As testament to the notion that raising youngchildren is no easy business , about 50 parents of preschool-aged children gathered at the New England Preschool Academy in Windsor Locks on Thursday , May 28 , to hear parent educator Bill Corbett’s ideas on raising disciplined , happy and cooperative children . Corbett is the author of “ Love , Limits and Lessons , ” a book that counsels parents on using discipline to raise cooperative children .

Opening the two-hour program , Corbett explained how he came to write his book and create his Cooperative Kids parent educator network . His father , he told his audience , was a featherweight boxer who carried on his hitting outside of the ring , abusing his wife and his eight children . Corbett said he vowed not to repeat his father’s behavior in raising his own children .

His oldest daughter , now the parent of two youngchildren herself , was almost a teenager when Corbett discovered “ what I should have been doing all along . ” From that discovery , he developed the program he previewed during his Windsor Locks presentation . “ Love , Limits and Lessons” is the title of his nine-hour parenting course , and the basis of his subsequent book of the same name . His two youngerchildren , he said , “ were the guinea pigs that I used the methods on , and I tried it over and over until I got it right . Because I knew I was on the right track . ”

Corbett brought out a toolbox that he used as a prop to get across the notion that parents have a set of tools they use to try to discipline their children . He easily got his audience to concede that they inherited their parenting tools from their own parents . His sample tool set included several oversize “ playing cards” such as the “ guilt card” and the “ time-out card . ” The other examples he offered up were a magic wand used hopelessly to obliterate undesirable behavior , the old-fashioned paddle when nothing else seems to work , an ice cream cone symbolic of parental bribery , and a megaphone to represent parents’ yellingand screaming .

“ Parents talk way too much , ” Corbett said . “ When children hear youtalking too much , they fall into something called parent deafness . ” He said it was very much like the nonsensical sound effect used in a Charlie Brown cartoon to represent the teacher’s voice when the students weren’t paying attention . To his audience of parents with very youngchildren , he said , “ Now is the time youwant to keep them engaged , so they’re listening to you. ”

The danger of rendering youngchildren parent-deaf , Corbett explained , is that in their teen years, they will be listening to negative peer groups instead of their parents .

To emphasize the point , Corbett played a short video in which comedienne Anita Renfro incorporated all the standard sayings a mother would use in a 24-hour period . The audience howled at the performance and the familiar reality of the over-used phrases set to the tune of the “ William Tell Overture . ”

Nancy and Jeff Johnson from East Granby sat in the back of the room with the youngestof their three children , their 6-month-old daughter . Like many of those in attendance , they had an older child who is a student at NEPSA in Windsor Locks . “ There were some good things to take out of it , ” Jeff Johnson said . “ We were brought up in the autocratic style , ” he said .

“ We’d like to take a different approach , ” wife Nancy added . They both felt encouraged by what they heard and planned to begin applying some of the techniques they learned from Corbett’s two-hour mini session .