Back to School Book Recommendations for Parents!
The school year isn’t just tough for kids, it can also be tough on parents. Here are some books for parents to add to their tool box in order to navigate the school year. Whether it’s a healthy approach to screen time or guiding your kids through difficult topics, these books are the perfect addition to any parent’s reading list.
Raising kids in America is difficult—no federally supported parental leave, a lack of mental health support, a crushing combination of workplace pressure and aspirational parental perfection, and the fresh hell that is the playgroup Facebook page. But what if there was another way? Parenting—and specifically motherhood—looks wildly different across nations. Please Yell at My Kids is an around the world journey and a practical guide to rethinking parenting. What can we learn from Brazilian birth parties, Singaporean grandparents, and Danish babies sleeping soundly outside of coffee shops? And how can that be integrated into the lives of American readers? Journalist Marina Lopes travels around the globe, interviewing parents and caregivers to provide practical, actionable ways to change the way we view parenting in the United States.
At the heart of many global approaches to parenting lies one simple, and not so simple thing: community. In America, parenting is, at best, a dual mission. But globally, parenthood is more often a team sport. From guiding caregivers through how to define their own non-negotiable values, to navigating tricky conversations with their in-laws, Please Yell at My Kids provides readers with the tools to build a community of care in their own lives and find a newfound joy in parenting.
It is estimated that fifteen million children in the United States are dyslexic which can often be a major challenge not only for the kids, but also for their parents, families, teachers, tutors, and therapists. Dyslexia doesn’t have to be a disadvantage for kids, if the right tools are available. Parenting Dyslexia provides prescriptive advice and concrete tips to drive educational and personal growth without any associated stigma. An easy-to-use, comprehensive reference book for anyone caring for a dyslexic child to use at all stages of development, Parenting Dyslexia addresses the psychosocial and academic issues that dyslexic learners are likely to face at different stages, including:
·Cultivating varied skills to balance out classic deficits.
·Developing effective self-esteem and academic habits to help overcome age-specific hurdles.
·Establishing individual and family practices to prevent a child’s feelings of isolation, anxiety, and depression.
·Survival tools to navigate the predictable challenges a dyslexic learner will likely encounter.
·Nurturing independence as well as a child’s ability to ask for help and become a strong self-advocate.
From her unique vantage point, Dr. Rappaport provides a relatable, sympathetic, and optimistic voice of personal experience to this sensitive topic. Grounded in science but written in non-technical language, Parenting Dyslexia offers a wealth of tried-and-true methods for supporting dyslexic learners of all ages.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER!
From “The Gamer Educator”, an openminded guide to parenting alongside screens and gaming, offering practical solutions to managing your family’s screen time.
Parents are feeling mounting pressure to minimize screen time, but are struggling to do so in our technologically driven world. In contrast to the fear and pressure parents are facing, Ash Brandin’s Power On offers a calm and reassuring message that keeps the wellbeing of the whole family in mind. Power On powerfully reframes our current dialogue around technology, beginning with the morality placed on screen time and leisure, and the systemic factors contributing to it. Brandin replaces fear with empowerment, giving caregivers tools and strategies for safely incorporating tech into their children’s lives, guiding children to having a healthy relationship with screens, with easy to implement approaches such as:
·The ABCs of the Screentime Management Elements – Access, Behavior, Content
·The Managing Online Safety S.T.A.R. – Settings, Time, Ads/App Store, Restriction
·The N.I.C.E. Screentime Boundaries – Needs, Input, Consistent, Enforceable
·And several other sets of steps, tools, and strategies to understand, manage, and effectively utilize tech in parenting.
With today’s parenting advice being awash with unhelpful negative judgements on screens and little realistic actionable advice, Ash Brandin provides timely, realistic direction that will empower readers to find a balance with screen time that works for the entire family.
Everyone—especially young children, teenagers and young adults—now reports higher levels of anxiety than ever before. Yet there’s no playbook for parenting today. From the climate crisis to gun violence to political upheaval to racism, parenting in these times means bearing witness to chronic levels of uncertainty amidst societal and planetary transformation. Many are succumbing to fears and despair by becoming cynical “Doomers” (those who are extremely pessimistic or fatalist about global problems such as climate change and pollution).
In Raising Anti‑Doomers, psychotherapist Ariella Cook‑Shonkoff reveals that Doomerism is nothing more than fear or despair gone wild. We have a choice in breeding this response further into our culture—or not. Her book helps parents help themselves, and in doing so, help children, and future generations. Ultimately, when we reset our parenting dials to respond to present day needs and circumstances, we breathe hope back into the world by raising resilient generations to come—this book offers that hope at a time when we are desperately in need.
Melissa Wirt recounts her journey and dozens of others in building a supportive “village” to transform oppressive, solitary motherhood into a connected—even joyful—endeavor.
Melissa Wirt thought she had everything—she’d built her own company and moved to a beautiful farm with her family. Then during a personal crisis, she realized that despite having created an online community reaching thousands of moms, she’d also somehow, become utterly isolated.
In I Was Told There’d Be a Village, Melissa leads us through the small changes she made to seek out connection. She also recounts how she talked to mothers from across the country, and soon saw that the beliefs keeping each of us parenting solo – I don’t have time; my life is too messy – were also keeping us from accessing our most powerful resource: each other. The stories she uncovered, combined with her own, became a foundation for slowly building back community.
That journey starts with an intentional shift from an isolation mindset to a village mindset. It might be as simple as smiling at the mom next to you at story-time or sending a quick text to a friend. But it can be much bigger, eventually growing into a thriving, supportive community. Motherhood shouldn’t be this hard, and it doesn’t have to be. Here, at last, is a roadmap for finding your village.
Over the past century and a half, we have tried to manipulate baby sleep to fit with the rapidly changing nature of adult lives. The mismatch we have created with our babies’ biology is framed as ‘baby sleep problems’, and infants are often ‘treated’ using behavioural and clinical interventions. But it is not baby sleep that needs fixing—only our understanding of it.
In How Babies Sleep, Helen Ball brings together cutting-edge science, anthropological insight, and practical advice to provide parents with everything they need to help them confidently—and sanely—navigate the first 365 night-times with a new baby. It will teach you how to harmonise your needs with those of your infant, and empower you to reject approaches that make you uncomfortable. Feel confident in a strategy that works for you and your family!