Parents and Families: Recommended Books

After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s, rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why? In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults.

What if parenting were an act of social justice? In this part story-telling, part self-inquiry book, authors and therapists Jaya Ramesh and Priya Saaral situate parenting children of color with neurodivergence within the context of various interlocking systems of oppression including settler colonialism, White supremacy, ableism, and capitalism.

In this groundbreaking book where neuroscience meets love and logic, parents are given practical tools to help children of all ages go from behavioral problems like defiance, meltdowns, and power struggles to being: Responsible, confident, kind, and resilient. Better prepared to make good decisions. More focused and motivated. Better able to have healthy relationships.

Psychologists Anne Hilde Vassbø Hagen and Joanne Dolhanty explain everything you need to know about your child's anger and how to manage it. Anger can be normal and healthy when it enables us to stand up for ourselves and defend against injustice. However, it can also lead to aggression--even violence--while also hiding other, more vulnerable emotions. For instance, an angry child may be hiding embarrassment, shame, disappointment, sadness, loneliness, or fear. As a parent, it is your job to help your child understand their anger, express it in an appropriate way, and address the underlying need.

With the right information, parents can help children to overcome their anxiety, guiding any child to lessen their worrying and reduce their avoidance of challenging tasks. Childhood anxiety is much more prevalent these days, and parents and carers need to be able to help their kids to prevent dangerous escalation.

An understanding of Child Development is necessary for early childhood students as it underpins all early year's practice and curricula. This book provides students with an in-depth understanding of the research, theory and current practice, supporting them through a complex area. Offering a fresh take, this book examines child development through a range of disciplines including psychology, education, sociology, anthropology and philosophy.

In Class, Land takes us with her as she finishes college and pursues her writing career. Facing barriers at every turn including a byzantine loan system, food insecurity, the judgments of professors and fellow students who didn't understand the demands of attending college while under the poverty line--Land finds a way to survive once again, finally graduating in her mid-thirties. Class paints an intimate and heartbreaking portrait of motherhood as it converges and often conflicts with personal desire and professional ambition.

Through an empathetic and positive approach to interpersonal communication, this book guides readers to build on the skills they already possess to communicate-and connect-with others. This book helps readers find a way to communicate that will help build understanding regardless of each party's perspective.

In teenagers, powerful emotions come with the territory. As teens contend with with academic pressure, social media stress, worries about the future, and concerns about their own mental health, it's easy for them--and their parents--to feel anxious and overwhelmed. The Emotional Lives of Teenagers gives parents the concrete, practical information they need to steady their teens through the bumpy yet transformational journey into adulthood.

The definitive book on helping kids navigate growing up in a world where nearly every moment of their lives can be shared and compared. With social media and constant connection, the boundaries of privacy are stretched thin. Growing Up in Public shows parents how to help tweens and teens navigate boundaries, identity, privacy, and reputation in their digital world.

In this book, Dr. Robyn takes you through the whole spectrum of kids' curious questions, giving you the strategies and scripts to prepare you for life's most challenging conversations. That way your kids get age-appropriate information straight from you, their trusted source, rather than from peers, the media, or the internet. You'll learn how to develop calm, well-thought-out answers to tricky questions on subjects including- Death Sex Friendship Divorce Money And more!

In Never Enough, award-winning reporter Jennifer Breheny Wallace investigates the deep roots of toxic achievement culture, and finds out what we must do to fight back. Drawing on interviews with families, educators, and an original survey of nearly 6,000 parents, she exposes how the pressure to perform is not a matter of parental choice but baked in to our larger society and spurred by increasing income inequality and dwindling opportunities.

How the power of peers and peer culture shapes individual behavior and future success The effect of peers is not just a story about kids; peers can also affect adult behavior. Noted sociologists Syed Ali and Margaret M. Chin take readers on a tour of how our peers, and the peer cultures they create, shape our behavior in schools and the workplace.

It's time to parent smarter, not harder. Filled with scientifically based and eminently actionable advice and strategies, Raising a Kid Who Can boils down the ten essential things that every child needs to thrive.

How teens navigate a networked world and how adults can support them. What are teens actually doing on their smartphones? Contrary to many adults' assumptions, they are not simply "addicted" to their screens, oblivious to the afterlife of what they post, or missing out on personal connection. They are just trying to navigate a networked world.

Learn how to communicate with compassion and choose language that reflects your personal values and aims with this essential guide to Nonviolent Communication. Judith Hanson Lasater and Ike Lasater, long-term students of yoga and Buddhism, had studied the concepts of satya (truth) and the Buddhist principle of right speech for years but it was not until they began practicing Marshall Rosenberg's techniques of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) that the concept of speech as a spiritual practice became real for them.

A revelatory tale of how the human brain develops, from conception to birth and beyond. By the time a baby is born, its brain is equipped with billions of intricately crafted neurons wired together through trillions of interconnections to form a compact and breathtakingly efficient supercomputer. Zero to Birth takes you on an extraordinary journey to the very edge of creation, from the moment of an egg's fertilization through each step of a human brain's development in the womb--and even a little beyond.

Inside, you'll find practical guidance for: Providing the support and structure teens need (while still giving them the autonomy they seek); Influencing and motivating teenagers,: Helping kids overcome distractions that hinder their learning; Protecting them from anxiety, isolation, and depression; Fostering the real-world, face-to-face social connections they desperately need; Having effective conversations about tough subjects--including sex, drugs, and money.

One of the very best scientific predictors for how any child turns out--in terms of happiness, academic success, leadership skills, and meaningful relationships--is whether at least one adult in their life has consistently shown up for them.

In this book, family therapist Darby Fox challenges parents to redefine the goals of adolescence by reorienting their focus from what they want their child to be to on who they want their child to be.

Headlines from news sources are combined with the latest and best social science research to offer scholars, practitioners, and parents a much-needed source for understanding contemporary American parenthood.

Examines how reading aloud makes adults and children smarter, happier, healthier, more successful, and more closely attached, even as technology pulls in the other direction.

Parenting is stressful. For many parents, who are always busy, usually tired, and probably not trained in dealing with children, the words "tranquility" and "parenting" do not go together. Don't you just wish there was some technique out there that could help you become calm, content, and confident parent? Something that you could have on hand all the time to help you through your most challenging situations and stressful days? Well, there is something, and it comes from a wisdom tradition that has been helping people through difficult situations for about 2300 years.

How to Raise Kind Kids will help you give and get respect, hold family meetings to tackle persistent problems, discipline in a way that builds character, and improve the dynamic of your relationship with your children while putting them on the path to a happier and more fulfilling life.

Fight back against boredom and keep your kids busy and entertained--without staring at a screen--with this handy collection of family activities ranging from DIY projects to outdoor adventures to easy daytrips.

Morgenstern views parenting as the ultimate time-management challenge-- and shares concrete ways for you to structure and spend true quality time with your kids.

A powerful collection of original essays, letters, and poems that addresses both the deep joys and the very real challenges of raising black boys today.

Intended to help the reader to become more effective as parents and teachers.

When happy things come to you, hold them close and never let go. From celebrated author of Your Name Is a Song Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow, fine artist Patrick Dougher, and photographer Jamel Shabazz, Hold Them Close is a picture book celebration of Black past, present, and future--a joyful love letter to Black children.

When We Are Kind celebrates simple acts of everyday kindness and encourages children to explore how they feel when they initiate and receive acts of kindness in their lives.

A moving bilingual ode to the unshakeable bond between a parent and child.

Duck finds a book and is surprised to discover that there are books with words and no pictures--and that even without pictures a book can interest and excite you.

All Rufus Leroy Williams III wants is to go to school so he can learn to read his favorite book. But there's one problem: he's a pig and Principal Lipid says: "NO PIGS IN SCHOOL!"

Helps young readers learn to recognize and identify different emotions, and explains what to do when those emotions get too big or become out of control.

A little yellow bird teaches Rocket the dog how to read by first introducing him to the "wondrous, mighty, gorgeous alphabet."

Strange new teacher. Strange new toys. Lots of kids and lots of noise! What would Llama like to do? Llama Llama feels so new ... It's Llama Llama's first day of preschool! And Llama Llama's mama makes sure he's ready.

Spoon's always been a happy little utensil. But lately, he feels like life as a spoon just isn't cutting it. He thinks Fork, Knife, and The Chopsticks all have it so much better than him. But do they? And what do they think about Spoon?

A bilingual book about being thankful.

Ramon loved to draw. It¹s what makes him happy. But in one split second, all that changes. A single reckless remark by Ramon's older brother, Leon, turns Ramon's carefree sketches into joyless struggles. Luckily for Ramon, though, his little sister, Marisol, sees the world differently. She opens his eyes to something a lot more valuable than getting things just "right."