The key ideas

How to Talk to Children

Julia Gippenreiter, 2000

Why doesn't “how many times do I have to tell you” ever work, while your child either snaps back or does the opposite out of spite? Gippenreiter shows that the problem isn't the child's temperament, and it isn't that you're a bad parent. It's a way of talking that nobody ever taught us. The book gives you a simple new language, active listening and I-statements instead of shouting, so your child finally hears you, and you hear them.

Who it is for

Parents who want to understand their child and argue less

A child doesn't hear our correct words — they hear whether we feel them.

What the book is about

This book is about how to stop being at war with your own child and start understanding them. Many parents love their children with all their heart, but in the daily rush talk to them with the same handful of phrases: “how many times do I have to tell you,” “why do you always,” “hurry up.” The child shuts down, snaps back, or does everything out of spite, and both sides suffer. Gippenreiter shows that the problem isn't a bad temperament in the child, nor is it that you're a bad parent — it's the way of talking that nobody specifically taught us. And that way of talking can be learned.

Julia Gippenreiter is a Russian psychologist who worked with families and children for many years. She gathered simple, tested principles of humanistic psychology and rendered them in plain, everyday parenting language — not dry theory, but understandable rules and breakdowns of ordinary family scenes. The book's central message is warm and reassuring: the relationship with your child can be repaired at any moment, because the child always wants to be in contact with us — you just have to give them that chance.

Idea 1. Unconditional acceptance — loving them not for something, but just because

A child needs, as a matter of survival, to feel loved not for good grades, obedience, or a clean room, but simply for existing. That's unconditional acceptance. When love turns into a reward for good behavior, the child lives in constant anxiety: if I slip up, I stop being loved. That anxiety is exactly where tantrums, lying, and aggression grow from. But the feeling of “I'm loved no matter what” gives a child a foundation that makes them more confident and, oddly enough, more obedient.

Accepting unconditionally doesn't mean approving of every action. You can be unhappy about a specific thing and still make it clear: you yourself are still precious to me. Separate the child from their behavior — criticize the act, but don't withdraw the love.

Eight-year-old Tyoma broke his mother's favorite mug and hunched his shoulders, bracing for a storm. His mother first gasped, then knelt beside him: “I'm sad about the mug, it upset me. But you matter to me far more than any mug — come here.” Tyoma exhaled and offered to glue the pieces back together himself. In another family, there'd have been half an hour of shouting over the same mug, and the child would have learned one thing: I'm loved only as long as I don't break anything.

Let your child feel that your love can't be lost over a mistake.

Read in Livria

About the author

Julia Gippenreiter is a Russian psychologist and professor, the author of well-known books on raising and communicating with children.

All books by this author: Julia Gippenreiter

Terms from the book

  • I-statement
  • Unconditional acceptance: loving a child simply because they exist, not for their grades, behavior, or achievements
  • Active listening: a way of talking where you say the child's feelings out loud and show them you've heard them
  • Natural consequences: what happens on its own because of a child's action, and teaches them better than any punishment

All terms

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