The Best Parenting Books: Top Picks - September 2021
The Power of Parenting Books
In today’s world, an abundance of parenting books offers invaluable insights for parents. Moreover, reading serves as a powerful way to change your neural pathways, ultimately leading to personal growth and improved parenting skills.
How Reading Transforms Your Brain
When you read, your brain forms new memories and creates synapses between nerve cells. Consequently, this process is essential for transmitting information and strengthening existing neural pathways. As you embark on the journey of rewiring your brain, you’ll discover how to show up as a more informed and engaged parent.
Deepen Your Understanding of Parenting
Furthermore, educating yourself through reading allows you to understand your child more deeply. With a wealth of knowledge at your fingertips, you’ll be significantly better equipped to navigate the challenges of parenting.
Recommended Parenting Books
To assist you on this journey, I’ve compiled a list of incredible parenting books. These titles cover various topics, including:
- Parenting in the Screen Age
- Enhancing Communication with Your Kids
- Understanding Self-Regulation
- Exploring Polyvagal Theory and the Nervous System
Start Your Journey to Conscious Parenting
If you’re new to conscious parenting and eager to expand your mindset, these recommended books serve as an excellent starting point. In fact, I frequently suggest these titles to parents I work with one-on-one. Additionally, for even more parenting book suggestions, you can explore additional resources here:
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This parenting book is my top recommendation right now because it offers incredible insights. Mona Delahooke draws on her extensive knowledge in infant mental health, child development, clinical psychology, and neuroscience to provide a revolutionary approach to addressing challenging behaviours in children.
In “Beyond Behaviours,” Delahooke emphasises that these difficult behaviours are just the “tip of the iceberg.” They signal deeper, individual differences in children that we must understand and address to resolve underlying issues. Many children who struggle with behaviour simply lack the developmental capacity to behave appropriately.
This insightful guide teaches parents how to effectively communicate with teenagers, authored by the bestselling duo behind “The Self-Driven Child.”
As a parent, you’ve likely experienced moments when conversations with your child didn’t go as planned. After sixth grade, the curious child who once asked endless “why” questions may suddenly stop talking. Engaging in meaningful conversations that foster your child’s safety, health, and passion can feel nearly impossible. The good news? You can cultivate effective communication skills.
With over 60 years of combined experience in one-on-one interactions with kids, William Stixrud, Ph.D., and Ned Johnson often hear one question from parents and educators: “What do you say?” While many adults grasp the importance of parenting philosophies found in popular books, they often struggle to apply these concepts in real-life conversations.
In “What Do You Say?”, Stixrud and Johnson guide you through respectful and effective dialogue, starting with the fundamental principles of listening and speaking. They offer fresh strategies for addressing challenging topics that often lead to standoffs between parents and children, including delivering constructive feedback, setting boundaries around technology, discussing sleep and brain health, navigating anxiety about current events, and family problem-solving.
This book serves as a manual and roadmap to transform your communication skills, enabling you to successfully navigate the complexities of parenting.
3. SELF-REG: How to Help Your Child (and You) Break the Stress Cycle and Engage with Life”
This groundbreaking parenting book merges the science and psychology of children’s behavior to foster brain and body awareness, promoting self-regulation and success.
In “Self-Reg,” Dr. Stuart Shanker presents a revolutionary understanding of children’s emotions and behaviors, serving as a practical guide for parents to help their kids engage calmly and successfully in both learning and life. Rooted in decades of clinical practice and research, this book realigns the parent-child relationship to facilitate positive change.
Self-regulation refers to the nervous system’s response to stress, and we are witnessing a generation of children and teens facing unprecedented stress levels, leading to a surge of emotional, social, learning, behavioral, and physical health issues. Unfortunately, many parents overlook the “hidden stressors” affecting their children, which can be physiological, social, or emotional. Instead of viewing children as lacking self-control or willpower, it’s crucial to recognize that excessive stress is often the root of these challenges.
Improving self-regulation can significantly enhance a child’s mood, attention, and concentration, fostering empathy and essential virtues for long-term well-being. Dr. Shanker translates his extensive research into practical advice for parents, offering concrete strategies to develop self-regulation skills and teach children how to achieve optimal learning, social and emotional growth, and overall well-being.
4.Parenting in the Screen Age by Delaney Ruston, MD
Are conversations about screen time with your child or teen always ending in conflict? Or do you avoid the topic, feeling frustrated and worried? Understanding how to approach screen time discussions is crucial for ensuring healthy technology use.
In “Parenting in the Screen Age,” award-winning filmmaker and mental health advocate Dr. Delaney Ruston distills over a decade of communications research into a comprehensive guide for modern parents. This book is packed with evidence-based insights on screen time, input from kids and teens, and solutions drawn from Dr. Ruston’s own parenting experiences.
