Last fall, I (luckily) found and read the book Duct Tape Parenting, A Less is More Approach to Raising Respectful, Responsible, and Resilient Kids by Vicki Hoefle. Talk about a game-changer! It instantly spoke to me about the power to staying quiet, as well as allowing our children to grow resilience by figuring things out on their own.
I instantly decided to band-aid my mouth shut for five mornings in a row. It was fascinating, eye-opening, and yes, oddly relieving to stop the nagging, reminding, and constant talking.
So, in the spirit of LOVING this book, Vicki has been gracious enough to allow me to do a BOOK GIVE-AWAY!
I want all of you to read the following FIVE DAY CHALLENGE, leave a comment below, and I will pick a winner JUNE 7th!
The lucky winner will win a copy of Duct Tape Parenting, A Less is More Approach to Raising Respectful, Responsible, and Resilient Kids!
If you are interested in listening to an interview Vicki and I did about my “Say Nothing, Do Nothing” Experiment, listen here!
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Duct Tape is not Just for Quick Fixes, Anymore!
That’s right, you’ve guessed it. I’m going to change how you look at Duct Tape. I am going to suggest you start thinking about what ONE roll of duct tape can do for your parenting experience.
First, let’s take a second to think about you and your kids. I don’t know your children, but you know them very well, so go ahead and think about them in action. Now think about you in action as the parent. What seems to go smoothly (bedtime routine?) and what seems to fall apart every single time (morning routine?). Now, think about your favorite parenting strategy. Do you have one? I bet you do, but you might not even know it. You might think, well, I don’t use anything consistently, but yelling, nagging, reminding, lecturing, and all those reactive habits are strategies that you use every day to try and change your children’s behavior. How is it working for you? Are you implementing strategies that are creating long-term change, facilitating strong independent confident, capable children? If not, here’s where the duct tape comes in handy.
Another use for Duct Tape
Imagine sitting down with your kids and telling them you are sorry. You are sorry for all the bossing, dictating, controlling and micro-managing you have been doing and that you are really sorry for treating them as though they are incompetent. Tell them you are going to step back for five days and observe and watch what they can do by themselves and identify where they could benefit from some training. Ask them how they would like to wake-up in the am. An alarm clock, alarm on a phone, the sun streaming in the window? The choice is theirs. Tell them you will be taking a piece of duct tape and putting it right over your mouth, to help you break your old habit of jumping in and nagging, reminding, lecturing, bribing and so on. What would happen if you were unable to remind them what to be doing, thinking, or saying all day long? Now sit in a chair. Imagine you’re duct taped there. You cannot run into the living room with every little spat. You can’t carry backpacks, or bring shoes for kids who left them at home. You can’t clean the entire house. In fact, all you can do is sit there, accept what’s happening around you, learn what your kids are capable of, where they could use some training and where you will start on your journey to raising respectful, responsible, & resilient kids.
When and why would a parent do this?
When your child decides to wear fleece pants to school in August and learns a valuable lesson, you can nod and say nothing (instead of “I told you so”), because personal experience is the BEST teacher.
When your child has a temper tantrum in the kitchen, you quietly leave the room, instead of getting down on the floor and joining her. (We all know adult temper tantrums are much worse.)
When your child forgets his lunch you quietly have faith that he has what it takes to be a little hungry, solve the problem, and remember the next time. (If we want children to believe in themselves, we must believe in them first.)
This, my friends, is the best gift you can give yourself, and it’s the gift that you can give your children. I challenge you to learn to “duct tape” yourself out of all the nonsense that goes along with raising children. With this one gift of duct tape, you can give your kids the golden gift of learning independence, problem solving, failure, forgetting, learning, asking, remembering, discovering, unfolding, realizing, trying something new and creating a life that is their own. In one year, imagine the difference.
Consider the Duct Tape Parenting pledge
As a Duct Tape Parent, I pledge to
- Do my best
- Zip it
- Shut it
- Think first
- Avoid quick fixing
- Not feed the weed
- Quit my job as the maid
- Avoid interfering
- Let the kids handle it
- Forgive and move it along
- Model behaviors
- Pass on the cheap drama
- Stay emotionally available
- Stay cool, chill, and calm
- Allow new thinking
- Invest in the relationship
- Allow natural consequences
- Train my kids in self and life skills
If this all seems a bit radical and overwhelming, pick up a copy of Duct Tape Parenting, A Less is More Approach to Raising Respectful, Responsible, and Resilient Kids (Bibliomotion 2012) at your local bookstore or Amazon.com or enter to win this giveaway. Learn more about the foundational philosophy behind this parenting approach and the strategies that will help you to invest in the relationship with your child, to trust your child to navigate his life, to train your child in life and self-skills necessary to lead a healthy fulfilling adult life, to provide the opportunity for your child to practice and master these skills while living at home with you AND to still manage to get out of the house on time in the morning without tantrums or tears.
Enjoy the Journey! – Vicki
Listened to the CDs of the book on tape. Going to try the 5 day challenge. Still a little confused about it but will give it a try.
Hmmm… wish I had read this earlier in the morning… looks good!
i do see the logic in all this but am a complete control freak and also keep finding myself doing “what my parents did”. which is very old school. maybe along with a copy of the book you should include a roll of duct tape!
I know I need this. I nag. A lot. And I don’t want to nag.
My husband and I BOTH so need this. He is only now realizing that he needs to do something different in his parenting. I’ve realized my own limitations for a long time but Just.Cannot.Change. for longer than a day!!
So going to try this! After so many mornings of being late despite lots of nagging and screaming, this sounds glorious.
This is EXACTLY what I need to do with 5 year old! Thinking about a few ROLLS of duct tape! Sounds amazing! Can’t wait to find out more!
In the past few weeks, I’ve come to the realization that “zipping it” is my next big frontier in parenting. I am overdoing it, probably to compensate for the fear I have of doing it wrong or repeating legacy habits. Looking forward to reading this book!
Wow, the thought of not being able to talk to my kids freaks me out…which tells me I seriously need to back off. My husband and I are always doing, fixing, talking…I think this book may be exactly what we need. Thanks for the generous giveaway!!
I think I need this. it is so hard for me to keep my mouth shut 🙂
This sounds like an interesting approach to me — and thus far I only have one 2-year-old son. I’m already tired of how I sound reminding him over and over and over again not to do things like bang his fork or spoon on the kitchen table, and while I realize that he is only 2, I hear parents with older children nagging nagging nagging them all the time to do this or that. I would be interested in reading this book!
Oh my!! What a revolutionary concept!! Thanks for introducing me to this great resource, Meghan. Would love to win a copy, but plan to get a copy regardless. 🙂
Great advice. I’d love to read the whole book. Thanks for the excerpt!
What a great idea for letting your kids show you what they can do and to let them learn for themselves. It’s so true… no matter how others tell you what it will be like, it’s nothing like having your own experience to learn from even at my age! Thanks for the post.
I remember following you when you were doing the challenge, I find it totally crazy! I also get sick of hearing my own voice and hate the constant nagging but there is no way I would ever be able to duct tape my mouth shut. I agree NC are the way to go but I feel that there is so much pressure on us parents to make sure out kids are doing this and doing that and on time here and dressed apprpotiately there. I just find that it would be hhard to sit and let things just happen. I do love the idea of think first, I do forget to do that a lot it seems. quiting my job as the maid, I can not live in a disaster zone, I just feel my whole mojo is off when my house is in a complete dissaray. I would love to invest in my relationship with my kids more then being their coach/drill sergant.
I think this might do me some good. Especially with summer coming up and not much on the schedule!
I can’t think of anything better that I could learn to be a better mom than taping my nagging and sometimes yelling mouth shut. Thank you for introducing me to this book! And thank you for a great giveaway! 🙂
I keep TRYING to do figurative duct tape parenting (based on what I’ve read about the concept, not the book itself – yet), but more and more, I think I literally need the tape!!!
I’m a month late, but I’m hoping since there are no other comments that the book is still available! 🙂
Great interview!