Family Development

In the ever more competitive race to secure the best possible future, today’s students face unprecedented pressure to succeed. They jam-pack their schedules with AP classes, fill every waking hour with resume-padding activities, and even sabotage relationships with friends to “get ahead.” Family incomes and schedules are stretched to the breaking point by tutoring fees and athletic schedules. Yet this drive to optimize performance has only resulted in skyrocketing rates of anxiety, depression, and even self-harm in America’s highest achieving schools.

Toddlers don’t come with a manual, but here’s the next best thing. We’re Parenting a Toddler! is a comprehensive guide to parenting toddlers, with tons of practical strategies and sympathy for first-time parents. Get sound advice and funny stories from a four-time parent who’s been in the toddler trenches, covering key situations from eating, sleeping, and tantrums, to potty training, communication, and so much more.

What to Expect Before You’re Expecting has everything that eager-to-be moms and dads need to know about getting pregnant, from getting their bodies ready to make a healthy baby to getting that healthy baby on board faster. You'll find baby-friendly foods to order up (say yes to yams); fertility busters to avoid (see you later, saturated fat); how to pinpoint ovulation, time baby-making sex, keep on-demand sex sexy, and separate conception fact - it takes the average couple up to 12 months to make a baby - from myth - position matters.

After more than two decades and over 2000 presentations, my interactions with parents reveal that although most want to learn and parent their best, they feel ill-equipped. Kids don’t come with manuals. The goal of this audiobook is to equip and empower you as a parent, grandparent, or youth leader to help kids navigate all aspects of life in the current culture.

In this remarkable self-help guide, Dr. Susan Forward draws on case histories and the real-life voices of adult children of toxic parents to help you free yourself from the frustrating patterns of your relationship with your parents---and discover a new world of self-confidence, inner strength, and emotional independence.

Little Jamey, 2½ years old, is placed with experienced foster carer, Cathy Glass, as an emergency. The police and social services have no choice but to remove two-year-old Jamey from home after his mother leaves him alone all night to go out partying. When he first arrives with foster carer Cathy Glass, he is scared, hungry and withdrawn, craving the affection he has been denied for so long. He is small for his age and unsteady on his feet–a result of being left for long periods in his cot.

Many family fights, communication break downs, relationship disconnections, and overall stress and frustration can be solved if parents and children learn the principles and skills of self-government. This second edition of Parenting: A House United is the improved version of Nicholeen’s original basic guide for establishing a united self-governing family.

Popular parenting expert Dr. Laura Markham, author of Peaceful Parents, Happy Siblings, has garnered a large and loyal readership around the world thanks to her simple, insightful approach that values the emotional bond between parent and child. As any parent of more than one child knows, though, it's challenging for even the most engaged parent to maintain harmony and a strong connection when competition, tempers, and irritation run high.

In a compelling narrative that introduces historical and contemporary research on self-directed education, Unschooled also spotlights how a diverse group of individuals and organizations are evolving an old schooling model of education. These innovators challenge the myth that children need to be taught in order to learn.

This unique book supports parents who are struggling with the heartache of having a teenager or an adult child who is troubled, angry, or distant. Such rifts can cause unspeakable sorrow that parents too often must bear alone. Psychologist and parent Joshua Coleman, PhD, offers insight, empathy, and perspective to those who have lost the opportunity to be the parents they desperately wanted to be and who are mourning the loss of a harmonious relationship with their child.

There is a war on masculinity, and everywhere we look—on every front we hold sacred—we can see the painful reminders of this collapsing order. The chaos and crisis we are experiencing today should be a signal for men everywhere to rise up; to fight to preserve our way of life by once again walking the ancient paths. But this isn’t a journey that need be taken alone.

In divorce and co-parenting, not only do parents need to deal with their own emotions, they may be faced with a daily barrage of hostile calls, texts, social media blasts, and/or emails. How can you regain a sense of control and peace for your own sake and for the kids? For more than a decade, the BIFF method of responding to hostile and misinforming conversation has been used by thousands of people. This book can help you reduce conflict and regain your sanity by teaching what to write, and what to ignore.

Now updated with new material throughout, Alicia F. Lieberman's The Emotional Life of the Toddler is the seminal, detailed look into the varied and intense emotional life of children aged one to three. Hailed as "groundbreaking" by The Boston Globe after its initial publication, the new edition includes the latest research on this crucial stage of development. Alicia F. Lieberman offers an in-depth examination of toddlers' emotional development and illuminates how to optimize this crucial stage.

We can only anchor, nurture, nourish and instill confidence in our children when we extend the same support to ourselves. After all, how can we effectively tend to our children's needs when our energy reserves are depleted? There are a thousand and one ways to parent, and only one way that's authentic for you. Drawing on her work as a psychotherapist, alongside her own experiences as a mother, Anna shows that caring with our children begins with caring for ourselves, and it's time to replace exhaustion with empowerment.

Struggling to cope with three young children, Janie turns to experienced foster carer Cathy Glass. Helping the family each morning, Cathy soon uncovers how dangerous their situation has truly become. Riley and his two little siblings, Jayden and Lola, are not safe at home. With all three children in her care, will Cathy be able to rebuild their lives – and Janie’s?

We've needlessly turned parenting into an unpleasant chore. Parents invest more time and money in their kids than ever, but the shocking lesson of twin and adoption research is that upbringing is much less important than genetics in the long run. These revelations have surprising implications for how we parent and how we spend time with our kids. The big lesson: Mold your kids less and enjoy your life more. Your kids will still turn out fine. Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids is a book of practical big ideas.

In medieval times, uncharted waters were marked on maps as Here Be Dragons to signify that no one knew what dangers might lie ahead. Melanie Shankle quips that the years spent raising our teenage daughters could be labeled the same due to the uncertainties before us. Filled with personal stories and written in the same whimsical and honest style Melanie is known for, Here Be Dragons will have you both laughing out loud and crying—as you confront the challenges of raising your own strong, independent daughter while fighting dragons along the way.

Greta Eskridge, mom of four and unlikely porn fighter, knows that it's not easy for parents to start a frank conversation about porn. The fear of saying the "wrong" thing or worry about how to answer uncomfortable questions can prevent them from connecting with their kids, but avoidance isn't the solution. In this book, Greta will help parents understand how essential it is to push through the awkwardness and show them how to create a safe space for conversation while tackling the toughest topics with confidence.

An examination of adults who have been manipulated by divorcing parents. Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) occurs when divorcing parents use children as pawns, trying to turn the child against the other parent. This book examines the impact of PAS on adults and offers strategies and hope for dealing with the long-term effects.

When Tracy Hogg's Secrets of the Baby Whisperer was first published, it soared onto best-seller lists across the country. Parents everywhere became "whisperers" to their newborns, amazed that they could actually communicate with their baby within weeks of their child's birth. Tracy gave parents what for some amounted to a miracle: the ability to understand their baby's every coo and cry so that they could tell immediately if the baby was hungry, tired, in real distress, or just in need of a little TLC.