The Whole-Brain Child
Twelve strategies, plainly set out, for talking to a child whose reasoning has temporarily left the building. Practical without being thin — it explains the why before the how.
The premise is that a child in distress is not so much being difficult as being temporarily unavailable, and that the adult's first job is to reach the part still listening before making any argument at all.
What lifts it above the genre is the order of the explanation. The reasoning comes first and the technique second, so the strategies survive contact with a situation the book did not anticipate.
The illustrations are a little relentless and the tone occasionally over-warm. Neither is a reason to skip it. Read the first half slowly; the second half will then largely write itself.