Psychotherapist’s Advice Is a Hit With Parents Who Go Buy the Book : Families: Don Fleming’s self-published guide to raising children defies the odds and becomes a big seller.

Most self-published books end up in the writer’s garage.

But more than a decade ago Beverly Hills psychotherapist Don Fleming self-published a guide to parenting that did something totally unexpected. It sold--and continues to sell.

First published in 1981, “How to Stop the Battle With Your Child” was picked up by mainstream publisher Prentice Hall the following year. Last year, an American Booksellers Assn. publication described it as one of the three best parenting books of the decade. At last count the book had sold almost 50,000 copies.

Fleming went on to write a sequel, “How to Stop the Battle With Your Teenager,” published in 1989. Fleming says he thinks he was able to beat the odds against self-publishing a successful book because of the public’s hunger for practical advice on raising children.

In his private practice, the 60-year-old psychotherapist says, parents are always asking concrete questions, like “What do I do when my kid acts up in the market?”

Instead of responding with theory, Fleming answers with specifics. In dealing with the market monster, for instance, he suggests setting rules before the trip instead of waiting until Junior is pulling cereal boxes off the shelves. Try telling him: “If you don’t follow the rules, we’re leaving the store and you’re going home and have a timeout.” The carrot option may work if the stick fails: “If you follow the rules at the store, we’ll get your favorite ice cream afterward.”

According to Fleming, the battle between parents and children is utterly natural, a result of the child’s desire to test parental limits as he or she struggles toward maturity. He also thinks it is natural for parents to be perplexed by the difficult little darlings. “Parents shouldn’t feel guilty,” he says. “They should appreciate how normal it is to be confused by their children’s behavior.”

Fleming describes his approach to parenting as “serious but lighthearted.” He pokes gentle fun at certain common but counterproductive parental styles. There is, for instance, the “Overtalker” who is so taken with his or her argument “that they fail to notice that the child has left the room and gone to bed.” There is also the “Helpless Parent.” A mother is particularly prone to this between 3 and 7 p.m. when the mounting pressures of the hours leading up to dinner and bedtime may cause her to crack and throw herself on her child’s mercy. Always a mistake, Fleming counsels. “The child realizes they’ve got you and becomes a maniac.”

Fleming, who does not have children, has been working with them since he was 17 and became a youth director at a YMCA. His private practice includes children of all ages as well as adults. Over the years, he says, “I’ve developed a great respect for how hard it is to be a parent. And I think the times make it harder. There are more real things to worry about now.” He finds today’s parents admirable in many respects, including their willingness to acknowledge their parenting failures to their children--something all but unheard of in the past, he says.

Whining comes up, as it so often does in talking about children. “I always like talking about whining because the way adults usually respond to kids is to whine back,” Fleming says with a laugh. “We seem to be more understanding about our own whining than our children’s whining, and frankly, developmentally, it’s more appropriate for a 3-year-old than a 33-year-old.”

To stop the whining, Fleming urges parents to be specific. Try: “I really want to hear what you have to say but I want to hear it in your regular voice.” If that fails, suggest that the whiner go off somewhere and whine to his or her heart’s content. It won’t last long because, Fleming points out, “it’s no fun to whine alone.”

Fleming, who has a Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia Pacific University, is working on a new book. Grounded in his work with children, it is called “The Great Pretenders: Why Men Deceive Women.” Fleming’s theory is that the tendency of some adult men to deceive women grows out of their early success outmaneuvering their mothers. “They find out that women give in.” In Fleming’s sure-to-be-controversial view, the difficulty that many little boys have with deferred gratification and impulse control may persist decades after kindergarten.