On Becoming Childwise: Parenting Your Child from 3-7 Years

Excellent book. A lot of details and solutions. There are a lot of what to think about. I'm definitely suggesting this to read to parents .

I have worked the baby wise and now child wise concepts in my home since my first born arrived a little over 2 years ago. My husband and I are constantly amazed at the results we get by following a few basic ideals.Even our pediatrician asked if we followed the babywise/childwise philosophy. I said yes, how did you know? Her answer was simple and direct. She said, "I've seen thousands of children and the babywise (childwise) children are consistantly healthy and very confident" She continued to sing the praises of these books and our child. In fact, at our 2 year check up she gave us, the parents, an A+. I can't tell you how gratifying a feeling that is for a first time parent.I've read the negative reviews on Mr. Ezzo's books and I'm baffled. But if you read the reviews of the parents that actually read and applied the philosphy in these books to there own children, most of those reviews are positive. That says a lot.The final proof to myself that I'm doing the right thing by my child is the behavior of many of the kids in my moms' group. All the children (around 25) are within 2 months in age. The other moms ask me, how do you get your son to mind? He actually comes when you say, "Come here". He listens when you say no. He takes his nap everyday. He goes to bed without incident at night. He eats the dinner you put in front of him...I could go on and on.My son and I had a play date with one of them yesterday. Her child has been "on-demand" feeding since day one and has always slept in the parents' bed. This whole week, the child wouldn't take a nap and has had hysterical melt-downs every afternoon. She finally fell asleep while we were there (around 5pm) and slept for a short while, only to be up until midnight that night. The mother cries to me, "I don't know what to do".I wish I could tell her Babywise (Childwise), but I don't think the mom is willing to change what she's been doing. But you can...start from day one with Babywise. It's hard work at first, but trust me, it pays off in the long run and you too can have healthy, confident and wonderful children.

I underlined this book so much the first time through that it now looks like a well used college textbook! And maybe that's appropriate because it is a fantastic handbook resource/ guide to childhood and teaching your child how to behave in fundamentally respectful and courteous ways to their parents and others. We have seen great success with the techniques explained here even though we are still at the beginning of our journey through child-rearing.As a case study: our three year old girl was getting out of hand with back talk, tantrums, and disobedient. She would be sweet and angelic one moment and in a total meltdown the next when something happened to cross her will. We began requiring more respect from her and enforcing quick, responsiveness with non-reactionary regularity and it has changed her world. She is not only more polite and respectful, she's also more even-tempered, cheerful, and understanding when things don't go her way. She speaks confidently but appropriately with adults and peers and she hardly ever has meltdowns anymore. We couldn't be more pleased or grateful for this book. It really gave us the courage to assume our role as parents not pushovers.

I began initiating some of the practices in Child Wise after breezing through half of the book and was pleasantly surprised at how well both my children and I responded. On day one, our house became calmer, quieter, and the kids began listening and obeying with less complaint. After bedtime (Which went the smoothest it has in weeks) I finished the remainder of the book and feel empowered to bring a better balance to our home. I found the advice to be realistic, practical, and (so far) effective.

This book series is amazing. We saw outright transformations in our kids. I recommend the first two babywise books for the foundational info even if your kids are older. Then just get whichever ones match the ages of your kids.Edit 1/15/2015 - I've seen a lot of things on the Internet about how "awful" these books are. In most cases, not a single quote of questionable content is ever provided from any of the books. In several cases, these poor book authors are confused with another author (Michael Pearl) who has *nothing* to do with the people who wrote these books. There is also much mention of Mr. Ezzo's lack of any medical credentials for the medical parts of the books - which *utterly* ignores that the co-author of the series, DOCTOR Robert Bucknam (M.D) even exists. Having said that, the medical stuff is now a good 25 years old, so do some modern research...but the information was entirely correct for its day.These books *are* just about the antithesis of "attachment parenting" and most similar philosophies, so if you're looking for a way to become your children's whim-controlled submissive, I highly DON'T recommend these books. If you are too offended by Christian themes to be able to pull useful secular data from their pages, then again...these are not the books for you.However, if you believe that *you* should be the guiding authority figure in the parent/child relationship, AND you have the fortitude of personal identity to pick the parts of this book that work for you while making your own decisions to adopt any given thing or not (family prayer time in an atheist household, for example, would not mesh well), then by all means, read away.And if you're a new parent who didn't have a very good example of parents growing up and you do nothing but follow these books to the letter...even with the somewhat outdated medical data and the (by today's standards) almost Puritan morality, you'll be fine, and your kids will be fine.