Today’s blog is from clinical psychologist and acclaimed author of several parenting books – Oliver James. He writes about his new book ‘Love Bombing’ and how parents can help their child overcome emotional difficulties. We have ten copies of the book to giveaway. Simply leave your comment below to be in with a chance of winning a copy.
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Perhaps your child is a bit troubled in just one respect, like a little shy or sometimes over-demanding. Maybe he or she has much more numerous and serious problems, like severe temper tantrums at the age of 10, or being paralysed by groundless fears. Either way, Love Bombing can help – and my new book, ‘Love Bombing: Reset Your Child’s Emotional Thermostat’, shows how.
The child’s problem is almost never the fault of parents, who are only doing their best. Because of one misfortune or another, or a chain of them, the child’s basic brain chemistry is in need of adjustment, usually only a small one.
One of the most astonishing and significant scientific discoveries of the last ten years is that children’s brains are much more flexible – malleable – than previously believed. We have an emotional thermostat, and luckily it is a thermostat.
Just as you can alter the amount of heating or air-conditioning in your home, so you can adjust your child’s brain. Of course, making the change takes more effort than just turning a dial, which is where Love Bombing comes in: you do not have to agonize about what went wrong in the past or beat yourself up about that stuff – the joy of Love Bombing is you can just get on with putting things right.
Love Bombing gives your child a very intense, condensed experience of feeling completely
loved and completely in control. The period during which this is done can be 48 hours (two nights), 24 hours (one night), a single day, or shorter bursts. Whichever period you use, you subsequently rekindle that experience daily for half an hour.
During the time in this zone, the child is told it is in charge and can do almost whatever it likes. You also lavish love on it.
It might sound bonkers to do that if your child is badly behaved or you are just sick of being messed about by its nastiness and wilfulness, like rewarding bad behaviour. But oddly enough, the 100 or so parents who have done various versions of it say otherwise. It has taken off worldwide.
Dramatic shifts result in the child’s personality and behaviour. When it comes to dealing with disobedient or shy or clingy or aggressive or impatient children, love and control, it seems, really are the answer. What is more, because so many parents are, or have had periods of, living very busy or miserable or complicated lives, most of us need to reconnect with our children from time to time. Love Bombing does the job. Parents report it has radically favourable effects on their relationship with the problem child.
The Love Bombing need cost nothing, financially. In my book I describe many cases where they did it at home or found ingenious ways of doing it in short bursts.
You can find reports of parents who have done it already on the web (google ‘oliver james love bombing’ for thousands of examples): Here’s one example.
Also there are newspaper reports of the experience, eg:
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/255817/It-took-one-day-to-change-my-son-s-bad-behaviour
If you have tried it let me know what you think or if it sounds interesting and you have questions, I would love to hear them.
My book with 20 case histories, Love Bombing – Reset Your Child’s Emotional Thermostat is published by Karnac Books and available at good l bookshops (priced at £9.99). For further discussion of Love Bombing go to www.lovebombing.info
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Win……win…..win.
If you would like to win a copy of the new book ‘Love Bombing – Reset Your Child’s Emotional Temperature then simply leave a comment and we will pick 10 winner at random from all comments received by midnight on 31st October.
I think this is a great concept. My husband and I both work full time and immediately see the difference when we make a concerted effort to spend time purely having fun with the boys. I would love to have a bit more information about the practicalities of apply this method when you have two (or more) children as it could obviously be a bit counter productive if one feels the other is getting all the attention.
This book sounds like a really interesting book.
Isn’t this what some of us call good parenting? How truly sad that we need to show intense love for 2 days to make up for the lack of love the other days. How about giving parents time, support and encouragement to give love on a daily sustained basis. We used to call it nurturing.
I agree Tracie but spending time with our children, holding them, listening to them, nurturing them, has been so down-graded. Its the down-side of all the positives that have come out of the feminist movement.
Would love to give this ago with my 2. DD is less troublesome but much more strongminded and prone to tantrums and DS just ignores us (its like he’s deaf to our shouts of “no”) and always manages to find the most destructive activity to take part in. Any tips for love bombing twins who are not yet 2? Presumably this works better one on one but we are usally all 3 of us together.
I really like Oliver James, How They F*ck You Up, and How Not to F*ck Them Up, were both great reads. I like the way James does not ‘blame’ parents – the business of life can sometimes mean that unwittingly we don’t give children enough attention etc, no one’s fault, which can lead to demanding behaviour etc. So the principals of love bombing help readdress the balance, so everyone is happier! It’s also reassuring to know that the brain development of a child, the neural connections, are not set in stone – so that as a child’s behaviour changes from unhelpful to positive (owing to the impact of the parent’s attention/behaviour), this changes the brain chemistry. This turns the saying ‘a leopard never changes its spots’ on its head – people (children and adults) with the right therapy, course of action, can change.
This sounds so good and might even work. Jane
Love bombing sounds great, my son has been in and out of hospitals constantly over the last 5 years due to asthma and severe allergic eye disease, so its been a 24 hour round the clock practical relationship in checking his symptoms and giving him medicines, to the point where we both become so fed up we could and do scream. On top of this my 2 year old daughter has asthma too, so it would be nice to give my son and daughter a love bomb so we can reconnect outside these dominant health issues.
also behaviour is never the fault of the parents?? I beg to differ Oliver you’re trying to sooth consciences which need challenging not savlon. Children do what We allow the to what WE teach them to and what WE, because we are so wrapped up in our jobs our careers and our lives, let go. When are we going to stop pandering to parents and tell them YOUR CHILD IS YOUR FAULT. Clever marketing strategy but no solution. Show me any Early years practitioner or teacher who agrees? (unless their is a medical condition) You can point out any child’s parents because they behave the same way the children do, or they dont care enough to spend the time correcting and giving. Nurture a child to behaviour it wont just happen, hence the need for ‘bombing’
Nice work Mr James. A Question for all the children’s service professionals out there – what parallels do you see with child-centred practice?
I think this book sounds interesting but I wonder if there is age restrictions for is to work.
I can really see how this wld work. My eldest is a highly sensitive child & I can always tell when I jave not been attending her needs (be it from work commitments, attending the littlest 1 or being tired) but our mummy daughter dates really pull us back on track…sometimes it takes all day, sometimes just a couple of uninterrupted hours…but it always works. As a counsellor I am interested in the psychology behind this & how it could work in child/family counselling.
This sounds an interesting read. Before becoming a mother, I nearly always attributed bad behaviour in children, to poor parenting. Since having my own children, I realise that this may not always be the case at all. I have 2 DS and consider myself a loving, fair, affectionate, time-giving, consistent mum. My elder son is often ‘difficult’ whereas my younger son is certainly a ‘pleaser’.
I look forward to finding out about love-bombing and will certainly give it a go with my troubled little man. I agree that parents need to take responsibility for the behaviour of their children. Reading this book is just one way of doing so.
I would be really interested in reading this book. My eldest daughter is a sensitive and bright little soul who although perfectly behaved at school or other people’s houses turns into a demon child at home with me. I am sure that this is mainly due to lack of attention what with demanding (although easier) little sister and working parents. Like one of the other commenters I would be interested to know how it would impact your other kids. I would really like to give this a try though- def sounds interesting.
Sounds a very interesting theory. I love this guy and have read his other books which i thoroughly recommend. It’s brilliant that we are starting to know much more about a child’s brain and we can adapt as necessary.
I think this is a helpful technique for parents- whether they stay at home or have to use childcare when out at work. We will read previous books also by Oliver now that they have been recommended. Joanne Loughlin
Would really like to win a copy of this book for tips on helping my daughter with shyness.
This looks fantastic. As an ‘outnumbered’ mother of three I am always looking for ways to spend more quality time with each of them. Please consider me for the book!
I noticed a marked improvement in my relationship with my eldest son this summer when I made a conscious decision, as a yoga teacher, to be more often “fully present” in my time with him. I realised that too often I was trying to park him to one side while I got on with other stuff, such as cooking, cleaning, checking emails from clients, getting some paid work done… When I said, often, “I’ll be back in a minute,” let’s face it, I was lying.
He’s into lots of boyish things I don’t find interesting – fighting, wrestling, football, soldiers, computer games – so part of the the success was finding things I could genuinely engage in with interest that he really wanted to do eg ice skating, playing poker (!), monopoly, having a “dance off” together…
Hard not to let his little brother feel left out, so that needed handling, but I certainly found the big one wanting to talk to me more about stuff on his mind and generally being more amenable to the needs of people around him. Is this an example of love bombing?