About the Book
An innovative approach for parents of challenging boys to prevent meltdowns and put out fires
Parenting is often called the toughest job you will ever love. If you have a challenging boy, one who won’t take no for an answer, argues every decision, and explodes at the slightest provocation, you know how incredibly tough parenting can be. But with the right tools, you can bring out the best in your child—and in you as a parent.
In Challenging Boys: Keeping Your Cool in the Heat of Parenting, Timothy Davis draws on his experience as a child and family psychologist, father of three, and volunteer firefighter to help parents remain calm and in control even when it feels like the house is on fire during yet another meltdown. Like a firefighter, Davis teaches parents how to create a plan ahead of time to prepare for emergencies. He shows how to identify and manage specific triggers, recognize the patterns that challenging episodes follow, and plan for de-escalating a meltdown when it does occur. This plan is not a one-size-fits-all approach, because every boy is unique; instead, it is based on the child’s individual needs and each parent’s strength.
While challenging boys can make life difficult for parents, teachers, siblings, and peers, Davis emphasizes that these children actually aren’t oppositional at all. They want to please, but often lack the skills to do so. Challenging Boys teaches parents how to help their boys develop these skills so that their natural gifts can shine.
About the Author :
J. Timothy Davis, PhD, has spent the last three decades working with challenging boys and their families. He is a former researcher of male development and as a psychologist he specializes in treating males of all ages. He was also a volunteer firefighter with the Swarthmore Fire and Protective Association. Dr. Davis’s writing has won prestigious academic awards, including the Menninger Award of the American Psychoanalytic Association and the Deutsche Prize of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. He served on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School for twenty-five years and currently is in private practice near Boston.
Review :
Challenging Boys is based on the powerful idea that the pathway to success is understanding yourself and understanding your son. Tim Davis takes readers beyond blame, beyond simplistic solutions, and beyond hopelessness, to a place of hope and the possibility of deep change.
--Lawrence Cohen, PhD, author of Playful Parenting and The Opposite of Worry
I love how from the start Dr. Davis explicitly frames the word 'challenging' as both a negative and a positive. With compelling vignettes and useful exercises, this book is essential reading for parents seeking to rediscover joy in their relationship with their growing boy.
--Claudia M. Gold, PhD, pediatrician and author of Getting to Know You: Lessons in Early Relational Health from Infants and Caregivers
In this book, Dr. Davis offers parents and therapists insightful and sympathetic understanding of the difficulties in raising and helping youngsters struggling with meeting the demands of development. With clear explanations of the various sources of trouble for kids and their parents, he offers a practical, programmatic plan for parents to work through the problems and generate better solutions for themselves and their children. For therapists, he offers tools they can use with parents to amplify the work of therapy and help parents transform the way they respond to blowups, meltdowns, and disappointments. In showing how everyone involved with children can make a difference, Dr. Davis offers hope in situations often seen as intractable.
--Kerry Kelly Novick, FIPA, life-cycle psychoanalyst, co-author of Working with Parents Makes Therapy Work
Tim Davis offers us an essential to guide to parenting 'challenging' boys, and in doing so he teaches us how to better parent all children in challenging times. By drawing on his own experience as a father, as well as years in the clinical trenches, he has crafted a hands-on travelog that helps parents to grow even as they help their kids to grow up. There is up to date science, and there is valuable, approachable advice. Bravo to Davis for helping us to find our way to the Rosetta Stone of raising kids these days--how, when things are beyond stressful, can we find a way to calm down without shutting down?
--Mark O'Connell, PhD, author of The Good Father and The Marriage Benefit
While this book is advertised to be for parents of challenging boys, I think the wisdom and recommendations in the book would be helpful to most parents of any child. Most parents love their children and want to respond in calm, productive ways, but often find themselves losing their cool in the moment. Tim Davis helps you see patterns so you are not caught by surprise by an outburst, refusal to listen, or other challenging behavior from your child. He'll help you with techniques and strategies for maintaining your calm. Tim also points out some things that help you appreciate and enjoy your child more--reminding you, or helping you see for the first time, some ways in which your child is absolutely amazing and, despite the yelling and disrespectful behavior, he'll help you see that your child loves you and wants to please you.
--Adele Diamond, Canada Research Chair Professor of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
