Alan Davidson - How Good Parents Raise Great Kids: The Six Essential Habits of Highly Successful Parents

Its not magic. It doesnt take a college education or a library full of books by so-called experts. Instead, good parenting is a matter of practicality, common sense, sensitivity, and a few acquired skills. Now find out just how to put it all together, by sharing the secrets of success with other parents like you.

Use this book to look at the lives of other families whose kids are doing well. Find out how to resolve the arguments, how to respond to out-of-bounds behavior, and how to open the channels of communication and keep them open. This book will show you why:

• Good parents dont try to win every fight.
• Good parents arent perfectand they admit their mistakes.
• Good parents often feel more uncomfortable talking about sex than their kids dobut they do it anyway.
• Good parents prepare for trouble before it happens.

Refreshing./Presents the collective wisdom of parents in their own wordsI recommend this book to any parent.

Michael E. Bernard, associate professor, California State University, Long Beach, Department of Educational Psychology and Administration

Filled with warmth, wit, and wisdom A wonderful resource that helps guide todays parents to support the authentic development of children.

Eihen Paris, Ph.D., and Thomas Paris, Ph.D., authors of Ill Never Do to My Kids What My Parents DM To Me!: A Guide to Conscious Parenting

Alan and Robert Davidson have produced an invaluable tool for all parents.If you want dynamic adolescents in your life, follow the practices of the successful parents described in HOW GOOD PARENTS RAISE GREAT KIDS. These six elements of success in child rearing should be in every adults bag of tricks.

Robert E. Palazzi, past president, California Association of Teachers of English

A very special book. By the love and respect for fundamental human values, the authors imbue the book with a total commitment to helping parents to actualize their childrens potential a sense of morality, and purpose in life. If I were asked to recommend one book on parenting, I would recommend this one.

Thomas R. Vemey, M.D. author of The Secret Life of the Unborn Child and Gifts to Our Fathers, and founder of the Association for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health

Should help parents from birth through college. The title captures the spirit of the book: a successful parent is a good parent (not a perfect parent) who has great kids. This book presents the results of multiple field trials done by the true expertssuccessful parents.

Susan Reid, M.D., chief of psychiatry, Portsmouth Hospital, NH

Copyright 1996 by Dr. Alan Davidson and Robert Davidson

All rights reserved.

Warner Books, Inc.

Hachette Book Group

237 Park Avenue

New York, NY 10017

Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

First eBook Edition: October 2009

ISBN: 978-0-446-56018-4

To the parents who opened their homes and hearts to us.

Thank you and congratulations on a job well done.

One of the first high school counselors we spoke with, Barry Miller, convinced us of the need for this project when he said, This book is just what todays parents need. We thank him for his contagious enthusiasm.

Author and devoted friend Susan Page encouraged us to write this book and assisted usin numerous ways throughout the project. All writers should be so lucky.

Our literary agent, Shelley Roth, believed in this project from the beginning and offered excellent, insightful editing and organizational suggestions in the early stages. It was a real plus having not only an extremely qualified agent, but one who is also a top-notch writer.

Our editor, Colleen Kapklein, saw the importance of this book and made several astut editing suggestions, as did copy editor Libby Kessman, whose red pencil was always welcome. Thank you both.

Thank you Naomi Wise, whose wit and editing wisdom helped us develop our proposal. Her words, Kill that passive voice! will resound in our heads forever.

Thanks also to Jean Nattkemper who said, after reviewing our proposal, You have a publishable book here. She was right.

We also want to acknowledge several other people who helped us in their own ways: Steve deLaet, Jim Nunan, Brad Bunnin, Ruth Davidson, Walter Rubenstein, our parents Joan and Milt Davidson, Howard Gurevitz, M.D., Grace Timpanero, Harold and Pauline Allen, Greg and Cleo Filias, Ceil and Tony Mirto and their great kid Jeannea shining example of what can happen through love, tolerance, and respect. May all children turn out as wonderful as she did.

There could not be a better time for this remarkable book. It is designed to help children not just survive, but thrive in our fast-paced, complex society. It shows parents that despite the tremendous distractions kids face today, they can grow up happy and do exceedingly well.

With so many contradicting child-rearing styles espoused in the various parenting books, this book is a welcome contribution. The Davidsons studied the families of children who achieved all-around success. By reading how skilled parents did it and why their methods worked, parents will gain fascinating insights that could not have been obtained any other way.

Perhaps most important, readers will learn how wise parents taught their children the important distinction between being a material success and being internally successful, between what they have and what they have become.

What they have becomeand what all children can become when their parents follow the guidance in this wonderful bookare delightful kids who enjoy life by functioning at their maximum potential.

Way back in the 1930s, pioneer psychiatrist Karl Menninger sated in his landmark work, The Human Mind:

Let us define mental health as the adjustment of human beings to the world and to each other with a maximum of effectiveness and happiness. Not just efficiency, or just contentmentor the grace of obeying the rules of the game cheerfully. It is all of these together. It is the ability to maintain an even temper, an alert intelligence, socially consider ate behavior, and a happy disposition. This, I think, is a healthy mind.

The Davidsons help parents develop these qualities in their children with a book that makes its own pioneering breakthrough. By looking not at the neuroses, compulsions, and phobias and how to solve them, but at healthy cases, parents can model their guidance accordingly. Whether addressing parents of infants or adolescents, this valuable book finally offers intelligent solutions to the parenting puzzle.

Howard Gurevitz, M.D., F.A.P.A.

T his book brings together a collection of valuable advice on successful child rearing from a wide cross section of highly successful parents. Based on a large array of interviews with the parents of children who were identified by high school administrators as great kids, this book offers an intimate glimpse into the homes of all types of families-upper-class, lower-income, and single-parentwho found that six key elements were essential, to quality child rearing. These elements, upon which this book is founded, are: Communicate, Encourage Intellectual Development, Discipline, Instill Self-Esteem, Teach Values,