A young girl jumped off the fourth floor of her university in my city today as her colleagues stood by contemplating if she’s pulling an act or making videos. I have no words to offer, nor am I able to think straight except perhaps ponder out loud how we can reduced the agitation around us. How we can approach parenting in a way that helps our children open their lives and hearts to us, if not with everything than with just what bothers them. Not only that but nurture our children for a more compassionate world.
Maximising parental empathy is what inculcates in them to be kinder human beings. May our kids never ever be in those shoes. The ones of the suicidal nor those who stood by and watched it all happen for both signify death in its literal sense of the word.
Here’s what we can do.
Please hoard these books if you are about to become a parent, new parent or have kids of any age at all.
I’m sharing brief synopsis off of Amazon for each of these, just don’t have it in me to write about them myself. Way too drained to function.
Raising your Spirited Child: A guide for parents whose child is more intense, sensitive, perceptive, persistent and energetic
By Mary Sheedy Kurcinka
Including real life stories, this newly revised third edition of the award-winning bestseller—voted one of the top twenty parenting books—provides parents with the most up-to-date research, effective discipline tips, and practical strategies for raising spirited children.
Do you ever wonder why your child acts the way he or she does? Are you at a loss regarding your child’s emotional intelligence and how to prevent meltdowns? Do you find yourself getting frustrated and feeling like you’re at the end of your rope?
You are not alone! Many parents are dealing with the same challenges.
In Raising Your Spirited Child, Third Edition, parenting expert Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, Ed.D, offers ALL parents a glimpse into what makes their children behave the way they do. Through vivid examples and a refreshingly positive viewpoint, this invaluable guide offers parents emotional support and proven strategies for handling the toughest times. Dr. Kurcinka has devised a plan for success with a simple, four-step program that will help you discover the power of positive—rather than negative—labels, understand your child’s and your own temperamental traits, cope with tantrums and blowups when they do occur, develop strategies for handling mealtimes, bedtimes, holidays, school, and many other situations.
In this third revised edition, you will find:
• More practical strategies to help you manage your own intensity (keep your cool)
• Effective discipline tips—including how to win cooperation and establish clear expectations and limits
• New strategies for managing the meltdowns—including how to prevent them in the future
• Revised tips for helping your spirited child fall asleep and stay asleep
• Revised tips for finding the school that “fits” your child
• Ideas for working with your child when he or she does not want to talk about emotions
• Steps to teaching your child how to be “problem solvers,” work well with others, and be more flexible
• … and more!
Including charts and quick tips for today’s time-challenged parents, this newly updated edition of Raising Your Spirited Child will help you foster a supportive, encouraging, and loving environment for your children.
The Explosive Child
By Ross W Greene
A groundbreaking approach to understanding and parenting children who frequently exhibit severe fits of temper and other intractable behaviors, from a distinguished clinician and pioneer in this field.
What’s an explosive child? A child who responds to routine problems with extreme frustration—crying, screaming, swearing, kicking, hitting, biting, spitting, destroying property, and worse. A child whose frequent, severe outbursts leave his or her parents feeling frustrated, scared, worried, and desperate for help. Most of these parents have tried everything-reasoning, explaining, punishing, sticker charts, therapy, medication—but to no avail. They can’t figure out why their child acts the way he or she does; they wonder why the strategies that work for other kids don’t work for theirs; and they don’t know what to do instead.
Dr. Ross Greene, a distinguished clinician and pioneer in the treatment of kids with social, emotional, and behavioral challenges, has worked with thousands of explosive children, and he has good news: these kids aren’t attention-seeking, manipulative, or unmotivated, and their parents aren’t passive, permissive pushovers. Rather, explosive kids are lacking some crucial skills in the domains of flexibility/adaptability, frustration tolerance, and problem solving, and they require a different approach to parenting.
Throughout this compassionate, insightful, and practical book, Dr. Greene provides a new conceptual framework for understanding their difficulties, based on research in the neurosciences. He explains why traditional parenting and treatment often don’t work with these children, and he describes what to do instead. Instead of relying on rewarding and punishing, Dr. Greene’s Collaborative Problem Solving model promotes working with explosive children to solve the problems that precipitate explosive episodes, and teaching these kids the skills they lack.
How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk
By Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish
The ultimate “parenting bible” ( The Boston Globe) with a new foreword—and available as an ebook for the first time—a timeless, beloved book on how to effectively communicate with your child from the #1 New York Times bestselling authors.
Internationally acclaimed experts on communication between parents and children, Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish “are doing for parenting today what Dr. Spock did for our generation” ( Parent Magazine). Now, this bestselling classic includes fresh insights and suggestions as well as the author’s time-tested methods to solve common problems and build foundations for lasting relationships, including innovative ways to:
· Cope with your child’s negative feelings, such as frustration, anger, and disappointment
· Express your strong feelings without being hurtful
· Engage your child’s willing cooperation
· Set firm limits and maintain goodwill
· Use alternatives to punishment that promote self-discipline
· Understand the difference between helpful and unhelpful praise
· Resolve family conflicts peacefully
Enthusiastically praised by parents and professionals around the world, the down-to-earth, respectful approach of Faber and Mazlish makes relationships with children of all ages less stressful and more rewarding.
The Whole Brain Child
By Daniel J Siegel
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The authors of No-Drama Discipline and The Yes Brain explain the new science of how a child’s brain is wired and how it matures in this pioneering, practical book.
“Simple, smart, and effective solutions to your child’s struggles.”—Harvey Karp, M.D.
In this pioneering, practical book, Daniel J. Siegel, neuropsychiatrist and author of the bestselling Mindsight, and parenting expert Tina Payne Bryson offer a revolutionary approach to child rearing with twelve key strategies that foster healthy brain development, leading to calmer, happier children. The authors explain—and make accessible—the new science of how a child’s brain is wired and how it matures. The “upstairs brain,” which makes decisions and balances emotions, is under construction until the mid-twenties. And especially in young children, the right brain and its emotions tend to rule over the logic of the left brain. No wonder kids throw tantrums, fight, or sulk in silence. By applying these discoveries to everyday parenting, you can turn any outburst, argument, or fear into a chance to integrate your child’s brain and foster vital growth.
Complete with age-appropriate strategies for dealing with day-to-day struggles and illustrations that will help you explain these concepts to your child, The Whole-Brain Child shows you how to cultivate healthy emotional and intellectual development so that your children can lead balanced, meaningful, and connected lives.
Unconditional Parentin: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason
By Alfie Kohn
A groundbreaking approach to parenting by nationally-respected educator Alfie Kohn that gives parents “powerful alternatives to help children become their most caring, responsible selves” (Adele Faber, New York Times bestselling author) by switching the dynamic from doing things to children to working with them in order to understand their needs and how to meet them.
Most parenting guides begin with the question “How can we get kids to do what they’re told?” and then proceed to offer various techniques for controlling them. In this truly groundbreaking book, nationally respected educator Alfie Kohn begins instead by asking, “What do kids need—and how can we meet those needs?” What follows from that question are ideas for working with children rather than doing things to them.
One basic need all children have, Kohn argues, is to be loved unconditionally, to know that they will be accepted even if they screw up or fall short. Yet conventional approaches to parenting such as punishments (including “time-outs”), rewards (including positive reinforcement), and other forms of control teach children that they are loved only when they please us or impress us. Kohn cites a body of powerful, and largely unknown, research detailing the damage caused by leading children to believe they must earn our approval. That’s precisely the message children derive from common discipline techniques, even though it’s not the message most parents intend to send.
More than just another book about discipline, though, Unconditional Parenting addresses the ways parents think about, feel about, and act with their children. It invites them to question their most basic assumptions about raising kids while offering a wealth of practical strategies for shifting from “doing to” to “working with” parenting—including how to replace praise with the unconditional support that children need to grow into healthy, caring, responsible people. This is an eye-opening, paradigm-shattering book that will reconnect readers to their own best instincts and inspire them to become better parents.
No Bad Kids
By Janet Lansbury
Janet Lansbury is unique among parenting experts. As an RIE teacher and student of pioneering child specialist Magda Gerber, her advice is not based solely on formal studies and the research of others, but also on her 20 years of hands-on experience guiding hundreds of parents and their toddlers. No Bad Kids is a collection of Janet’s most popular and widely read articles pertaining to common toddler behaviors and how respectful parenting practices can be applied to benefit both parents and children. It covers such common topics as punishment, cooperation, boundaries, testing, tantrums, hitting, and more. No Bad Kids provides a practical, indispensable tool for parents who are anticipating or experiencing those critical years when toddlers are developmentally obliged to test the limits of our patience and love. Armed with knowledge and a clearer sense of the world through our children’s eyes, this period of uncertainty can afford a myriad of opportunities to forge unbreakable bonds of trust and respect.
