Best Parenting Books: Top Picks of 2021
Transform Your Parenting: Top 10 Best Parenting Books
Discover the best parenting books available today, covering topics like childhood trauma, neuroscience, child development, attachment styles, and conscious parenting. These resources can transform your parenting approach by enhancing your awareness and understanding of your style.
Many of us repeat parenting patterns learned from our own parents. With the right knowledge, we can break these cycles and embrace healthier practices.
In this article, I’ve listed my top 10 best parenting books that can significantly impact your parenting journey. Whether you’re new to conscious parenting or looking to deepen your understanding, these recommendations are a great starting point. For more suggestions, check out my Instagram!
Healing Developmental Trauma by Aline LaPierre and Laurence Heller
Healing Developmental Trauma offers tools for those seeking to heal from developmental trauma and enhance self-awareness. This book addresses the challenges of forming connections, emphasizing that a compromised ability to connect with oneself and others can lead to various psychological and physiological issues.
Clinicians Laurence Heller and Aline LaPierre introduce the NeuroAffective Relational Model®, which provides insights into these hidden dimensions. This resource is invaluable for anyone working to overcome trauma and improve relational health.
2. Why Love Matters by Sue Gerhardt
Why Love Matters explains the crucial role of love in early brain development, especially for social and emotional systems. Sue Gerhardt reveals how our earliest relationships shape a baby’s nervous system, impacting adult life—even if we can’t remember infancy.
The book explores how brain development affects future emotional well-being and highlights specific early pathways that influence stress responses and contribute to issues like anorexia, addiction, and anti-social behavior.
This engaging read presents the latest findings in neuroscience, psychology, psychoanalysis, and biochemistry. It’s essential for psychotherapists, mental health professionals, parents, and anyone interested in the importance of brain development in addressing adult challenges.
3. Running On Empty No More by Dr. Jonice Webb
Running On Empty No More builds on the insights from Dr. Jonice Webb’s earlier work, Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect. This book reveals how Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN) can impact lives and relationships, providing practical solutions for healing.
Dr. Webb offers guidance on discussing CEN and its effects within relationships with partners, parents, and children. She shares relatable examples of well-meaning individuals facing challenges in their connections.
As Terry Real, an acclaimed family therapist, notes, the book explains what’s missing in these relationships and how to address it. Dr. Karyl McBride praises it as a valuable resource for healing both yourself and your relationships, making it a must-read for those seeking deeper connections.
4. Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn
In Unconditional Parenting, educator Alfie Kohn challenges traditional parenting methods that focus on control and obedience. Instead, he asks, “What do kids need, and how can we meet those needs?” This groundbreaking approach emphasizes collaboration over coercion.
Kohn argues that a fundamental need for all children is unconditional love—knowing they are accepted regardless of their actions. Conventional techniques like punishments and rewards often convey that approval must be earned, leading to lasting emotional damage.
This book goes beyond discipline, encouraging parents to reflect on their assumptions and relationships with their children. Kohn offers practical strategies for shifting from controlling behaviors to supportive interactions, including replacing praise with the unconditional support that fosters healthy, responsible individuals. Unconditional Parenting is an eye-opening resource that reconnects parents with their instincts and inspires growth.
5. Parenting From The Inside Out by Daniel J. Siegel and Mary Hartzell
In Parenting From The Inside Out, child psychiatrist Daniel J. Siegel and early childhood expert Mary Hartzell explore how our childhood experiences influence our parenting. They draw on groundbreaking research in neurobiology and attachment to illustrate how relationships impact brain development.
The authors provide a step-by-step approach for parents to understand their own life stories, enabling them to raise compassionate and resilient children. This book originated from workshops that combined Siegel’s research on communication and brain development with Hartzell’s expertise in child development and education.
By guiding parents to create loving and secure relationships, Parenting From The Inside Out offers invaluable insights for fostering emotional well-being in children.
6. The Conscious Parent by Dr. Shefali Tsabary
The Conscious Parent emphasizes the importance of mindfulness in parenting and engaging with your child as an individual. Dr. Shefali Tsabary encourages parents to reconnect with their emotions and let go of inherited baggage that may affect their children.
As parents become more conscious, they can transform their relationships and raise happy, well-adjusted children. This book has already made waves in the U.S., spending 15 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Oprah called it “the most profound book on parenting I’ve ever read,” while Eckhart Tolle noted that becoming a conscious parent is the greatest gift you can give your child.
The book also features a foreword by His Holiness The Dalai Lama, adding to its profound impact on parenting practices.
7. Being There: Why Prioritizing the First 3 Years Matters by Erica Komisar
In Being There, veteran psychoanalyst Erica Komisar emphasizes the critical role of a mother’s emotional and physical presence during a child’s first three years. This investment increases the likelihood of raising emotionally healthy, happy, secure, and resilient children.
Komisar’s compassionate approach focuses on both children’s and mothers’ emotional health. Drawing from over two decades of clinical experience and cutting-edge research, she provides valuable insights on:
- Establishing emotional connections with newborns and toddlers, regardless of work status
- Easing transitions to reduce stress for young children
- Selecting and training quality childcare
- Debunking myths like “I’m not good with babies” and “I’ll make up for it later”
- Recognizing and addressing postpartum depression or feelings of boredom
- Understanding why three months of maternity leave is insufficient and how parents can prioritize their family’s emotional needs
Being a new mom can be challenging, but with support, emotional awareness, and coping skills, it can also be the most rewarding work we ever do.
8. Hold On To Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté
In Hold On To Your Kids, child development expert Gordon Neufeld and bestselling author Gabor Maté address a troubling trend: children increasingly turning to peers for guidance on values, identity, and behavior. This “peer orientation” threatens family cohesion, hampers healthy development, and promotes a hostile, sexualized youth culture.
The book explains the causes of this breakdown in parental influence and offers strategies to re-establish strong connections with children. Neufeld and Maté demonstrate how to create a safe and understanding home environment that fosters loyalty and love.
This updated edition also tackles the unique parenting challenges posed by digital devices and social media. By reawakening innate parental instincts, Neufeld and Maté empower parents to be the essential sources of security and warmth their children need.
9. The Whole Brain Child by Tina Payne Bryson & Daniel Siegel
In The Whole Brain Child, neuroscientist Daniel J. Siegel and parenting expert Tina Payne Bryson present practical insights into how a child’s brain develops. Understanding that different brain areas mature at varying rates allows parents to turn outbursts, arguments, and fears into opportunities for integration, helping to raise calmer, happier children.
The book offers clear explanations, age-appropriate strategies, and illustrations to help parents convey these concepts to their children. It features twelve key strategies, including:
- Name It to Tame It: Use storytelling to calm emotional storms by engaging the left brain.
- Engage, Don’t Enrage: Encourage thoughtful responses rather than reactive behavior.
- Move It or Lose It: Utilize physical activity to shift emotional states.
- Let the Clouds of Emotion Roll By: Help children understand that emotions are temporary.
- SIFT: Teach children to recognize Sensations, Images, Feelings, and Thoughts for better decision-making.
- Connect Through Conflict: Use disagreements to foster empathy and improve social skills.
This innovative approach empowers parents to support their children’s emotional and cognitive development effectively.
10. The Happiest Kids in the World: Bringing Up Children the Dutch Way by Rina Mae Acosta and Michele Hutchison
Why are Dutch children so content and well-adjusted? In this insightful book, Rina Mae Acosta and Michele Hutchison explore the unique aspects of Dutch parenting that contribute to the happiness of their kids. From allowing children to play outside independently to trusting them to bike to school, Dutch parents prioritize freedom and responsibility.
The authors, both married to Dutchmen and raising their families in Holland, examine findings from a UNICEF study that ranks Dutch children as the happiest globally. They delve into the factors that create this positive environment, including the absence of homework for kids under ten and the minimal teenage rebellion.
Read The Happiest Kids in the World to discover valuable lessons from Dutch parents that can help ensure your children grow up happy and well-adjusted.
For September’s top parenting book suggestions click here
