Do you ever feel as if you and your child speak different languages?

Does your teenager fly into a rage when you ask a simple question?

Does your toddler wage the Battle of Bedtime each night?

Here's help from bestselling communications expert Suzette Haden Elgin. As the mother of five and grandmother of nine, Dr. Elgin has spent a lifetime talking with kids both personally and professionally. In this refreshingly direct and down-to-earth book, she shows you how to talk to your child about anything and everything—positively, productively, and above all, peacefully. Her personal approach employs realistic parent/child scenarios and dialogues to illustrate how it is possible to have communication without confrontation.

Her techniques will help you:

• Be a better listener
• Speak firmly, yet compassionately
• Spot early warning signs such as anger, sulking, and moodiness
• Handle a wide variety of problems, from bedtime and bathtime encounters to more serious issues such as self-esteem, teen pregnancy, and drug abuse
• Give special attention to the needs of a technically savvy "cyberchild"

Set in the twenty-second century after the repeal of the Nineteenth Amendment, the novel reveals a world where women are once again property, denied civil rights, and banned from public life. In this world, Earth's wealth relies on interplanetary commerce, for which the population depends on linguists, a small, clannish group of families whose women breed and become perfect translators of all the galaxies' languages. The linguists wield power, but live in isolated compounds, hated by the population, and in fear of class warfare. But a group of women is destined to challenge the power of men and linguists. Nazareth, the most talented linguist of her family, is exhausted by her constant work translating for the government, supervising the children's language education in the Alien-in-Residence interface chambers, running the compound, and caring for the elderly men. She longs to retire to the Barren House, where women past childbearing age knit, chat, and wait to die. What Nazareth does not yet know is that a clandestine revolution is going on in the Barren Houses: there, word by word, women are creating a language of their own to free them of men's domination. Their secret must, above all, be kept until the language is ready for use. The women's language, Laadan, is only one of the brilliant creations found in this stunningly original novel, which combines a page-turning plot with challenging meditations on the tensions between freedom and control, individuals and communities, thought and action.

For some employees, verbal abuse can be the everyday language of doing business. Defending yourself from these verbal abusers-calmly, professionally, and successfully-can be crucial to your on-the-job success. Nationally recognized linguistics expert and author Suzette Haden Elgin applies her acclaimed techniques for combating verbal attacks to common workplace situations. Powerful yet unthreatening, her proven strategies will help you recognize and defend yourself from verbal abuse-everything from casual obscenities and racist or sexist language to sarcasm, cutting jokes, and subtle put-downs. Richly illustrated with fully dramatizes scenarios and real-world examples, Dr. Elgin's communication techniques will help you instantly take control of any verbal confrontation. You'll also learn how to avoid "malpractice of the mouth" and sexual harassment; communicate sensitively and clearly with non-native English speakers; and project a strong, straightforward, and trustworthy image. You'll find tips for handling sensitive issues via email and voice mail, advice on meeting the communication challenges that face home-based and virtual businesses, and plenty of "workouts" placed throughout the book to give you valuable opportunities to practice your new skills. The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense at Work is your roadmap through the potentially career-threatening minefields of workplace communication.

From Simon & Schuster, More on the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense is Suzette Haden Elgin's guide to disarm verbal attacks at work, at home, and in-between. Designed to help you defend yourself in any verbal context, More on the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense is your road map to becoming the cool, calm, and collected communicator you want to be.