Didier Pleux, a psychologist and psychotherapist, is the director of the French Institute for Cognitive Therapy. He is the author of many highly successful works such as De l’enfant roi à l’enfant tyran, Manuel d’éducation à l’usage des parents and Un enfant heureux.

For many parents, educating young children is a difficult endeavour. Drawing on a common activity — the bedtime story — Didier Pleux shows parents how, by reading aloud the illustrated stories included in this book, they can evoke scenes and events from daily life that have posed problems.
The characters in these stories are like most children: they don’t want to stop playing, they won’t sit still and eat a meal, they refuse to take a nap. “Pleasure experts”, in the authors’ words, they try hard to avoid anything that is not pleasurable. Which is why a little mouse called Patoufou intervenes in the story to remind them of a few simple rules. At the end of each story, the rules are recapitulated, then followed by a message addressed specifically to parents.
Both entertaining and educational, this book focuses on what parents most often need: the capacity to tolerate frustration. If children are to grow up happily, they must learn to live with others and accept reality.

• A great psychologist shares his knowledge in a book for very young children.
• A read-aloud book to be shared in a family context that will help the child to develop and understand the meaning of effort and the sense of the Other.
• This book will help parents teach children to accept the inevitable frustration of some of their desires.