Book Review: “The No-Cry Discipline Solution”

I admit it. I’m a skeptic when it comes to parenting books. I think I was put off after reading the touted What to Expect When You’re Expecting and finding it saccharine and patronizing. Or maybe it is just the sheer volume of parenting tomes on display at any given bookstore, each touting its own approach as if it were the only one.

It was with this doubtful eye that I opened a review copy of Elizabeth Pantley’s The No-Cry Discipline Solution: Gentle Ways to Encourage Good Behavior Without Whining, Tantrums, and Tears (Pantley). I was pleasantly surprised. Pantley, a mother of four, is the author of “No-Cry Solution” books for sleeping and potty training as well as several other parenting volumes. It is to her credit, however, that the books draw on more than just her own experience. For this work, she surveyed and spoke with 242 test parents around the world including gay parents, adoptive parents, and those in interracial or multicultural relationships. (She doesn’t, however, delve into how these different types of families might approach parenting differently or face different issues.)

Pantley starts on a good note and admits “there are no distinct black-and-white answers when it comes to raising children, and contradictory advice abounds. So parents must sort through everything they know, everything they hear, and everything they learn to come up with the right parenting approach for each of their children.” She assures parents that effective parenting skills are learned, even the best parents have children who will misbehave, and all parents lose their cool sometimes. Her book is geared towards parents of toddlers and preschoolers, but it’s easy to see how many of her ideas could be applied to older children as well.

Rather than jump right in to discipline solutions, however, Pantley talks first about the root cause of all common childish misbehaviors, a child’s undeveloped emotional control. When children act up, she says, it is typically not because they have personality defects or bad parents, but simply because they are still developing an ability to control their emotions.

After establishing this, Pantley offers a variety of practical discipline techniques. She again emphasizes there is no one-size-fits-all solution: “The beauty of having various options to choose from is by selecting those that fit each particular parent/child pair best, you can avoid the frustration and tears that result when parents attempt to follow an outsider’s advice about what is best for them.” This is refreshing in a world that bombards parents with “you should do this” advice. Her general approach is to find and address the specific cause of a child’s problem. Children who are tired, hungry, frustrated, bored, overstimulated, afraid, feeling powerless, or confused will tend to act out. Stopping the immediate behavior is only part of the solution, and will not help the child learn the long-term lesson of how to control their emotions and reactions. Pantley then offers several general solutions for avoiding and handling misbehavior, such as consistency of routine, offering a child an age-appropriate number of choices, and using songs, stories, and silliness to engage and garner cooperation. The last section of the book consists of “no-cry” solutions for specific misbehaviors, such as not wanting to take a bath, having poor manners at mealtime, fighting with siblings in the car, dawdling, hitting, lying, and messiness.

It’s all very sensible stuff. Many parents, I think, will already know that a hungry or tired child is more likely to be a misbehaving one, and many of us have used an impromptu puppet to distract and calm. Still, having it laid out like this can, I think, make us even more conscious in the heat of the tantrum-throwing moment that we need to address the why and not just the what.

What makes Pantley’s book stand out among parenting guides, however, is the middle chapter focusing on parental behavior. She wants to help us assess and manage the anger that, no matter how hard we try, seems to be a natural part of the whole parenting package when our children misbehave. Denying our anger or feeling guilty about it can only make things worse. Instead, we must deal with this emotion just as we expect our children to deal with theirs. Pantley offers several suggestions to help us do so.

Overall, this is a smart, practical book that is less about a specific method or style and more about how to identify causes of misbehavior and communicate effectively to stop them. Even her titular “no-cry” approach is a bit of a misnomer. “If your child doesn’t calm down with gentle efforts,” she advises, “then sometimes it’s best to let the tantrum run its course.” And again: “There are times when your child is fussing because he is unhappy with something you’ve told him to do or stop doing. If that’s the case, it’s only fair to let him be sad.”

Pantley peppers her work with pull-quotes from other parents, labeled “Mother-Speak” and “Father-Speak,” showing how others are using the same principles in practice. Perhaps not surprisingly, most of the quotes are from mothers. I suspect this is a factor of the parents Pantley had access to when she was working with her test families, but it is a shame there are not more fathers represented.

There are only a few moments when the book lapses into the overly chirpy tones of many parenting guides. (“Are you a bit surprised that ALL of the most common childish misbehaviors are likely caused by a child’s undeveloped emotional control? Yes, all of them! Every single one!”) The only moment of preachiness is when she asserts “Dedicated parents read parenting books, so I know that if you are reading these words you are a parent who truly cares about doing the best job you can.” I’d argue that dedicated parents find resources, which could include books but might only consist of friends, one’s own parents, online forums, or medical professionals. The human race certainly had its share of dedicated parents before mass publishing.

My last complaint is a minor one, which is that the photos of children throughout the book don’t lend anything to it. They are not connected to the text in any way, but merely show us “Wade, Age 4” or “Isabella, Age 2 1/2.” I suppose they are meant to show happy, well-adjusted children (there are no photos of misbehaviors), but I didn’t find much value in them. Save the paper and leave them out, or find some photos of the techniques in action (a parent calming a crying child, for example).

For LGBT parents, there is little that is objectionable, although the book is written for a general audience. Pantley mostly uses “parent” and “parents” with only a few sentences like “Having a distracted Mommy or Daddy sitting beside her on the floor as she plays feels very different than having the same parent engaged. . . .” Even this could be read as a nod simply to parents of either gender, and not to Mommy-Daddy pairs per se. Pantley also acknowledges the many ways people create their families, saying at one point “During pregnancy or the adoption process, parents will daydream about their future families.”

Whether you find yourself struggling with your child’s behavior, want to be more prepared for when problems do occur, or simply want to be more aware of how methods you may already be using fit into the big picture of child and parental emotions, this is a worthwhile read.