Today I want to share with you my top 3 favourite parenting books!
When I was a new mama and didn’t know what I was doing, these books saved me. From the knowledge in these books, I learnt how to handle my daughter’s big emotions and her stubborn behaviours and calm her down. I found guidance to parent in ways that aligned with my values – like using love and connection rather than fear and punishment to get my child through every day tasks.
So here are my top 3 books!
Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids by Dr Laura Markham
I love Dr Laura’s advice – she outlines how to use connection and empathy and coaching to raise happy kids who have such a great bond with you they'll want to please you. And it’s a really practical book too, with specific things to say in given situations. And it’s all based on mindfulness of our own emotions and triggers. Powerful stuff.
"Peaceful parents find it much easier to be calm and patient. Why? Because this kind of parenting creates a better parent-child relationship, which produces better-behaved children - and parents who enjoy their child more. Peaceful parents have actually found a way to put the joy back into parenting."
Click the link to buy it on Amazon Australia:
Click the image to buy it on Amazon USA:
The Whole Brain Child by Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson
This book gives you the brain science behind why kids behave they way they do - how you can use this knowledge to cope with their difficult behaviours and coach them to listen to you and do what you ask. It’s also filled with great advice on how to help your children learn to handle their emotions and reactions.
I wrote in this blog all about our kids' freaking-out "upstairs brain" and calm, mindful "downstairs brain" and this is the book that explains in detail how this works!
"With an understanding of the brain, you can be more intentional about what you teach your kids, how you respond to them and why. You can do much more than merely survive. By giving your children repeated experiences that develop the whole brain, you will face fewer everyday parenting crises."
Click the title to buy it on Amazon Australia:
Click the image to buy it on Amazon USA:
Unconditional Parenting, Alfie Kohn
According to Alfie Kohn, most traditional parenting practices are mainly about training kids to do what parents say. The goal is having compliant children, forgetting about bigger, more important goals like raising confident, caring and curious kids. Forcing kids to comply through punishment and rewards teaches them that they are loved only for what they do, not who they are. Kohn outlines how we can raise our kids to feel loved just as they are – unconditionally.
“Children need to be loved as they are, and for who they are. When that happens, they can accept themselves as fundamentally good people even when they screw up or fall short. And with this basic need met, they’re also freer to accept (and help) other people. Unconditional love, in short, is what children need in order to flourish.”
Click the title to buy it on Amazon Australia:
Click the image to buy it on Amazon USA:
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