Eli, I have been listening to your warm voice at every moment I have had spare (great success while doing housework and craft projects, not quite so successful during the lull times on nightshift in the operating theatres ). I'm at chapter 12 and already you have made such a huge difference to the way I relate to my beautiful babies! Especially our ADHD miss 8. I also am ADHD so escalating emotions are extremely tough, her tantrums are ODD style toward me and I learnt that the only way she would de-escalate was after I lost it and had a tantrum back at her- I can see it wasn't actually working to "resolve" anything, probably just scared her into changing the emotion rather than dealing with it. I was aware of this before but had no idea what to do about it. As you say, a lot of the advice out there is contradictory and they don't have any advice for what to do if the advice doesn't work. Yelling battles have been ruining my experience as a mum and wife . We're very open with each other as a family and have tried many times to adjust the way we communicate with each other but we always ended up back at the yelling and arguing cycle. We got rid of the punishment and reward system a long time ago and the kids know that we only insist on things due to consequences but we have had no success in getting things done without a fight, AKA "we can't get the kids to listen without yelling at them". At this stage, I have really connected with your wisdom of the "task focused mode" versus "connection focused" mode. This small but hugely significant change in my approach has soothed my heart immensely. It means I go in asking for my kids cooperation in tasks with the mindset that I love this little person, instead of "I know you're going to fight me on this but it needs to get done and I need to be hard on you from the start to get you to do it straight away because you're going to waste time avoiding the task and arguing with me". My new mindset, with thanks to you, means I take the time at the start of the task, without the panic, to set the little ones up to put them in charge of the task and let them know that I'll co-operate with them to get them whatever they need to succeed in the task. It's early days, but the introduction of calm in my heart during "business time" is so refreshing and promising.I have had tears listening to you. Your work is profoundly deep and healing. I have had some good realisations from other parenting books but none of them have had such a fundamental approach to adjusting the underlying causes of the problems, they pretty much just blamed the parents for the symptoms and offered bandaid strategies that didn't take into account that we are already in a habitual cycle and crazy life still goes on. We don't have the time and resources to sit down together and write complex behaviour flowcharts, time in motion studies and behaviour agreement contracts. We don't have any capacity to "discuss things with the child when they're not emotionally heightened". That's great advice, but my appointment diary is full, we could squeeze in a 5min chat at bedtime, except we're always late to bed and they're too tired, and the advice always says how important sleep is! Even if we can manage to get a conversation in, it's forgotten in the heat of the battle anyway! We don't have enough time to "get things done" as it is, let alone adding in more tasks. Your science and wisdom negates the need for scheduling and gives real solutions to help before and during the episode so I know exactly what approach to take at the time- right in the heat of the battle! I'm not having to guess what may have triggered the behaviour and who or what needs fixing to avoid it next time, I'm not even interested in guessing or fixing because we can work it out together, at the right time, with the right approach for us. Please be reassured that you have done a great thing that is already saving generations of kids. You have successfully got the nerd words out to the people, you have attached! Love your work . Thank you! Beck- Nurse specialist, mum of 3.

The tone of voice of this book is so supportive and acknowledging. A powerful resource for anyone's parenting journey, giving practical tools that are backed up by science. Honestly, I get tears in my eyes sometimes because of how seen I feel sometimes by reading this book. Plus, it's definitely funny and light too!