Well as a parent you dream about seeing your child launch successfully into adulthood we all do

you work so hard to prepare him or her for that big jump of leaving home but what if your son or daughter isn't listening

to your let's call them basic instructions it could very well mean that he or she has a

strong will they want to do it their way. If you're having difficulty

raising your son or daughter, we've got some help for you today. I'm John Fuller with

Dr. Danny Werther. He's vice president of parenting and youth here at focus on the family.

And let's go ahead and return to a conversation right now that Jim Daly and I had with author

Cynthia Tobias in which she gave some excellent advice for communicating with your strong-willed child.

Cynthia, for a parent to switch that gear, because here you are a mom and you're doing the diapers and then they're eating solid food and now you're

getting them ready for kindergarten you really got to flip a switch to parent

them slightly differently don't you because doing the chores is what I need you to do

take out the trash help with the dishes but to give them a problem to solve you got to be

thinking like a teacher almost and you know one of the things mentioned at the back of the book is you

don't have to do all this at once you don't have to change everything at once you know

maybe start with what one area that's really a problem and just work on it for a little bit and practice a little and you know

use your strong-willed friends or may even spouse as resources there's it's great to go

up to a strong-willed adult that you know and say you know I got a kid a lot like you

I need a little advice here and what's great and what I loved about doing the book is

just talking to other strong-willed minds that just either verified or expanded and said,

you know what really worked for me was?

And that'd be great.

Mm-hmm.

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