Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

In Raising Cain, Dan Kindlon, Ph.D., and Michael Thompson, Ph.D., two of the country’s leading child psychologists, share what they have learned in more than thirty-five years of combined experience working with boys and their families. They reveal a nation of boys who are hurting–sad, afraid, angry, and silent. Kindlon and Thompson set out to answer this basic, crucial question: What do boys need that they’re not getting? They illuminate the forces that threaten our boys, teaching them to believe that “cool” equals macho strength and stoicism. Cutting through outdated theories of “mother blame,” “boy biology,” and “testosterone,” the authors shed light on the destructive emotional training our boys receive–the emotional miseducation of boys.

Kindlon and Thompson make a compelling case that emotional literacy is the most valuable gift we can offer our sons, urging parents to recognize the price boys pay when we hold them to an impossible standard of manhood. They identify the social and emotional challenges that boys encounter in school and show how parents can help boys cultivate emotional awareness and empathy–giving them the vital connections and support they need to navigate the social pressures of youth.

Your Competent Child

In this important book, Jesper Juul argues that today’s families are at an exciting crossroads. The destructive values — obedience, physical and emotional violence, and conformity — that governed traditional hierarchical families are being transformed.
Instead we can choose to embrace a new set of values based on the assumption that families must be built not on authoritarian force or democratic tyranny but on dignity and reciprocity between parent and child. Children are competent to express their feelings from birth, and they are eager to cooperate. It is parents who must work to listen to and learn from their children. When our children’s behavior makes us feel less than valuable, then it is almost always because we are. That is, prior to a conflict, we were unable to convert our loving feelings into loving behavior, our good intentions into fruitful interaction.

Juul is a renowned international authority on the family. Using examples from families in many different countries, he has written a book that challenges parents to see their years with their children as an exciting time of growth and development for the whole family.

WILD THINGS

Giving the Love That Heals: A Guide for Parents

Keeping the Love You Find: A Single Persons Guide to Achieving Lasting Love

Your dream of finding a partner is a natural and normal human instinct and your dream is perfectly achievable. Whatever your history, whatever your heartbreak, as a single person you are in an ideal position to learn what you need to know and what you can do to greatly improve your chances for finding, and keeping, love. With KEEPING THE LOVE YOU FIND, renowned relationship therapist and bestselling author Harville Hendrix will help you to: mid    IDENTIFY your Imago – the fantasy partner that your unconscious mind, which has a hidden agenda of its own, has chosen for you mid    BREAK FREE from those patterns in your parents’ marriage that you have unknowingly accepted as your relationship model mid    CREATE hope in place of despair, companionship instead of loneliness mid    DEVELOP communication skills to turn conflict into contact – and togetherness mid    TRANSFORM every past relationship into a source of positive growth mid    DISCOVER the rewards of real love – and the little things that make it last …and more. Filled with wisdom and compassion, KEEPING THE LOVE YOU FIND will help get your next relationship off to the best start and keep your love strong for a lifetime.

The Heart of Parenting: How to Raise an Emotionally Intelligent Child

This is a practical guide for parents on how to raise a child who can understand and control his or her emotions. It explains a child’s different emotional needs at different ages, and shows parents how to help their children calm themselves down, how to focus their attention, how to give their children better emotional support through difficult times, such as divorce, and offers simple tools and techniques for parents to evaluate and improve on their own emotional parenting styles. Specific and positive advice is interspersed with case studies and anecdotes throughout. A five-step process of “emotional coaching” is presented for parents to follow. Questionnaires enable parents to evaluate their style of “emotional parenting”. The book is based on a study of 100 families over a ten-year period. John Gottman is the author of “Why Marriages Succeed or Fail”.

Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child

Roots of Empathy

Mary Gordon’s unique approach brings care, compassion, emotional literacy and meaningful communication into the classroom. A must-read for any teacher who wants to create a caring environment in the classroom. Parents can also gain great insight from this book. I’d also recommend this book  in situations that have a concerns regarding child bullying – it’s  an eye-opener re: how to create a respectful, caring community.