The Secret of Happy Children

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View books by Steve Biddulph.

An Excellent Book - Rated
I found this a really useful book when trying to raise my children. It's full of helpful advice & fitted with my own views of childhood & parenting. Chapters include:- What children really want, Curing by listening, Kids & emotions, the Assertive parent, Families, and Ages & stages. A great book.

Very average compaired to his fabulous, 'Raising Boys' - Rated
I find it hard being mean and i usually give reviews of 5 stars and leave the others alone, but i was dasappointed with this book.

After reading his outstanding, 'Raising Boys' i brought this book on the strength of that alone, unfortunately, it was like wathching England beat Germany 5-1 at footie, then going to the next match and seeing a 0-0 draw against San Marino (to use a metaphor).

There are roughly 140 pages in this book, but approximately 40 of these are either sketches or diagrams, that leaves 100 pages of text and some of this text is confusing and it's almost as though different people have written these two books but used the same author name for a giggle.

What can you learn from 100 pages of text, well not a lot in this case. On the back of the book it mentions that the book has sold over 1,000,000 copies in 14 languages. If my maths is correct that means that it has sold just over 70,000 copies collectively in places like England, America, Australia, Ireland etc, etc, that's not impressive when broken down ............ is it?

Meeting unmet needs! - Rated
I really liked this book. Of course I was spoiled for choice given Steve Biddulph's many excellent titles.

But then I would, wouldn't I, as he goes over similar ground to the Coaching Parent! Having said that, there is much more to gain from Steve's coverage of how we inadvertently hypnotise kids into being unhappy and having low self-esteem. It is full of useful tips, and I especially found the chapters on what kids want, ages and stages and family shape informative. Yes, you can't stress the application of love, touch and listening too often; insights into why kids behave differently at different ages may help you recover your sanity. Contemporary families have moved on massively since 2.4 kids, and Steve puts forward wise advice.

He uses a variety of rock-solid references apart from `applied common sense' [which isn't that common], such as NLP [Neuro-Linguistic Programming] and TA [Transactional Analysis].

It is very easy to see why his books are such good sellers.

Please - Rated
I really am sorry folks but just because a book isn't written by an academic it doesn't mean its any good. This book is totally cringeworthy and you get the impression that he does not like children or mothers for that matter. Training children isn't everyone's cup of tea and his funny little (true) stories make my toes curl. I can just see him in his money making seminars now - like a down at heal version of Tom Cruise in Magnolia.

Fantastic book, maximum help for parents ! - Rated
I have 3 boys, this book has helped me think about and change certain aspects of my parenting for the better.

The so-called 'experts' will hate this book as it bypass's all the psycho-babble that we are all bombarded with these days from people with no children and straight from university.

I have seen positive changes in my children because of the way I now relate to them thanks to this books clear and accessible advice.

With the excellent layout, easy to refer to again and again.