When the Naughty Step Makes Things Worse

How a book comes into being

In a week’s time, my book with Eliza Fricker, When the Naughty Step Makes Things Worse will be published. It's about parenting, when your child doesn't respond well to anything that the 'parenting experts' tell you to do. Starting with 'put them down drowsy but awake', passing quickly (and disastrously) through the Naughty Step and Time Out and onto 'firm and fair boundaries' or 'just take away their iPad'. It's parenting, for children who just haven't read the parenting manuals.

It's one of those books which might never have happened, if it wasn't for a serendipitous but often unexpected series of events. Due to covid, my family moved to Hove in 2020. My first book came out in 2021 and I joined Twitter. I don't know quite how Eliza found me but soon we were connected and I was seeing her fantastic illustrations in my Twitter feed, showing just how it feels to be the parent when nothing is going the way that you planned.

Then it turned out that she lived twenty minutes down the road, and she invited me to meet up to talk about a podcast she was working on. We sat outside a cafe, socially distanced, and talked. The podcast was made.

At around this time I was working on my second book and I suddenly thought how much better it would be with some of Eliza's illustrations. We added them in at the last minute.

Later in another cafe, we were talking about low demand parenting, and we had an idea for a series of webinars. Written by me and illustrated by Eliza, they would combine psychological knowledge and theory with lived experience and empathy for the very challenging job that parents do. They would be down-to-earth, relatable and chatty, the very antidote to the events which Eliza had attended when her child was really struggling. They would aim to give parents hope and the energy to carry on.

The Art of Low Demand Parenting webinars started in Dec 2022 and were immediately popular. We covered the topics parents asked us about - screens, food, behaviour, communication. And the other side of it - the worries, the guilt and the judgement which is never far away. What it's like to be a parent when your child doesn't behave in the way that everyone expects.

By the next summer we had put in a book proposal and I was working late at night again trying to get it all done. And now we are finally getting to the final strait. It is going to be published next week.

We would love you to preorder it and if you do, you will get a free ticket to a special webinar we are doing to celebrate the book.

Here's how.

1. Preorder the book from any bookseller.

2. Send us the proof of purchase on https://www.naomifisher.co.uk/is-it-all-my-fault.

3. Get a link to a free webinar ticket (plus recording).