Book Review: You’re Not the Boss of Me

I agreed to review You’re Not the Boss of Me: Brat-proofing Your Four- to Twelve-Year-Old Child by Besty Brown Braun for many reasons. Mainly, my oldest son, who just so happens to be four, picked up some lessons in not-so-stellar attitudes from preschool over the past two years. My husband and I, providing a united front, have been trying to deal with some of the things that come out of his mouth but we occasionally fail. As an example, our son who normally puts on the angel act for his grandparents recently gave my dad some major attitude.

Not awesome.

I read the book. I was pretty pleased with it. Though I did laugh and tweet that I was a failure from page one. The good news is that the book wasn’t accusatory. I found that it took a lot of common sense and put it in an easy to reference, easy to understand and supportive tone. I walked away from the book, some parts of which I still need to read as we’re no where near those phases, feeling like we could master our issues and those yet to come.

Here are some sections I found most helpful.

1. Chapter One, entitled, “Did You Hear Me? How to Talk to Your Kids.”

Uh, guilty. I’ve talked about it on the blog before, how I parent better in public. I have been working on tone and how I talk with/to the boys over the past few months and this chapter just gave me more ideas on how to improve my Mom Voice. Things like allowing them time to process their day before telling you, making sure you’re having a conversation and not just speaking at your child and the importance of answering questions.

2. Chapter Four, titled, “Where’s My Jacket?! Teaching Responsibility.”

We’re actually in the midst of this right now. I suppose all parents are, aren’t we? Anyway, I started this chapter with dread, fearing that I was doing everything wrong. Turns out I’m not a total failure! The lists of what various aged children can do was quite helpful. In addition, chapter nine goes into great detail about chores, allowances (plus wages) and other bits of information that we are currently working on employing or will in the future. These two chapters contained a lot of great points and good ideas.

3. Chapter Five, titled, “No You Go to Your Room! Creating a Respectful Child.”

Oof. Maybe you remember how I took away the TV for a week because my oldest son copped an attitude with me. This is another chapter that I started to read with pure dread. The good news is that the section on development said that these issues are really challenging to the preschool-age child. In fact, it goes on to say, “In reality, what parents may view as disrespect is often the actions of a child trying to scale one of these peaks.” OH MY! Maybe my son isn’t going to be a Monster Child! WIN! Of course, that doesn’t let me off the hook completely. The chapter was full of great ideas on how to teach your children about respect. It also reminded me that “sharing your feelings is not disrespectful.” It’s really okay to tell your child that you’re angry when they do/don’t do something as long as you’re not being an ogre about it. Sadly, the book went on to tell me that a child saying “I hate you” is okay as it is an expression of feeling. I understand that and I agree with what was said in the section but, man, does anyone else struggle with that concept? Am I alone here?

The one section I couldn’t agree with, however, was the walking to school alone blurb. Sorry. Not ever going to happen here. Don’t care. No way. No how. Call me a helicopter mom. My issues with loss do extend to this and, no, it’s just not going to happen. If that’s the only reason my children need therapy in the future, I’ll count my lucky stars. (As an aside, we’re hoping that our next home will be far enough away from any school building that this won’t even be a plausible issue.)

That aside, I really, really liked this book. Again, I find it to be an easy to reference book so that when a problem comes up, I can re-find it in the book. More over, I really enjoyed how sections, like the I Hate You one, gave good responses that I might not have thought of on my own. I feel that guides like these help me put things into context and come up with what I would do or say if it was happening to me.

I would recommend this book for any parent with a four-to-twelve-year-old (or before or beyond). I have no doubt that I’ll be pulling it off the shelf repeatedly over the next few years.

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[Disclosure: I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour campaign by Mom Central on behalf of HarperCollins and received a copy of You’re Not the Boss of Me to facilitate my review. Mom Central also sent me a gift certificate to thank me for taking the time to participate.]