Recommended Books

This book presents groundbreaking strategies for psychotherapy with today’s teens, for whom high-risk behavior, lack of adult guidance, and intense anxiety and stress increasingly come with the territory. Ron Taffel addresses the key challenge of building a therapeutic relationship that is strong enough to promote real behavioral and emotional change. He demonstrates effective ways to give advice that teens will listen to, get them to tell the truth about their lives, help parents reestablish their authority, and extend the reach of therapy by such nontraditional means as inviting teens to bring friends into sessions.

Every parent fears “losing” their child. But in this revolutionary book, youthologist Vanessa Van Petten translates what parents want to say into what teens want to hear.
At 16, Vanessa Van Petten started her award-winning website, RadicalParenting.com, in reaction to sudden friction with her parents. Today, Vanessa and more than one hundred teen contributors help thousands of parents build and maintain healthy, strong, mutually fulfilling relationships with their teenage children-by providing prescriptive advice straight from the source.
From classic fights like dating and chores to 21st Century issues such as sexting and cyberbullying, this comprehensive book provides step-by-step guidance on every worry, including:
Lying
Peer Pressure
Social Networking
Sex
School
Drugs

It’s never too late to reconnect. Vanessa Van Petten helps you learn what’s really going on in your child’s life, and most importantly- understand when to put your foot down and when to let go.

Everybody who has survived adolescence knows what a scary, tumultuous, exciting time it is. But if we use memories of our experiences to guide our understanding of what today’s girls are living through, we make a serious mistake. Our daughters are living in a new world. Reviving Ophelia is a call to arms from Dr. Mary Pipher, a psychologist who has worked with teenagers for more than a decade. She finds that in spite of the women’s movement, which has empowered adult women in some ways, teenage girls today are having a harder time than ever before because of higher levels of violence and sexism. The current crises of adolescence - frequent suicide attempts, dropping out of school and running away from home, teenage pregnancies in unprecedented numbers, and an epidemic of eating disorders - are caused not so much by “dysfunctional families” or incorrect messages from parents as by our media-saturated, lookist, girl-destroying culture. Young teenagers are not developmentally equipped to meet the challenges that confront them.
Adolescence in America has traditionally involved breaking away from parents, experimenting with the trappings of adult life, and searching for autonomy and independence. Today’s teenagers face serious pressures at an earlier age than that at which teenagers in the past did. The innocent act of attending an unsupervised party can lead to acquaintance rape. Having a boyfriend means dealing with sexual pressures, and often leads to pregnancy and/or sexually transmitted diseases. It’s no wonder that girls’ math scores plummet and depression levels rise when they reach junior high. As they encounter situations that are simply too complex for them to handle, their self-esteem crumbles. The dangers young women face today can jeopardize their futures. It is critical that we understand the circumstances and take measures to correct them. We need to make that precious age of experimentation safe for adolescent girls.

Childhood can be an exciting time, full of joyous exploration, new skills, friends, and imaginative play. It can also be very frightening, especially when children have experiences that threaten their feelings of safety and well-being. Even common traumatic childhood events can deeply affect children’s normal healthy development, their self-esteem, and their families. Many behavioral problems stemming from common traumatic events could require years of psychotherapy or medication. That is, they did—until the advent of EMDR. Developed by psychologist Francine Shapiro in the late 1980s, EMDR had already helped thousands of adult clients when Joan Lovett experienced its healing power firsthand.
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is a comprehensive therapeutic approach that helps patients release disturbing thoughts and emotions that originate in traumatic experiences. Experiences can be traumatic in the commonly accepted sense—abuse, disasters, violence—but children may also perceive and respond to more ordinary events as very threatening. A playground accident, the loss of a loved one, school problems, or choking on a piece of popcorn can be a part of growing up. They can also be critical incidents that cause a child to view him- or herself as helpless or powerless, to become fearful, and to develop debilitating behavioral problems.

An essential guide for recognizing, preventing, and healing childhood trauma, from infancy through adolescence—what parents, educators, and health professionals can do.

Trauma can result not only from catastrophic events such as abuse, violence, or loss of loved ones, but from natural disasters and everyday incidents such as auto accidents, medical procedures, divorce, or even falling off a bicycle. At the core of this book is the understanding of how trauma is imprinted on the body, brain, and spirit, resulting in anxiety, nightmares, depression, physical illnesses, addictions, hyperactivity, and aggression. Rich with case studies and hands-on activities, Trauma Through A Child’s Eyes gives insight into children’s innate ability to rebound with the appropriate support, and provides their caregivers with tools to overcome and prevent trauma

This book, written especially for the often-neglected male half of the parenting team, is a father's guide to making wise investments in his children and family.

In BECOMING A FATHER, author Dr. William Sears shares his own story of maturing into fatherhood, discovering the joys of being an involved dad, and weathering the changes that children bring to a marriage.

This book discusses the father's role during childbirth, different ways a father can interact and bond with his child, discipline, balancing the demads of a job with the needs of a family, and more!

America's favorite pediatric experts turn their attention to solving babies' sleep problems in a definitive book that offers immediate results. A comprehensive, reassuring, solution-filled sleep resource, this guide shows parents how to match the nighttime temperament of their baby to their own lifestyle, and provides practical tools parents need to help the entire family sleep better.

This is the #1 guide book for women who choose to breastfeed.  This book is considered to be the bible of breastfeeding.

This book gives new parents all of the basic information that they want in regards with what to expect during the child’s first year of life.  It is a great guide book, but for parents who have a tendency towards anxiety, it is a nightmare. This book illuminates all of the worst case scenarios that could happen, and for the parent who already has a tendency towards over-reacting - the book won’t help. For others, hearing all of the guidelines, and worst case scenarios can be calming.

Playground Politics is the first book to look at the neglected middle years of childhood—from kindergarten to junior high—and to help parents understand the enormous emotional challenges these children are facing. In witty, vivid stories, Dr. Greenspan brings to life the major emotional milestones of these years, when children move from the shelter of the family to the harsh rivalries of ”playground politics,” and toward an independent self image. His empathy for the turmoil children bring home from school, and for the parents who try to help, is deep and reassuring.

You Can Stop Fighting With Your Chidren!

Here is the bestselling book that will give you the know–how you need to be more effective with your children and more supportive of yourself. 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.

ScreamFree Parenting is not just about lowering your voice. It’s about learning to calm your emotional reactions and learning to focus on your own behavior more than your kids’ behavior . . . for their benefit. Our biggest enemy as parents is not the TV, the Internet, or even drugs. Our biggest enemy is our own emotional reactivity. When we say we “lost it” with our kids, the “it” in that sentence is our ownadulthood. And then we wonder why our kids have so little respect for us, why our kids seem to have all the power in the family.

Does your child constantly misbehave and ignore or refuse your requests for proper behavior? Is your relationship with your child based on conflict instead of mutual respect and cooperation? With the help of this groundbreaking book, you can create a positive, respectful, and rewarding relationship with your child.

Inside are proven techniques and procedures that provide a refreshing alternative to the ineffective extremes of punishment and permissiveness. Parents and teachers alike will discover how to effectively motivate the strong-willed child and achieve proper conduct.

Based on William Pollack's groundbreaking research at Harvard Medical School over two decades, Real Boys explores why many boys are sad, lonely, and confused although they may appear tough, cheerful, and confident. Pollack challenges conventional expectations about manhood and masculinity that encourage parents to treat boys as little men, raising them through a toughening process that drives their true emotions underground. Only when we understand what boys are really like, says Pollack, can we help them develop more self-confidence and the emotional savvy they need to deal with issues such as depression, love and sexuality, drugs and alcohol, divorce, and violence.