Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Parents (or parents to be) - Buy This Book!
William Sears and his wife Martha, a pediatrician and a nurse respectively, have written an excellent book. Although raising eight children does not make one an expert in child rearing, the personal examples they provide prove that they are. They also use real-life examples of parents and children they have met in their pediatric practice and also back their examples up with references to medical research.When my daughter was born six months ago my wife and I followed our gut and cared for our baby the way we FELT was right. We spent a lot of time with her, spoke to her all the time, and did not ignore her when she cried. But I wasn't sure if we were doing the right thing. Upon reading The Successful Child we were relieved because the authors promoted a method in line with ours, and we used the book to refine our method further. Most importantly, the book also helped us to understand our baby's behavior. For example, babies are not trying to manipulative us when they cry, they are communicating their needs to us. Ignore their cries and you are essentially teaching your child that their needs will not be met and that their attempts at communicating with you are futile, so they may stop communicating. This may result in a quieter child (which some books advocate) but at what cost?
The book is a little bit repetitive at times and I wish they would have listed the sources for the research they cite, but do not let this stop you from purchasing an excellent book...
Rating: - Powerful Advice for Parents and Child Care Pros
I bought this book and "The Child Whisperer" by Matt Pasquinilli on the advice of a professional. I was having difficulty getting my child to listen and follow through with simple tasks. It was affecting her school too. She is such a wonderful child, so kind and caring. The problem was that she gets distracted easily, and daydreams too much. "The Child Whisperer" was so profound in its simplicity. It created a foundation of basic skills that changed my relationship with my child. The man who recommended these two books suggested I read and reread "The Child Whisperer" first, then after trying the techniques within it for a few weeks, I was supposed to start reading "The Successful Child:What Parents Can Do to Help Their Kids Turn Out Well." Fantastic advice!!! "The Successful Child" is chock full of easy to use advice and insights that will build your child's confidence and esteem. All children are wonderful and start out completely innocent. As parents, we can use all the help we can get to raise happy and healthy kids. This book helps!
Rating:  - If You've Read One, You've Read Them All
This book contains a lot of practical advice on how to foster desirable, pleasant behaviors and attitudes in children, which naturally contribute to their success in life. However, it has several fundamental flaws in its execution. The first and biggest is that, as many other reviewers have noted, the entire book is little more than a propaganda piece for attachment parenting. Because of this, there is never a moment in the book where he addresses ANY of the challenges his theories have faced. It is also filled with endless gross generalizations such as "The connected child will do what's right because doing what's wrong makes him FEEL wrong." ["Connected child" is his term for children who are raised according to his dictates. If you disagree with any of his tactics, you're in danger of raising a "disconnected" i.e. sociopathic failure of a child.) And "Children who are on the receiving end of sensitive parenting become sensitive themselves." Ad nauseum. Literally. The book is filled with obsequious overgeneralizations. There are dozens of little "interviews" from, I guess we're supposed to believe, patients (although the speakers are NEVER identified, making it very confusing when the sidebar refer to "our son Matthew" while knowing Dr. Sears has a son Matthew too). These "interviews" produce hysterically unbelievable and melodramatic accounts of miraculously empathic (and boy howdy, ARTICULATE!) 2 year olds, shrewd psychological insight imparted by kindergarteners, etc. Oh, and of course, the book is riddled with obliquely validating comments such as "Research has shown," yet the book fails to have a bibliography or reference section. One eventually has to question why the book ends up seeming more like a sales pitch for attachment parenting than any real compilation of advice. As the parent of a 6yo child with high-functioning autism who DID/does practice many of the things the Sears deem as "attachment parenting" to the letter, I can tell you that while I don't disagree that his child-sensitive approach to parenting does engender trust and emotional intimacy between parent and child, it is in NO way a blueprint for raising "successful" children, nor is it a recipe for producing any kinds of desirable traits in your children. There is little room for variables in Dr. Sears' tract, if any. I don't think following these practices would hurt any child, but I think that the claims Dr. Sears makes are, at best, spurious, and should be questioned and challenged a lot more than they currently are.
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