanking and other forms of physical punishment to be both harmful to children and ineffective as disciplinary techniques, and holds the line with this premise throughout the book.

 While Pantley does allude to discipline with teenagers, this book is really focused on younger children.  Her assumption is that if discipline is managed well with very little children, teenage problems will be less likely to occur.  Likewise, it is easy to see how one could use the techniques she suggests to help manage teenage behavior as well.  Perhaps the best point Pantley makes, though, is that our relationships with our children are the foundations of our discipline – from birth to adulthood.

The No-Cry Discipline Solution also wins big points by being more than just theory.  While many books on discipline theory are interesting and enlightening, parents often struggle finding a way to apply the theories.  Pantley’s advice is practical and specific.  If ever trapped on a desert island with a bunch of kids, this is among the most useful books you could bring along.

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