Why Is My Child in Charge?

Through stories from her practice, Claire Lerner shows parents how making critical mindshifts—seeing their children's behaviors through a new lens—empowers parents to solve their most vexing childrearing challenges. This process puts parents back in the driver's seat, where they belong, and where their children need them to be. Why Is My Child In Charge? picks up where other books have left parents hanging. Most parenting books offer solutions that sound good on paper but don't work in practice. They are aspirational rather than achievable, or they offer one-size-fits-all approaches that don't meet the needs of an individual child. They can compound parents' feelings of frustration and thus, can be counterproductive. Case by case, Claire unpacks the individualized process she guides parents through to solve the most common challenges such as throwing tantrums in public; delaying bedtime for hours; refusing to participate in family mealtimes; and resisting potty training. Employing a relatable story-telling approach, Claire elucidates: the faulty mindsets that pose obstacles to parents seeing the situation more objectively; the essential mindshifts that enable parents to quickly identify the root causes of the problem; and the development of an action plan tailored to each unique child and family.