How can we stop kids from whining, avoid power struggles, keep communication channels open and show love for our children without spoiling them?

Raising well-behaved, considerate children requires learning how to balance firm discipline with equal doses of love and humor. In her new book Loving Without Spoiling, well-known parent educator and bestselling author of Loving Your Child Is Not Enough, Nancy Samalin provides tips and strategies for resolving a range of everyday challenges parents confront.

There's a wealth of good, solid advice here. Each of the 100 topics focuses on a situation that typically occurs in families. Actual parent/child dialogues help clarify the issues and illustrate ways to resolve common problems. In the section on power struggles, for example, the author describes how to tame toddlers' temper tantrums, how to transform defiance into cooperation and how to avoid being sidetracked by "whys. …