Alain Braconnier is notably the author of such immensely successful books as Les Filles et les Pères, Mères et Fils, Protéger son soi and Le Guide de l’adolescent. A physician and psychoanalyst, he heads a mental health association in Paris and teaches at the University of Paris-V.


What should you do when an infant becomes agitated, when a child demands your constant presence, or when an adolescent becomes confrontational? Parents, teachers, physicians and psychologists tend to agree that there are now more “difficult” children and adolescents than in the past.
Life today is increasingly governed by the pleasure rather than the reality principle. With 40 years’ professional experience behind him, Alain Braconnier has been able to follow two generations of parents who have been attracted to, but also disturbed by, contemporary educational ideas opposed to the overly strict models of the past.
These upheavals have often led to over-indulgence, while the failure of common sense has become a serious threat to education. Point-by-point, this book reviews past educational errors and offers new perspectives. Parenting must be reinvented in order to turn today’s children into tomorrow’s adults.

• All the evidence shows that children and adolescents have become increasingly difficult — we must therefore reinvent their education.
• An indispensable book for every parent in need of guidelines.
• Included here are numerous examples of educational situations followed by tailored advice (for infants, children, adolescents) based on three guiding principles: love, common sense and logic.