The best books for tired and frazzled parents

Beth Macgregor Author Of Helping Your Baby to Sleep: Why Gentle Techniques Work Best
By Beth Macgregor

Who am I?

My passion for children’s welfare began as a psychology undergraduate over 30 years ago and burns just as fiercely today. As a trainer and author, I share with parents and professionals recent advances in research that reveal the small but powerful steps adults can take to help children flourish and thrive. This requires letting go of outdated and harmful views of children and offering them the tender care and guidance they need to come to believe that they are loved, worthy and capable. I absolutely believe that by taking these steps together we can build a more harmonious and loving society.

I wrote...

Helping Your Baby to Sleep: Why Gentle Techniques Work Best

By Anni Gethin, Beth Macgregor

Book cover of Helping Your Baby to Sleep: Why Gentle Techniques Work Best

What is my book about?

Raising a baby is tiring work! Especially in cultures where parents have little family support. This - combined with the West’s zeal for independence and self-reliance - has led many ‘experts’ to espouse that babies should self-settle and sleep for long periods without assistance. Parents of babies who don’t meet these expectations often feel pressure to ‘teach good sleep habits’ by leaving their babies to cry – a distressing experience for babies and parents.

Our book offers a more realistic understanding of the developmental and emotional vulnerabilities which can make independent sleep hard for young children. Endorsed by the world’s leading Infant Mental Health Specialists, it also offers tips, advice, and encouragement for tired parents who want to support healthy sleep habits.

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The Books I Picked & Why

The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children

By Ross W. Greene

Book cover of The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children

Why this book?

There’s a reason over a million copies of this book have been sold. It describes the many emotional and thinking skills children require to live a happy life and explains how challenging behaviours occur when demands are placed on children that exceed the skills they have to manage those demands. This book gifts parents the key to unlocking the mystery of their children’s uncooperative, frustrating, and even violent behaviours. It’s rich with examples, scenarios and clear suggestions for action, which make it easy to read and incredibly useful in building parents’ skills and confidence. You’ll never think about children’s behaviour the same way again.

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100 Ways to Calm the Crying

By Pinky McKay

Book cover of 100 Ways to Calm the Crying

Why this book?

You can trust Pinky McKay. A Lactation Consultant with decades of experience who has worked with thousands of parents, there’s not a baby problem that she hasn’t encountered and solved. This compassionate book covers the many reasons baby may be crying and is loaded with solid, kind, useful, practical advice to help frazzled parents soothe their precious bundles. Importantly, it also has baby feeding information you can trust. Written with bite-size ideas so that tired parents can read it in five-minute chunks if they choose, Pinky’s empathy for babies and parents can be felt on every page.

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Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child

By John Gottman, Joan Declaire

Book cover of Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child

Why this book?

Dr. John Gottman is an internationally acclaimed research psychologist whose Emotion Coaching technique has transformed the lives of countless parents and children across the world. This book helps parents understand the big feelings which are often at the root of children’s tantrums and upsets and offers a tried and true, research-based, practical way to respond. Dr. Gottman’s techniques not only help parents respond more confidently and effectively to their children - reducing the length and frequency of tantrums and upsets – but also increase their children’s self-confidence, mental health, and relationship skills. What could be better?!

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Self-Reg: How to Help Your Child (and You) Break the Stress Cycle and Successfully Engage with Life

By Stuart Shanker

Book cover of Self-Reg: How to Help Your Child (and You) Break the Stress Cycle and Successfully Engage with Life

Why this book?

Dr. Stuart Shanker is the rock star of Self-Regulation; what he doesn’t know about children is not worth knowing. This book lifts the lid on the many hidden and surprising sources of stress for children, and the impact stress has on their mind, behaviour, and nervous system. Packed with stories of the children he has treated and families he has helped and peppered with facts about the brain and nervous system, this book helps parents discover what could be causing their children’s behavioural, emotional, and learning problems. Best of all, it offers concrete steps parents can take to help children develop their self-regulation skills and successfully engage with life.

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The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind

By Daniel J. Siegel, Tina Payne Bryson

Book cover of The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind

Why this book?

The past two decades have seen an explosion in neuroscience’s understanding of children’s brains and what they need for best development. Dr. Dan Siegel is a master translator of this research; he turns complicated science into easy-to-understand language and cartoons. This book offers simple and super-effective brain-friendly discipline strategies parents can use to turn conflict and chaos into connection and calm. 

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