1-2-3 Magic

Customer Reviews

• 3 out of 5
  
  
  by Bethany from Gales Ferry, CT | Jun 30, 2008
  

  This book was recommended to me by a friend who has 10 children. It was helpful in understanding what to do when you as a parent get frustrated with your children. I especially liked the authors explanation on little-adult syndrome. Children are not naturally logical like adults and I make that mistake all the time with my five year-old becuase he talks to me like he's an adult sometimes. To make the counting discipline effective you have to use silence. I've found it effective and it certainly helps me keep my cool, however, I felt that some of the examples shared in the book the parents weren't listening to the child. I think listening to our children is important to their self esteem. The book is an easy read and though I didn't agree with everything, I think it is helpful in understanding how to discipline children.

  
  
   1 people found this review helpful
  
  

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• 4 out of 5
  
  
  by Kevin from Houston, TX | Feb 8, 2009
  

  How in the world do you begin to discipline a young child? When they get older, it's easy: no TV, no dessert, no play time with friends. But what about when all they do is run around and torment the place? Enter "1-2-3 Magic". It has a simple premise. Tell the child to stop doing something. If he doesn't stop, "that's one". Give him until three, with about five seconds in between one and two. On three, he's off to his room or isolated in a chair for a minute or two. When the timeout is complete, everything is back to normal. No lectures on why daddy did this or asking if you learned your lesson.
  
  With my child, it took about four times. He now obeys before I get to "two". It was amazing.
  (At this writing, he's about 4)
  
  Consistency is the key. Also parents need to understand something called the "Little Adult Assumption". This is the misguided belief that little kids have hearts of gold and are reasonable and unselfish. They're quite the opposite. It was eye-opening when I started looking at my son this way instead of a small version of me.
  The book is broken down into Start Behaviors and Stop Behaviors. For me, the Start Behaviors will be addressed when he's old enough to do homework, clean his room, etc. Right now it's important to have him stop doing something. The book also contains lots of information on positive feedback (don't just give your child attention when he's bad) and how to handle their attempts at manipulation.
  
  I'm glad I found this book when I did. It's important to lay a good foundation for discipline and to hopefully prevent allowing a wild, uncontrollable kid loose on friends, neighbors, and teachers.

  
  
   1 people found this review helpful
  
  

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• 1 out of 5
  
  
  by Rebecca from The United States | Oct 30, 2009
  

  This book has all the most hateful characteristics in the parenting book genre: an self-important "charismatic leader" type of author, an all-or-nothing prescriptive program (if you don't do it EXACTLY RIGHT, you WILL FAIL and actually HARM your CHILDREN!! p.s. buy my video), and an overriding Parenting-As-War metaphor. Defeat those little cretins! Never speak to them, never reveal your feelings. Bribe them if you must. Squash their writhing little spirits, obedience at all costs!!!! Mwahahahahahaaa.
  
  So, no.
  
  All of that vitriol out of the way, though, I did dogear the page (ONE PAGE) about punishing older kids for serious offenses, and I thought some of the advice about charting kids to motivate them could be useful.
  
  So that I don't have to read it again, here are the few useful things I might want to remember:
  
  p116-- Don't issue spur-of-the-moment requests. (BTW, take out the garbage right now!)
  
  p107-- Re: kids lying. "I want you to tell me the story of what happened today, but not right now. Think about it a while and we'll talk in 15 minutes. But remember I already talked with your teacher." Basically, don't provide opportunities for the kid to lie MORE.
  
  p101-- Have a plan (previously discussed) in place for major and minor serious offenses, complete with punishments and durations. That way if your kid does something rotten you can just look at the chart and say, "hm, minor offense. Would you rather have three days grounded or do 8 hours of extra chores?"
  
  Basically, this book is the author's ego trip, with some scraps of good ideas that appear more clearly and workably in other places. If your household is complete and total chaos and you just cannot pull it together enough to think about reading any GOOD parenting books Parenting with Love and Logic, this might be a good first life raft. But even that I doubt-- the prescribed behaviors are Mosaic: all disjointed laws and no overarching governing principles.

  
  

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• 1 out of 5
  
  
  by Shana from The United States | Apr 25, 2009
  

  I knew this was going to be a terrible book. It was recommended to me by a terrible speech therapist who was a behavioral therapist wanna-be, and a bad one at that. Thankfully she got fired because apparently no one else liked her approach either, which was based on this book. I read the book though, because hey, I'm open minded. You wont see me say this often, but I lost some brain cells by reading that book. I would not be so unkind as to recommend this book to anyone. Now, usually I can take some knowledge from anything I read. What I took from this is that, there are people out there with so few brain cells that they read this and feel they have gained something. I learned from this book that people can be fooled by a pile of poop with frosting. They take a bad idea, throw in some semantics, and voila: a frosted pile of poop. Don't get me wrong, I actually do believe in the power of words. I just find that sometimes the way you approach something matters, and other times it really just is semantics. And apple is an an apple even if you call it a pear. You can call it a pear though. It still tastes like an apple though. And this book was a rotten apple.

  
  

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• 4 out of 5
  
  
  by Carmen from Carmichael, CA | Feb 22, 2009
  

  As the parent of two toddlers, a boy and a girl, I feel that I constantly need to learn something new every day about being a good parent, while avoiding overparenting.
  
  I particularly enjoyed the 1-2-3 counting technique described in the book, which I successfully use with my kids to enforce discipline. Among other things the author talks about the importance of positive reinforcement and effective communication.
  
  However, the idea that resonates the most is centered around our lack of attentiveness some times towards our kids, as we forget to offer praise and encouragement. The author's quotation "Angry people speak, happy people shut up," is a reminder that we need to be eager to point out the positive first before being quick to criticize. Also in the grand scheme of things, this truly applies to all our relationships with our spouses, siblings, friends, and so on.
  
  In conclusion, let's hold hands more, and be sympathetic rather than judge and criticize.

  
  

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