Adele Faber, a former high school teacher who, with her Long Island neighbor Elaine Mazlish, wrote child-rearing blockbusters like “How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk” and “Siblings Without Rivalry,” which became bibles for generations of parents, died on April 24 in White Plains, N.Y. She was 96.
Her death, in an assisted living facility, was announced by her daughter, Joanna Faber.
The parenting guides Ms. Faber wrote with Ms. Mazlish have sold more than four million copies in North America alone, according to estimates by their publisher, Scribner. “How to Talk So Kids Will Listen” has been published in nearly 40 countries.
Both Ms. Faber and Ms. Mazlish were mothers of three living in Roslyn, N.Y., in the late 1960s when they began attending parenting lectures given by the prominent child psychologist Haim Ginott. The author of the influential book “Between Parent and Child” (1965), Dr. Ginott was known for his view, daring at the time, that parents should speak to their children as if they were equals in dignity, instead of scolding or criticizing them as inferiors.
Ms. Faber and Ms. Mazlish were instantly enthralled. “We joined for an eight-week course and we stayed for 10 years,” Ms. Faber said in a 1982 interview with The New York Times.
In his lectures, Dr. Ginott “spoke about methods of communication that could speak to a child’s heart as well as his mind,” Ms. Faber said in 1985, in another Times interview. “New ideas like how to express anger without insult or substitute a choice for a threat, or how to give a child in fantasy what you can’t give in reality.”
After the first lecture, Ms. Faber added, “I tried a few of his ideas with my own three kids and saw stunning results. I needed to know more.”
On a drive home from one lecture, she and Ms. Mazlish decided to spread the word about Dr. Ginott’s methods by writing their own book based on their experiences applying them. With his encouragement, they published the first of their seven books, “Liberated Parents, Liberated Children,” in 1974.
In that book, Ms. Mazlish said in a joint 1987 interview with The Times, “we shared our pain, our struggles, our ups and downs. We weren’t just telling people what to do as experts, but, having been there ourselves, we told them of our responses.”
Ms. Faber added, “It was not ‘Do this because you must,’ but ‘Here is our story and take what you can.’”
Their follow-up, “How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk” (1980), was a smash success. Broken into six “skill sets” with titles like “Alternatives to Punishment,” “Engaging Cooperation” and “Encouraging Autonomy,” it drew from years of the authors’ experiences running parenting workshops of their own.
In the skill set “Helping Children Deal With Their Feelings,” the authors counseled parents to acknowledge and name their children’s feelings while satisfying them in fantasy when doing so in reality was a non-starter.
The section featured a cartoon example of a fussy child at breakfast. When a child demands a cereal, say, Toastie Crunchies, that is not available, the authors recommended that a parent respond “I wish I had some in the house,” “I hear how much you want them,” “I wish I had the magic power to make a giant box appear.” Such responses, they said, could pivot a child to another idea: “Well, maybe I’ll have some Nifty Crispies.”
The book remains a go-to. In 2021, 41 years after its original publication, the author Lydia Kiesling wrote a paean to it in The New York Times Magazine under the headline “This Parenting Book Actually Made Me a Better Parent.” In the essay, she detailed how she used the book to navigate her relationship with her young daughter during the isolation and psychic stress of the coronavirus pandemic.
“For months she and I have found ourselves locked in an awful duet of upset and recrimination,” Ms. Kiesling wrote. “I yell; she yells; we both cry.” But, she wrote, when she discovered Ms. Faber and Ms. Mazlish’s book — or, as she referred to it, “the Book, as if it is a religious text” — it “made a quiet revolution in my home.”
Adele Meyrowitz was born on Jan. 12, 1928, in the Bronx, the youngest of three children of Morris Meyrowitz, a furrier, and Betty (Kamay) Meyrowitz, a seamstress. She grew up in the Soundview neighborhood.
After receiving a bachelor’s degree in theater and drama from Queens College and a master’s degree in education from New York University, Ms. Faber taught high school in Queens for eight years before moving to Roslyn.
She and her longtime co-author met at a great-books course at their local library, and it was Ms. Faber who initially pestered Ms. Mazlish to lend an ear to her new parenting guru. “Finally — I think to shut me up — she said, ‘Take me to your leader,’” Ms. Faber told The Times in 1987. “And here we are.”
“Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too” (1987) was another best seller and remains a parenting staple.
Ms. Faber also served on the faculty of the New School for Social Research in Manhattan and the Family Life Institute at the C.W. Post campus of Long Island University in Greenvale, N.Y.
In addition to her daughter, Ms. Faber is survived by her husband of 73 years, Leslie Faber; her sons, Carl and Abram; and seven grandchildren. Ms. Mazlish died in 2017.
The authors often cited academic research that they said backed up their approach. “We feel validated by the studies,” Ms. Faber told The Times in 1995, “but what we appreciate most is the response that we receive from around the world, the calls and letters from Japan to Nicaragua.”
They also noted the changing demographics among their followers. “Audiences have become larger and even more enthusiastic,” Ms. Faber said in the same interview. “In the early years, the majority were mothers. Now, about one-third are men.
“People welcome the new methods,” she continued. “They don’t want to repeat the same hurtful patterns they grew up with.”
“I remember once telling Haim Ginott that living according to his principles is a beautiful way to live,” Ms. Faber said, “but that it was very hard. I find myself starting, stopping, tripping over my own tongue. He replied: ‘To learn a new language is not easy. For one thing, you will always speak with an accent. But for your children it will be their native tongue.’”
The post Adele Faber, Who Helped to Change How Parents Talk to Children, Dies at 96 appeared first on New York Times.