Resources:
Recommended Books:
By Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. and Tina Payne Bryson, M.D.
By understanding what’s happening in your child’s brain, Dr. Siegel and Dr. Bryson give you strategies that work with your child’s brain instead of against it. By implementing these 12 strategies, you’ll help foster healthy brain development that leads to calmer, happier children.
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 your children can lead balanced, meaningful, and connected lives.
The Yes Brain: How to Cultivate Courage, Curiosity, and Resilience in Your Child
By Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. and Tina Payne Bryson
This book emphasizes the crucial role that our language and intentions play in the way we parent – it is the difference between parenting from a “yes” place as opposed to a “no” place.
No-Drama Discipline: The Whole-Brain Way to Calm the Chaos and Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind
Daniel J. Siegel
The authors use neuroscience to help you understand how your kids brains are developing and how to teach them developmentally appropriate ways to regulate their own emotions and thoughts.
It empowers parents to raise healthy kids who can think rationally, contribute to the world around them and grow into the incredible humans they were meant to be – having little unlearned as they grow up (unlike the situation many millennials are facing now).
How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk
By Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
This gem is a must-read for any parent who frequently finds themselves in the throes of a power struggle. This book is easy-to-read and packed with practical steps you can take to resolve conflict and improve cooperation from your children.
Filled with exact scripts and real-life examples, you’ll learn how to talk with your kids in a way that diffuses their anger and allows you to reconnect with their sweet, loving side.
The Conscious Parent: Transforming Ourselves, Empowering Our Children
By Dr. Shefali Tsabary
In this book, Dr. Tsabary helps parents get in tune with their own psychological and emotional awareness. By encouraging parents to look in the mirror, Tsabary helps parents understand why it’s important to be conscious of our own histories in order to pass along a positive wholeness to our children.
This book serves as a holistic approach to parenting, rather than a quick fix, but will help parents and children engage in a mutually loving relationship rather than a hierarchical one.
The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed
By Jessica Lahey
This book is a must-read for any parent of school-aged children! While many parents tout their desire to raise responsible, resilient, and independent adults, Jessica argues modern parenting strategies inhibit our progress towards this goal.
In this beautifully written manifesto, Jessica challenges the idea that we need to deliver the forgotten homework or try to resolve our kids’ friendship troubles.
She explains that even though overprotective parents see themselves as being highly responsive to their child’s well-being, they are prohibiting their child from learning to solve problems on their own.
To help parents adjust their over-responsive tendencies, Lahey lays out a blueprint for handling homework, report cards, social dynamics, and sports. Most importantly, she sets forth a plan to help parents learn to step back and embrace their children’s failures.
Parenting Apart: How Separated and Divorced Parents Can Raise Happy and Secure Kids
By Christina McGhee
If you are co-parenting or parenting apart from your ex, you NEED this book. This is the book every child of divorce wishes their parents would read!
Christina tackles all of the biggest issues of divorce and separation and helps you make a game plan for parenting your kids. You’ll learn:
This book is relevant no matter what age your children are!
Oh Crap! Potty Training: Everything Modern Parents Need to Know to Do It Once and Do It Right
By Jamie Glowacki
Jamie is my go-to gal for all things potty training. Her no-nonsense approach to potty training is effective and informative, humorous and heartfelt. Jamie is a Mom and social worker who has been there and helped thousands of parents cheer their toddlers on to success in the bathroom.
Using no bribes and no gimmicks, Jamie can help you wave farewell to the diapers in your life for good!
Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too
By Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
Adele and Elaine bring sound wisdom again in this second book! As parents themselves, they were determined to help their children get along. The result was Siblings Without Rivalry.
With the help of scripts and cartoons, they teach you how to manage the competition in a way that feels fair to all children.
This book offers practical strategies to improve cooperation among your children and reduce feelings of competition – all while helping your children connect to build lifelong friendships.
Middle School Makeover
By Michelle Icard
This little book is a must-have guide for parents and educators who want to help the tweens in their lives navigate the socially fraught hallways, gyms, and cafeterias of middle school.
Michelle helps parents, teachers, and other adults in middle school settings understand the social dilemmas and other issues that kids today face.
She covers a large range of topics, beginning with helping us understand what is happening in the brains of tweens and how this neurological development affects decision-making and questions around identity. She also addresses social media, dating, and peer exclusion.
Using both recent research and her personal, extensive experience working with middle-school-aged kids and their parents, Icard offers readers concrete and practical advice for guiding children through this chaotic developmental stage while also building their confidence.
Michelle’s newer book, 14 Talks by Age 14: The Essential Conversations You Need to Have with Your Kids Before They Start High School. This book is another must-read for all parents who want to equip their teens with the skills they need to grow into capable and responsible adults.
No More Mean Girls: The Secret to Raising Strong, Confident, and Compassionate Girls
By Katie Hurley
In this self-promoting, digital age we live in, it’s incredibly difficult to raise daughters who are able to confidently separate themselves from society’s views of who they should be. When girls feel insecure and devalued, these feelings often manifest in ways that put other girls down instead of lifting them up.
Luckily, Katie provides actionable steps to help parents empower young girls to be kind, confident leaders who work together and build each other up.
Katie will help you and your daughter navigate this consumer world so she can discern what positive traits she can offer this world. By empowering your daughter to focus on her strengths, you’ll increase her self-confidence and ability to lead other girls well.
Your Turn: How to Be an Adult
By Julie Lythcott-Haims
Kids aren’t automatically adults at age 18. It takes time and patience to earn that grown-up title.
In addition, what defines an “adult” is ever-changing.
Julie has worked with undergraduate students for years; that critical age when young adults may be old enough to make their own decisions, but aren’t always ready to do so.
Julie stresses that becoming an adult is a hard-earned, but rewarding, process. Thankfully, this guide helps big kids every step of the way.
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
By Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D.
After a quick search of the title, you may be thinking, “Wait a second! That’s not a parenting book!” Before you stop reading, my friend, let’s get something straight: parenting, like most things in life, is all about mindset.
If YOU want to be a successful parent and you want to raise successful kids, then this book has EVERYTHING to do with parenting.
In this brilliant book, Dr. Dweck shows how success in almost every human endeavor (parenting included) can be dramatically influenced by how we think about our talents and abilities.
People with a fixed mindset–those who believe that abilities are fixed–are less likely to flourish than those with a growth mindset–those who believe that abilities can be developed. This must-read book reveals how great parents and teachers can put this idea to use to foster outstanding accomplishment in their kids.
How to Do It Now Because It’s Not Going Away
By Leslie Josel
Leslie Josel (founder of Order Out of Chaos) developed the must-have guide for parents who struggle helping kids push through the roadblock of PROCRASTINATION.
Procrastination is especially tough for young adults. Getting started is overwhelming, it’s hard to get motivated, not knowing how long things take messes up planning, and distractions are everywhere.
We are all wired to put things off, but we can learn tools and techniques to kick this habit. This book is a user-friendly guide to help teens get their tasks done. Simple, straightforward, and with a touch of humor, this book is packed with practical solutions and easily digestible tips to stay on top of homework, develop a sense of time, manage digital distractions, create easy-to-follow routines, and get unstuck.
In her breezy, witty style, internationally recognized academic and parenting coach Leslie Josel opens the door to a student’s view of procrastination, dives deep into what that really looks like, and offers up her Triple Ts―tips, tools, and techniques―to teach students how to get stuff done…now.
The Addiction Inoculation: Raising Healthy Kids In a Culture of Dependence
By Jessica Lahey
It’s critical not only to talk to kids about substance abuse, but to fortify them against it.
Through comprehensive research, Jessica illustrates that a few solid strategies can be the difference between a child’s crippling addiction or healthy self-control.
The dangers are out there, but Jessica’s recommendations will help give you insight and a clear path forward. Don’t lose another night of sleep worrying about possible substance abuse!
The Sleep Lady’s Good Night, Sleep Tight: Gentle Proven Solutions to Help your Child Sleep Well and Wake Up Happy
By Kim West, LCSW-C with Joanne Kenen
Are you losing sleep over your bedtime routine? Don’t worry, The Sleep Lady has got you covered from infants to bigger kids. This step-by-step guide helps you tackle even the toughest bedtime struggles so you and your children can get the sleep you need, without any of the frustration leading up to it.
Having helped thousands of parents tackle the bedtime routine, The Sleep Lady is a trusted resource in the world of sleep training.
The Argument Hangover: Empowering Couples to Fight Smarter & Overcome Communication Pitfalls
By Jocelyn & Aaron Freeman
If you’re parenting with a partner and have trouble getting on the same page, this book is for you! The Freemans are world-renowned relationship experts and will help you make the most out of your adult relationship, so you and your parenting partner can do the best you can for your kids!
In this relatable, no b.s. book for couples, the Freemans explain what an argument hangover is, what causes it, and how to clearly communicate your needs to feel understood–without having to change each other.
This modern guide includes step-by-step tools and exercises you can implement right away, so you can handle the challenges that so many couples face today. Topics include:
- Why conflict doesn’t have to be something you avoid
- How to keep arguments from escalating
- How to resolve those nagging two or three disagreements that keep coming up
Embrace conflict and grow from it with the right communication skills―and say goodbye to argument hangovers once and for all.
Internet Resources:
Autism Speaks:
https://www.autismspeaks.org/
Children & Adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder:
https://chadd.org/
Parenting, Media, Apps, Online Safety and Everything in Between
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/articles/social-media
Learning Disabilities Association of America:
https://ldaamerica.org/
L.A. County Department of Mental Health Resources:
https://dmh.lacounty.gov/resources/
National Alliance on Mental Illness Greater L.A. County:
https://www.namiglac.org/
Our House Grief Support Center:
https://www.ourhouse-grief.org/
Self-Improvement:
https://www.verywellmind.com/brain-health-4157195
Women for Sobriety:
https://womenforsobriety.org/
Phone Apps and Videos for Children Help them learn and practice important skills for relaxing, expressing emotions and coping!
Breathe, Think, Do Sesame (free!)
For parents/caregivers to use with their young children to help teach skills such as problem-solving, self-control, planning, and task
persistence.
Calm (free!)
Calm is a perfect meditation app. It has calming sounds and music, a
few free sleep stories and guided meditations, a guided breathing
exercise, and more!
DreamyKid (free!)
The DreamyKid app offers meditation, guided visualization and
affirmations just for children and teens. It uses proven techniques that teach children methods to guide them towards a happier life through mindfulness.
Headspace: Guided Meditation and Mindfulness (free!)
Guided meditations suitable for all levels. Meditation can help
improve focus, exercise mindful awareness, relieve anxiety and
reduce stress.
Stop, Breathe, and Think Kids (free!)
For bedtime, developing positive relationships or simply having a
peaceful moment, this app gives children a fun and easy way to
identify and process their emotions by counting breaths, practicing
friendly wishes or doing frog jumps.
Emotionary (free!)
Emotionary guides kids through different emotions!
Smiling Mind (free!)
Smiling Mind is designed to help children and teens handle
pressure, stress, and challenges of daily life. This app is specifically
designed for kids ages 7-18.
Super Stretch Yoga (free!)
Super Stretch is an educational yoga tool to teach the fun of
physical activity and breathing to children. They will learn the skills
of self-awareness, self-esteem and self-regulation.
Relax Melodies (free!)
Mix and listen to different relaxing sounds. This app can be used
while using other apps!
iTouchiLearn Feelings for Preschool Kids (free!)
This app helps children identify and express emotions through fun
games and songs.
Virtual Hope Box (free!)
This app has simple tools to help with coping, relaxation,
distraction, and positive thinking. It includes places to add photos of
loved ones, recorded messages, inspirational quotes, soothing music,
personalized coping cards, and more!
YouTube playlists (free!)
Various YouTube videos have been chosen and put into playlists for
helping kids with relaxation skills, character building, brain breaks,
thinking skills, and emotion skills. There is also a playlist of videos
for parents! https://bit.ly/2E2dvL1 OR
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvlpOlvfw38dlVYxBMrIL7Q/playlists?