‘Managing the Unmanageable Child’ is authored by my friend Dr PV Vaidyanathan, a Mumbai based child specialist. Vaidyanathan writes in an easy-to-understand style, his writings help us realise that in most cases, we possess the expertise to handle our problems ourselves; and we don’t always have to rush to a psychological or medical expert to solve our problems.

In this to-be-released book, Vaidyanathan has touched upon many subjects. I liked the chapter titled ‘The Child who is a Poor Eater’ and here his interesting observations are:

1)      More than half the visits mothers make to a child specialist are to solve the problem that their children are not eating adequately.

2)      While some women do not get alarmed if their child is a poor eater, its others comments on her child which get her worried— that the child is eating less, is thin or  looks weak.

3)      Quite often, the child’s tantrums and refusal to eat are a power game. When the mother acts as if she is not too bothered on how much the child eats, the child too realizes that eating can no longer be used as a bargaining tool to get entertained or to get things done.

The interesting chapters in the book include ‘The child who tells a lie’, ‘The child who hates to go to school’ and ‘The first child and sibling rivalry’. The book is a useful read for every parent—regardless of how manageable or unmanageable their children are. Vaidyanathan makes us realise that manageable is a vague term—because the issue is not whether or not the child is unmanageable; it’s about how the parents think of the easy and manageable as difficult and unmanageable; and their false belief that the unmanageable is easily manageable.