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Summary and Reviews of Children Are From Heaven by John Gray

Children Are From Heaven by John Gray

Children Are From Heaven

Positive Parenting Skills for Raising Cooperative, Confident, and Compassionate Children

by John Gray
  • Readers' Rating:
  • First Published:
  • Aug 1, 1999, 255 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Jan 2001, 400 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

Children do not need to be motivated by fear of punishment. Instead, they can easily be motivated by reward and the natural, healthy desire to please their parents.

In his travels, lectures, and seminars, the book John Gray has been most often asked to write is a parenting book. After years of serious thought, workshops, and practical applications, John Gray has created a brilliantly original and effective system that he calls positive parenting, for children of all ages, from birth though the teenage years. Completing the notion that Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, he adds. . .and Children Are from Heaven.

John Gray has discovered that children today do not need to be motivated by fear of punishment. Instead, they can easily be motivated by reward and the natural, healthy desire to please their parents.

Children Are from Heaven covers the different skills of positive parenting to help improve communication, increase cooperation, and motivate your children. Central to this new approach to parenting are the five positive messages your children need to learn again and again:

  • It's okay to be different
  • It's okay to make mistakes
  • It's okay to express negative emotions
  • It's okay to want more
  • It's okay to say no, but remember mom and dad are the bosses

When these messages are put into practice--and John Gray shows you how--your children will develop the necessary skills for successful living: forgiveness of others and themselves, sharing, delayed gratification, self-esteem, patience, persistence respect for others and themselves, cooperation compassion, confidence, and the ability to be happy. With this new approach, you will be allowing your children to develop fully during each stage of their growth.

John Gray's reassuring message is that children are from heaven and they already have within themselves what they need to grow. Your job as a parent is to support that process. By applying the five messages and different skills of positive parenting, your children will receive what they need to become more cooperative, confident, and compassionate.

Children Are from Heaven

All children are born innocent and good. In this sense our children are from heaven. Each and every child is already unique and special. They enter this world with their own particular destiny. An apple seed naturally becomes an apple tree. It cannot produce pears or oranges. As parents, our most important role is to recognize, honor, and then nurture our child's natural and unique growth process. We are not required in any way to mold them into who we think they should be. Yet we are responsible to support them wisely in ways that draw out their individual gifts and strengths.

Our children do not need us to fix them or make them better, but they are dependent on our support to grow. We provide the fertile ground for their seeds of greatness to sprout. They have the power to do the rest. Within an apple seed is the perfect blueprint for its growth and development. Likewise, within the developing mind, heart, and body of every child is the perfect ...

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Reviews

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Reader Reviews

Tamara Miranda

By learning my child's temperament through this book, I have been able to better deal with my child's tatrums. What I thought was disobedience is actually just a characteristic of her temperament. I learn that redirection is the key to dealing with...   Read More
Danielle Mathias

Hello.I am a mother of two.I have a 9 yr. old son and a 7 yr. old daughter.My husband and I both were raised very old fashioned.Meaning alot of spanking,yelling and punishing. We chose right from our first child to not spank. We learned so much from ...   Read More
Susan Mirshkoff

Thought this book was very insightful... however, I found the advice given to be a little too general. Every child will react differently too any given situation, that is why there is no instruction manual for parenting... for a parent to get ...   Read More

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Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Children Are From Heaven, try these:

  • Hold On To Your Kids jacket

    Hold On To Your Kids

    by Gordon Neufeld, Gabor Maté

    Published 2006

    About this book

    The concepts, principles and practical advice contained in Hold On to Your Kids will empower parents to satisfy their children’s inborn need to find direction by turning towards a source of authority, contact and warmth.

  • How to Behave So Your Children Will, Too! jacket

    How to Behave So Your Children Will, Too!

    by Dr. Sal Severe

    Published 2003

    About this book

    Children learn what they live...your children do as you do." Instead of focusing on what children do wrong, this book teaches parents what they can do right.

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