Family Psychology

Parenting just got tougher. As your child's brain rewires, hormones kick in, and independence beckons, a perfect storm for family conflict emerges. But help is at hand. Divided into two sections—aged 8 to 10 and aged 10 to 12—this practical parenting book is grounded in evidence-based psychology, exploring the science at work during this period of your child's development. Taking 75 everyday scenarios, the book tackles real-world issues head-on, from sibling clashes and sulks to more serious concerns as your child edges towards their teenage years.

Can you teach your child to be kind? This vital question is taking on a new urgency as our culture grows ever more abrasive and divided. A world-renowned developmental psychologist, Dr. Thomas Lickona has lead the character education movement in schools for 40 years and now he shares with parents the vital tools they need to create a culture of kindness at home. Kindness doesn’t stand on its own. It needs a supporting cast of other essential virtues - like self-control, good judgment, courage, and gratitude.

You discovered your kid is cutting, leaving you with a sinking feeling in your stomach. Cutting is the behavior that tells you something is definitely wrong and that your kid needs immediate understanding and help. Dr. J.J. Kelly has been working with teens and young adults for the last 15 years, and she is the person whom other professionals send their self-harm patients to.

Imagine waking up one day to discover that you have forgotten everything about your life. Your only link with the past, your only hope for the future, is your identical twin. Now imagine, years later, discovering that your twin had not told you the whole truth about your childhood, your family, and the forces that had shaped you. Why the secrets? Why the silences? You have no choice but to begin again. This has been Alex's reality: a world where memories are just the stories people tell you, where fact and fiction are impossible to distinguish.

Reconnected Kids is a groundbreaking guide to help parents resolve their child's behavioral problems—without medication, strife, or drama. This empowering method shows parents how to first identify their own role in their child's behavior, and then how to guide the child to focus on goals, practice lifelong good habits, and stay motivated.

“Pat, we need to kill the dog.” When a sudden mental illness struck his wife, Patrick Dylan found himself living with an eerie stranger. Scared and unprepared, he began a desperate battle to protect her from a mysterious disease, shelter their children from her bizarre behavior, and recover the woman he loved. Within weeks, she had been admitted to the emergency room, the hospital, and the local crisis facility, but none of the experts could provide an answer. As her illness eluded diagnosis, the family’s struggle was only beginning.

Middle childhood, the period for those aged 8–12 years old, is often the most overlooked phase of a child’s development, but it’s the age where play continues to serve an important role in their emotional growth. It’s also an age where we are most likely to stop playing with our children. With over 20 years of clinical expertise and neuroscientific research, psychotherapist and parenting expert Joanna Fortune shares her proven techniques that will enable you to better understand your relationship with your children as they grow.

Kids are coming out as trans at younger and younger ages, which is a good thing for them. But what written resources are available to parents, teachers, and mental health professionals who need to support these children? Elijah C. Nealy, a therapist and former deputy executive director of New York City’s LGBT Community Center, and himself a trans man, has written the first-ever comprehensive guide to understanding, supporting, and welcoming trans kids, covering everything from family life to school and mental health issues, as well as much more.

If you’re single, this book will give you clarity and the confidence to choose a better partner. If you’re in a relationship, it will help you to work out if you should stay or go. Either way, this book will empower you to take charge of your relationship destiny.

Just as you prepared your home to welcome a new child, it is important to prepare your heart and mind - especially if the child has suffered from a background of trauma. Perhaps your invitation for love is met with hostility and you find that this new member of your family rejects connection. It’s critical to acknowledge the effects of trauma on a child’s ability to attach. Mike and Kristin Berry realized this when they became adoptive and foster parents. They now offer guidance from their own journey to others parenting a child who has experienced past trauma.

Beth McCord takes women on a transformative journey through motherhood, blending Enneagram wisdom with practical insights to foster authentic and healthy family dynamics. Beth unveils a guiding metaphor that brings clarity to the intricate art of parenting: diverse colors on a divine palette, graciously used by God to create the beautiful messiness of family life, all the while empowering and redeeming our contributions as parents. These colors represent the unique motivations and strategies reflective of each Enneagram Type.

This book provides a much-needed resource for family and friends of the more than five million American adults suffering from bipolar disorder. From psychotic behavior that requires medication to milder mood swings with disturbing ups and down, this book offers a warm and often humorous user-friend guide for coping with bipolar loved ones, colleagues, and friends.

Do you feel as though your relationship with your parents is seriously limiting your potential? Have they made you feel worthless in the past? Did you or do you have to constantly be there for them and their problems? If so, the chances are high you are dealing with a toxic parent. This can be a hard pill to swallow at first, but from here on, everything will begin to get better.

Parenting can be overwhelming when your child is struggling with an anxiety disorder or OCD—but it doesn’t have to be. Anxiety Coach is a step-by-step guide full of useful strategies, techniques, and action plans designed to address all the most common forms of anxiety, including social anxiety, separation anxiety, generalized anxiety, specific phobias, panic attacks, and OCD. It teaches parents what anxiety is and how to recognize when it becomes a problem, explains why children need to face their fears to overcome them, and introduces listeners to exposure therapy and its application.

Your guide to the emotions of pregnancy and early motherhood, from two of America’s top reproductive psychiatrists. With a combined 30 years of counseling new and expectant mothers, Dr. Sacks and Dr. Birndorf have seen firsthand how the pressure to be perfect, and perfectly happy, leaves women feeling confused and even ashamed of the emotions that can bubble up during pregnancy. Now, in What No One Tells You, the two psychiatrists show why it’s natural for “matrescence” - the birth of a mother - to be as stressful and transformative a period as adolescence.

The issue of diagnosing children with behavioral diseases that do not conform to a scientific definition of disease, and then medicating them is a scandal ready to erupt. In The Diseasing of America's Children, popular family psychologist, speaker, and best-selling author John Rosemond joins pediatrician Dr. Bose Ravenel to uncover the fiction and fallacy behind attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), early-onset bipolar disorder (EOBD), and the drugs prescribed to treat them.

Lying is a healthy and inevitable part of child development. But when do lies become a problem? In this book, psychologist Victoria Talwar, director of the Talwar Child Development Lab at McGill University, presents practical science-based strategies to address lying and foster truthfulness in children, from early childhood to the teenage years. Backed by years of psychological research, this common-sense, practical guide reveals which parenting strategies promote truthfulness in children—and which ones don't.

Community leaders and activists Gómez and Arroyo worked with children, teenagers, and parents - both the victims and the bullies - to put together this searing anthology of original essays, poetry, plays, and commentary on how bullying has affected their lives.

Last Winter is the story of a child who might not survive the heartbreak of her father’s death and a mother who struggles to both parent and manage her grief in the grips of a bipolar crisis. Atmospheric and deftly told with an economy of words and a finely tuned gaze on the small moments that build up to an inexorable and shocking end, this is a contemporary drama that will grip listeners both for the story and for the vibrant portrayal of the complexities of family life.

It could happen at the grocery store. At a restaurant. At school. At home. Meltdowns are stressful for both child and adult, but Dr. Baker can help! Dr. Jed Baker offers parents and teachers strategies for preventing and managing meltdowns. His 20+ years of experience working with children on the autism spectrum, combined with his personal experiences raising his own children, have yielded time-tested strategies and results!