Before there was “How to Talk So Kids Will Listen.” Before the cartoon illustrations, the millions of copies sold, and the translations into thirty languages. Before Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish became household names in the parenting world, there was this book. “Liberated Parents, Liberated Children: Your Guide to a Happier Family” is the origin story. It is the raw, honest, sometimes messy account of two mothers who walked into a parenting workshop led by the legendary child psychologist Dr. Haim Ginott and walked out as fundamentally different parents.
If “How to Talk So Kids Will Listen” is the polished curriculum, “Liberated Parents, Liberated Children” is the journal. It is the diary of transformation, written not from the clean distance of expertise but from the trenches of daily motherhood. It is the sound of two women unlearning everything they thought they knew about raising children and discovering, through trial and error and plenty of failure, a better way.
Published in 1974, six years before its more famous sibling, this book has lived in the shadow of “How to Talk” for decades. That is a shame. Because while “How to Talk” gives you the skills, “Liberated Parents, Liberated Children” gives you the why. It gives you the struggle. It gives you the permission to be imperfect. And for many parents, that permission is the thing they need most desperately.
The Setup: Two Mothers Walk Into a Workshop
The book opens with Faber and Mazlish as young mothers in the late 1960s, struggling with the same things every parent struggles with. Their children fight, whine, defy, and melt down. The mothers yell, threaten, bribe, and feel guilty. They love their children fiercely and feel like they are failing them daily. The gap between the parent they want to be and the parent they are at seven o’clock on a Tuesday evening feels unbridgeable.
Then they discover Dr. Haim Ginott.
Ginott was a clinical psychologist and author whose books “Between Parent and Child” and “Between Parent and Teenager” were quietly revolutionary. His central insight was that the language parents use with their children shapes not just behavior but identity. The words you say to a child become the voice inside their head. If those words are critical, shaming, and dismissive, the child internalizes a critic. If those words are respectful, empathetic, and honest, the child internalizes an ally.
Faber and Mazlish enrolled in Ginott’s parenting group and spent years studying with him. “Liberated Parents, Liberated Children” is the chronicle of that education, told through their own experiences as they tried to apply Ginott’s principles in real time with real children in real kitchens with real messes on the floor.
The Format: Story, Not Manual
This is the first and most important thing to understand about this book. It is not structured like “How to Talk So Kids Will Listen.” There are no cartoon illustrations. There are no neat skill summaries or practice exercises. There are no bullet points or step-by-step instructions.
Instead, it is a narrative. It reads like a memoir. Faber and Mazlish tell stories from their own homes, their own failures, their own moments of breakthrough and backslide. They describe conversations with Ginott in his workshop, where he challenged their assumptions and offered alternative responses that seemed impossibly simple and yet felt revolutionary.
This format is both the book’s greatest strength and its most common criticism. Parents who come to this book expecting the clean, practical structure of “How to Talk” may feel frustrated by the meandering narrative style. But parents who are willing to slow down and read it as a story will find something that no how-to manual can offer: the lived experience of change. You do not just learn what to say. You watch two real women learn it, stumble, fail, try again, and gradually become the parents they wanted to be. That process is deeply validating for anyone who has ever felt like they should be further along in their parenting journey than they are.
The Core Principles Through Story
While the book does not organize its wisdom into labeled skills, the core principles emerge clearly through the accumulated stories. They are the same principles that would later be formalized in “How to Talk,” but here they appear in their raw, unpolished form.
Feelings Come First
The most recurring theme in the book is the primacy of feelings. Ginott taught Faber and Mazlish that when a child expresses an emotion, the parent’s first job is not to fix, redirect, or correct. The first job is to acknowledge.
Faber tells a story about her son coming home furious about a friend who wronged him. Her instinct was to offer solutions, to play devil’s advocate, to minimize the conflict. Ginott’s teaching whispered in her ear. She simply said, “That must have really hurt.” Her son’s entire posture changed. The anger softened. He talked more. He eventually arrived at his own solution, one far better than anything she would have suggested.
The lesson is not that acknowledgment magically solves problems. The lesson is that acknowledgment creates the emotional space in which problem-solving becomes possible. A child who feels unheard is a child in emotional lockdown. A child who feels heard is a child whose brain is open for business.
This principle is illustrated dozens of times throughout the book, in scenarios ranging from trivial (a child upset about a lost toy) to significant (a child struggling with peer rejection and self-worth). Each time, the pattern is the same. The parent’s instinct to fix is replaced by the discipline to listen. And each time, the outcome is better than the fix would have been.
The Danger of Labels
Ginott was fierce on the subject of labeling children, and this theme runs through the book like a red thread.
Every time a parent says “You’re so lazy,” “You’re the smart one,” “Why are you always so dramatic,” or even “You’re such a good girl,” they are cementing an identity onto a developing human being. The child absorbs the label and begins to organize their behavior around it. The “lazy” child stops trying. The “smart” child avoids challenges that might prove them otherwise. The “dramatic” child performs bigger and bigger emotions because that is who they have been told they are.
Faber recounts a painful moment when she caught herself calling one of her children “the difficult one” in conversation with a friend, within earshot of the child. The look on the child’s face taught her more than any workshop could. That label, spoken casually, had landed like a verdict.
Ginott’s alternative was to describe behavior without characterizing the person. Instead of “You’re so messy,” say “I see clothes on the floor that need to be picked up.” Instead of “You’re such a good boy,” say “You put your dishes away without being asked. That was really helpful.” The behavior is addressed. The identity is left free.
This principle anticipates by decades the research on growth mindset that Carol Dweck would later popularize. Ginott understood intuitively what Dweck would prove empirically: that labeling a child’s character, even positively, constrains their development. Describing their actions liberates it.
Praise That Empowers vs. Praise That Entraps
Closely related to the labeling principle is Ginott’s approach to praise, which Faber and Mazlish explore at length through personal anecdotes.
Ginott argued that global praise, statements like “You’re wonderful” or “You’re the best,” creates dependency and anxiety. The child becomes addicted to the parent’s approval and simultaneously terrified of losing it. They perform for the label rather than acting from internal motivation.
The alternative is what Ginott called “appreciative praise.” You describe what you see and what you feel, and you let the child supply the evaluation.
Mazlish tells a story about her daughter showing her a drawing. Her instinct was to say “Beautiful! You’re such a talented artist!” Instead, she described what she saw: “I see a girl standing in a field of flowers, and you’ve drawn each flower differently. And the sky has three different shades of blue.” Her daughter looked at the drawing, then back at her mother, and said quietly, “Yeah. I’m pretty good at this.”
The pride was genuine because it was self-generated. The child evaluated her own work based on specific, descriptive feedback rather than accepting a global judgment from an authority figure. The confidence that results from this process is sturdier and more durable than the confidence built on external validation.
Anger Without Destruction
One of the most liberating aspects of the book is its treatment of parental anger. Ginott did not teach parents to suppress their anger. He taught them to express it without destroying the child.
Faber is bracingly honest about her own rage. She describes moments of screaming at her children, moments of saying things she immediately regretted, moments of being so overwhelmed by frustration that she wanted to walk out the door and never come back. She does not present herself as a serene, enlightened parent who has transcended negative emotions. She presents herself as a human being who gets angry and is learning to handle it better.
Ginott’s framework for anger has three components. First, you acknowledge your own feeling. “I am furious right now.” Second, you describe the situation that triggered it without attacking the child’s character. “When I walk into the kitchen and see the mess I specifically asked to be cleaned up, I feel disrespected.” Third, you state what you need. “I need this cleaned up before dinner.”
What you do not do is assassinate the child’s character. “You’re so irresponsible. You never listen. What’s wrong with you?” These statements may feel satisfying in the moment, but they land on the child like verdicts on their worth as a human being. The mess can be cleaned up. The feeling of being fundamentally defective lingers for years.
This teaching gave Faber and Mazlish, and through them millions of readers, permission to be angry without permission to be cruel. That distinction is one of the most important a parent can learn.
Autonomy and Respect
Throughout the book, Ginott consistently pushed his students toward granting children more autonomy and more respect than was customary in the parenting culture of the time.
He challenged the idea that children should do things “because I said so.” He challenged the practice of making decisions for children that children were capable of making themselves. He challenged the assumption that respect is something children must earn from adults rather than something adults owe to children by default.
Faber tells multiple stories about learning to step back. Letting her child struggle with a zipper instead of zipping it for her. Letting her child make a choice she disagreed with, like wearing a mismatched outfit to school, and discovering that the world did not end. Letting her child fail at something and sitting with the discomfort of not rescuing.
Each of these moments was a small death of the controlling instinct and a small birth of trust. Ginott taught that every time you do something for a child that the child could do for themselves, you communicate incompetence. Every time you step back, you communicate faith.
The Imperfection Is the Point
What makes this book uniquely powerful is that Faber and Mazlish do not pretend to be perfect practitioners of Ginott’s method. They fail constantly. They yell when they should listen. They label when they should describe. They rescue when they should step back. They lecture when they should be silent.
And then they try again.
This honesty is the beating heart of the book. It gives every reader who has ever felt like a failure as a parent the most important message in all of parenting literature: you do not have to be perfect. You have to be willing to repair.
Ginott taught that the relationship between parent and child is not defined by any single interaction. It is defined by the pattern. If the pattern is one of genuine effort, honest acknowledgment of mistakes, and a persistent return to respect and empathy, the relationship will thrive even through the inevitable ruptures.
This is repair. And repair, as modern attachment research has confirmed, is not just acceptable. It is actually the mechanism through which children develop secure attachment. A child who watches a parent lose their temper, apologize honestly, and try to do better next time learns something profound: that relationships can survive conflict, that mistakes are not catastrophic, and that people can change.
The Loss of Ginott
There is a poignant thread that runs through the later chapters of the book. Dr. Haim Ginott was battling cancer during much of the period the book covers. Faber and Mazlish write about his declining health with the grief of students who know they are losing their teacher too soon.
Ginott died in 1973 at the age of 51, one year before this book was published. He never saw the full impact of his work. He never knew that two mothers from his workshop would carry his ideas to millions of families around the world. He never knew that his principles would be validated by decades of subsequent research in developmental psychology, neuroscience, and attachment theory.
The book serves, in part, as a tribute to his legacy. And that tribute gives the text an emotional weight that a standard parenting manual cannot achieve. You are not just learning techniques. You are receiving a gift passed from a brilliant, dying man to two determined women to you.
How This Book Compares to How to Talk
The question most readers will have is straightforward: if I have already read “How to Talk So Kids Will Listen,” do I need this book?
The answer depends on what you need.
If you need skills and techniques delivered in a clean, practical format, “How to Talk” is the better book. It is more organized, more concise, and more immediately actionable.
If you need inspiration, permission, and the courage to keep trying, “Liberated Parents, Liberated Children” is the better book. It is more personal, more emotional, and more honest about the difficulty of change.
If you have read “How to Talk” and found yourself struggling to implement the techniques consistently, this book may be the missing piece. It shows you what implementation actually looks like, including the failures, the backslides, and the gradual, imperfect progress. It normalizes the struggle in a way that “How to Talk,” with its clean examples and tidy solutions, does not always do.
The ideal approach is to read both. Read “Liberated Parents” first for the heart and the why. Then read “How to Talk” for the structure and the how.
The Honest Critique
The book is a product of its era. The language, the family structures, and the cultural assumptions reflect the early 1970s. Mothers are the primary parents. Fathers appear rarely. The families are suburban and homogeneous. Readers from different backgrounds will need to translate.
The narrative format, while emotionally powerful, can feel unfocused. There is no index, no summary of key points, and no quick-reference guide. If you want to revisit a specific concept, you will need to skim through stories to find it.
The book does not address children with special needs, neurodevelopmental differences, or trauma histories in any meaningful way. Ginott’s principles are broadly applicable, but their application for children with autism, ADHD, or attachment disorders requires adaptation that this book does not provide.
Who Should Read This Book
Parents who feel like they are failing and need to know they are not alone should read this book before anything else. It is the most compassionate parenting book ever written.
Parents who have read “How to Talk” and want deeper understanding of the philosophy behind the techniques will find this book illuminating.
Parents who are interested in Haim Ginott’s original work but find his clinical writing style inaccessible will find Faber and Mazlish’s storytelling to be the perfect bridge.
Anyone who believes that parenting is not just about raising children but about growing as a human being will find this book profoundly rewarding.
The Final Verdict
“Liberated Parents, Liberated Children” is not the most practical parenting book on the shelf. It is not the most organized. It is not the one you will reach for when you need a quick script for a tantrum in the grocery store.
But it might be the most important one you ever read.
Because before you can change the way you speak to your child, you have to change the way you see your child. Before you can change the way you see your child, you have to change the way you see yourself. And this book, with all its rawness and honesty and imperfection, shows you exactly how that change happens. Not in a single blinding moment of enlightenment, but in a thousand small, messy, human moments of trying, failing, and trying again.
Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish did not write this book as experts. They wrote it as mothers in process. And that is precisely what makes it timeless.
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