The New Strong-Willed Child

July 1, 2004
In 1978, Dr. James Dobson penned the surprise bestseller The Strong-Willed Child, which has spawned a veritable cottage industry of books on how to parent those children who are more, shall we say, tenacious than other kids. Now, Dobson updates his classic with The New Strong-Willed Child: Birth Through Adolescence. The book has been completely revised, one of its most cheering features being the stories of the hindsight that comes when strong-willed children grow to be confident and mature adults. (One young man handed Dobson a personalized poem that read, "Roses are red, violets are blue. When I was a kid, I got spanked 'cause of you.") Several families are profiled in the book, and Dobson elucidates which strategies seem to work best and which do not. He also draws on new research about "inborn temperaments" and ADHD, discussing this in the context of what the Bible says about the formation of personality. Tyndale plans a 200,000-copy first print run. .