Why Is My Child in Charge?: A Roadmap to End Power Struggles, Increase Cooperation, and Find Joy in Parenting Young Children

Solve toddler challenges with eight key mindshifts that will help you parent with clarity, calmness, and self-control.

In Why is My Child in Charge?, Claire Lerner shows how making critical mindshifts--seeing children’s behaviors through a new lens --empowers parents to solve their most vexing childrearing challenges. Using real life stories, Lerner unpacks the individualized process she guides parents through to settle common challenges, such as throwing tantrums in public, delaying bedtime for hours, refusing to participate in family mealtimes, and resisting potty training. Lerner then provides readers with a roadmap for how to recognize the root cause of their child’s behavior and how to create and implement an action plan tailored to the unique needs of each child and family.

Why is My Child in Charge? is like having a child development specialist in your home. It shows how parents can develop proven, practical strategies that translate into adaptable, happy kids and calm, connected, in-control parents.

Claire Lerner, MSW, is a licensed clinical social worker and child development specialist. She served as the Director of Parenting Resources at ZERO TO THREE for more than 18 years. Claire has also been a practicing clinician for 33 years, partnering with parents to do the detective work of decoding their children’s behavior to solve their most vexing childrearing challenges. She also provides training to local preschools and pediatric residents. Claire is the author of hundreds of parenting resources, including books, blogs, podcasts and videos. She writes a column for PBS Kids and her work has been published by multiple parenting publications. She has served as a content expert for numerous national daily newspapers. Claire is the mother of two very spirited children, Sam (30) and Jess (28), and two step-children, Justin (30) and Sammy (27). She lives in Bethesda, Maryland with her husband and two, also very spirited, pups.