Try and Make Me! Power Struggles: A Book of Strategies for Adults Who Live and Work with Angry Kids

This book focuses on the complex, and often incomprehensible, world of power struggles between adults and acting out kids in their care. Adults who could benefit from this book include parents, foster parents, public and special education teachers, therapists and counselors, child care staff and case workers. Topics include: who is really responsible for power struggles, why these struggles occur, the different reasons kids start them, what kids (as well as us as adults) ‘get’ from being in them, how to prevent them, and how to respond once they have started. The author discusses a range of techniques to prevent, avoid and defuse such struggles. These are some of the key strategies she and her colleagues have used with consistent success over the past twenty-seven years in both residential and day settings with thousands of defiant children and teens. This book is easy reading as well as a practical resource for parents and/or professionals who want to look at their own roles in the dynamics of power struggles with kids and expand their repertoire of positive responses.