School Development

Spirited infants are the outliers—the exceptions to the “rules,” the extraordinary ones. They arrive in this world genetically wired to be alert and intense. Spirited babies put parents to the test and raising them takes special skills and patient perseverance. In this groundbreaking new book, beloved parenting expert Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, Ed.D., offers her findings in the fields of neuroscience, sleep, temperament, self-regulation, attachment, and parent-child interactions, and shares what she has learned from hands-on experiences with families.

Much is written about children's infancy and toddler years, which is good, since children will never remember those times themselves. It is ages four to 14 that make up the second act, as Catherine Newman puts it in this delightfully candid, outlandishly funny new memoir about the years that "your children will remember as childhood". Following Newman's son and daughter as they blossom from preschoolers into teenagers, Catastrophic Happiness is about the bittersweet joy of raising children and the ever-evolving landscape of issues parents traverse.

What does it take to raise great kids? Do you get tough? Or show acceptance? Lay down the rules? Or lighten up? In this audio guide, Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend show you how to avoid the twin extremes of permissiveness and over-control, and instead give your child the care and acceptance that make grace real to your child and the discipline and firmness that give direction. Drs. Cloud and Townsend provide you with important parenting advice that will help you reach middle-ground in the way you raise your kids.

The high school and college years: an extended roller coaster of academics, friends, first loves, first break-ups, driver’s ed, jobs, and everything in between. Kids are constantly changing, and how we parent them must change, too. But how do we stay close as a family as our lives move apart? Enter the co-founders of Grown and Flown, Lisa Heffernan and Mary Dell Harrington. In the midst of guiding their own kids through this transition, they launched what has become the largest website and online community for parents of 15- to 25-year-olds.

Few life skills are as neglected, yet as important, as the ability to remain calm. Our very worst decisions and interactions are almost invariably the result of a loss of calm - and a descent into anxiety and agitation. Surprisingly, but very fortunately, our power to remain calm can be rehearsed and improved. We don’t have to stay where we are now: our responses to everyday challenges can dramatically alter. This is a book that patiently unpacks the causes of our greatest stresses and gives us a succession of arguments with which to defend ourselves against panic and fury.

Now Say This guides parents through a highly practical three-step approach to effectively communicating with children called ALP. It also discusses the power of words in all of our daily conversations. Each chapter addresses a different aspect of parenting and includes actual scripts and precise language for parents to use to set limits with empathy and to use conversations as opportunities for learning. Language is powerful, and the exact words, tone, and nonverbal communication parents use when trying to move through a sticky moment with their child means everything.

Bringing up a child to be an authentic and mentally robust adult is one of life’s great challenges. It is also, fortunately, not a matter of luck. The Good Enough Parent is a compendium of life lessons, including how to say ‘no’ to a child you adore, how to look beneath the surface of ‘bad’ behavior to work out what might really be going on, how to encourage a child to be genuinely kind, and how to handle the moods and gloom of adolescence.

Parenting Bright Kids Who Struggle in School guides parents through the challenging and often unfamiliar landscape of raising kids who have been labeled with learning differences, including dyslexia, ADHD, autism, sensory processing disorder, and more. Drawing from her own experience as a parent of a child with learning differences - who is now a highly successful adult - the author outlines clear lessons from a quarter century of advocating for kids who learn differently.

As parents, it is easy for us to look back and see the shortcomings of our own education. Since many of us were taught in public schools, we often have a pretty good idea of what we don't want our children to learn. But what exactly should we give them instead?

Middle school is its own important, distinct territory, and yet it's either written off as an uncomfortable rite of passage or lumped in with other developmental phases. Based on her many years working in schools, professional counselor Phyllis Fagell sees these years instead as a critical stage that parents can't afford to ignore (and though "middle school" includes different grades in various regions, Fagell maintains that the ages make more of a difference than the setting).

Nicole Lapin gets into the nitty gritty of stocks and bonds, touching on how people talk about them and how they can invest in them as part of their investment portfolio.

If you're like most parents, you're probably feeling pretty nervous about potty training. But don't worry, help is on the way. This supportive guide provides step-by-step advice for a compassionate and emotionally aware process - one that focuses on positive connection rather than relying on gimmicks, pressure, or rewards (which usually backfire).Written by popular parenting expert Sarah Ockwell-Smith, creator of Gentle Parenting, this is the only audiobook you'll need to guide your child through this developmental milestone - without trauma, drama, and tears.

Struggling with your toddler's sudden emotional storms? Walking on eggshells around preschooler tantrums? You're not alone. Managing a child's anger can be overwhelming, but help is here. "Anger Management for Kids" is your guide to navigating these challenges with practical, easy-to-follow strategies tailored for children aged 3-5.

If you could protect your teen from unnecessary anxiety, depression, and chronic stress, and foster a greater sense of happiness and well-being in their life, wouldn’t you? In Generation Sleepless, the authors uncover one of the greatest threats to our teenagers’ physical and mental health: sleep deprivation. Caught in a perfect storm of omnipresent screens, academic overload, night owl biology, and early school start times, our teens are operating in a constant state of sleep debt and "social jet lag" while struggling to meet the demands of adolescence.

The vital skills children need to achieve their full potential! Being organized. Staying focused. Controlling impulses and emotions. These are some of the basic executive functioning (EF) skills children need to function and succeed as they grow. But what can you do if your child is struggling with one or all of these skills? With this hands-on guide, you'll learn what EF difficulties look like and how you can help your child overcome these challenges. Psychologist Rebecca Branstetter teaches you how to help improve the executive functions

Today’s college-bound kids are stressed, anxious, and navigating demands in their lives unimaginable to a previous generation. They’re performance machines, hitting the benchmarks they’re “supposed” to in order to reach the next tier of a relentless ladder. Then, their mental and physical exhaustion carries over right into first jobs. What have traditionally been considered the best years of life have become the beaten-down years of life.

This essential guide assists in preparing your children with techniques for an amazing future. Essential Life Skills Every 11 Year Old Needs to Know is an indispensable book for caregivers dedicated to their children's development. This guide equips 10-12 year old girls and boys with the tools required to grasp practical techniques, foster independence, and enable successful decision making.

Most kids get their first smartphone at the same time that they're experiencing major developmental changes. Making mistakes has always been a part of growing up, but how do parents help their kids navigate childhood and adolescence at a time when social media has the potential to magnify the consequences of those mistakes? Rather than spend all their time worrying about the worst-case scenario, listeners get a bigger-picture understanding of their kids' digital landscape.

Liz Ianelli, known around the world as Survivor993, spent years at the Family Foundation—labeled an “institution for troubled teens.” The children who went through The Family School like her were good people. They had potential and dreams, but they came out with lifelong trauma: anxious, angry, paranoid, self-hating and in pain. Most of them have suffered lives of hardship, unable to integrate back into society. Hundreds have died, mostly by overdose and suicide. I See You, Survivor is about what really happened at The Family and what continues to happen at thousands of facilities like it.

Reclaim Play delivers an inspiring manifesto on why play is critical for children and a comprehensive how-to for parents to bring back the magic of childhood. Unlock the boundless creativity, imagination, and profound learning that flourish when children immerse themselves in independent play. The narrative of childhood has been rewritten over the past two decades. Play, once synonymous with childhood, has seen a worrying decline, paralleled by a concerning upsurge in children's mental health issues, such as anxiety and depression.