My favorite books on raising an emotionally secure and resilient child

Why am I passionate about this?

Erica Komisar is a licensed clinical social worker, psychoanalyst, and parent guidance expert who has been in private practice in New York City for over 30 years. A graduate of Georgetown and Columbia Universities and The New York Freudian Society, Ms. Komisar is a psychological consultant bringing parenting and work/life workshops to clinics, schools, corporations, and childcare settings. She is a contributor to The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New York Daily News. She is a Contributing Editor to The Institute For Family Studies and appears regularly on Fox and Friends and Fox 5 News


I wrote...

Chicken Little the Sky Isn't Falling: Raising Resilient Adolescents in the New Age of Anxiety

By Erica Komisar,

Book cover of Chicken Little the Sky Isn't Falling: Raising Resilient Adolescents in the New Age of Anxiety

What is my book about?

This is a guide for parents who want to raise emotionally healthy and resilient adolescents in a time of great stress where anxiety and mental health disorders are epidemic.

In these times of great stress for our kids, resilience is not a given. The epidemic of mental health disorders in adolescents has made parenting even more challenging, but parents can still have an enormous impact on the health and well-being of their child. This book offers parents the tools they need to navigate this tumultuous time of change and create a continuous deep connection with their child. With covered topics such as anxiety, depression, ADHD, behavioral issues, and addiction, parents will learn how they can recognize mental health disorders as well as obtain compassionate and practical advice on how to address these issues if they occur

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Attachment

Erica Komisar Why did I love this book?

This book is the foundational book on attachment. John Bowlby is the father of attachment theory and this seminal work was his masterpiece which describes in terms anyone can understand, the importance of attachment to the long-term emotional and mental health of children.

By John Bowlby,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Attachment as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This first volume of John Bowlby's Attachment and Loss series examines the nature of the child's ties to the mother. Beginning with a discussion of instinctive behaviour, its causation, functioning, and ontogeny, Bowlby proceeds to a theoretical formulation of attachment behaviour,how it develops, how it is maintained, what functions it fulfills.In the fifteen years since Attachment was first published, there have been major developments in both theoretical discussion and empirical research on attachment. The second edition, with two wholly new chapters and substantial revisions, incorporates these developments and assesses their importance to attachment theory.


Book cover of Diary of a Baby: What Your Child Sees, Feels, and Experiences

Erica Komisar Why did I love this book?

I love this book because it takes the observations and research of Daniel Stern’s The Interpersonal World of the Infant and puts it into readable and understandable language. This book helps parents to empathize with their young children, to understand how they are feeling and what they are thinking and to make attachment theory more real.

By Daniel N. Stern,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Diary of a Baby as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Every new parent desperately wants to know what goes on in the mind of a baby. Now a noted authority on infant development and psychiatry brings us closer than ever before to penetrating a your child's consciousness. In alternating sections of evocative prose, representing the baby's own voice, and explanatory text, Daniel Stern draws on the latest research findings to recreate the baby's world."


Book cover of The Neurobehavioral and Social-Emotional Development of Infants and Children

Erica Komisar Why did I love this book?

This book helps clinicians and parents to understand the need for mothers or primary attachment figures to repair the missteps and misunderstandings from moment to moment to foster emotional security. Every mother and baby have moments of misunderstanding, the sooner the mother can repair this rift through empathy and taking responsibility for the misstep, the more seen and heard and secure the baby will feel.

By Ed Tronick,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Neurobehavioral and Social-Emotional Development of Infants and Children as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Over the course of his esteemed career, he has received funding for hundreds of key studies in the US and abroad on normal and abnormal infant and child development-including his Mutual Regulation Model and Still-Face Paradigm, which revolutionized our understanding of infants' emotional capacities and coping-all of which led to critical contributions in the field. Much of his work serves as the benchmark for how mental health clinicians think about biopsychosocial states of consciousness, the process of meaning making, and how and why we engage with others in the world.

Now, for the first time, Tronick has gathered together his…


Book cover of Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development

Erica Komisar Why did I love this book?

This is the seminal book on the field of neuropsychobiology, the coming together of the four fields of psychoanalysis, attachment theory, epigenetics, and neuroscience to promote the understanding of the critical nature of the first 3 years of a baby’s life and the role that mothers play in that regulation and the emotional security of the baby.

By Allan N. Schore,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

During the past decade a diverse group of disciplines have simultaneously intensified their attention upon the scientific study of emotion. This proliferation of research on affective phenomena has been paralleled by an acceleration of investigations of early human structural and functional development. Developmental neuroscience is now delving into the ontogeny of brain systems that evolve to support the psychobiological underpinnings of socioemotional functioning. Studies of the infant brain demonstrate that its maturation is influenced by the environment and is experience-dependent. Developmental psychological research emphasizes that the infant's expanding socioaffective functions are critically influenced by the affect-transacting experiences it has with…


Book cover of The Magic Years: Understanding and Handling the Problems of Early Childhood

Erica Komisar Why did I love this book?

The best book I know to understand the emotions of toddlers and how to help regulate those emotions.  Fraiberg is brilliant at taking complicated psychoanalytic and attachment knowledge and putting it into a readable and accessible form to help everyone from clinicians to parents.

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Acquaintance

By Jeff Stookey,

Book cover of Acquaintance

Jeff Stookey Author Of Dangerous Medicine

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Historical fiction writer Gay male Reader History buff Curious human

Jeff's 3 favorite reads in 2023

What is my book about?

As a young doctor, Carl Holman has experienced the horrors of World War I and the death of his lover, a fellow officer. Back home after the War, he befriends a young jazz musician who he hopes will become a companion he can share his life with. But this is Oregon: the Ku Klux Klan is gaining influence, homosexual acts are illegal, and such a relationship will jeopardize Carl’s promising medical career.

Musician Jimmy Harper has his own dreams for the future and his own obstacles to overcome before he will allow himself to accept Carl’s love. More than a gay love story, Acquaintance is a deep dive into gay and lesbian history based on extensive period research of the 1920s.

Acquaintance

By Jeff Stookey,

What is this book about?

As a young surgeon, Carl Holman has experienced the horrors of World War I and the loss of his lover, a fellow officer. Back home after the war, he befriends a young jazz musician who he hopes will become a companion he can share his life with. But this is Oregon: the Ku Klux Klan is gaining influence, homosexual acts are illegal, and such a relationship will jeopardize Carl’s promising medical career. Musician Jimmy Harper has his own dreams for the future and his own obstacles to overcome before he will allow himself to accept Carl’s love.
Acquaintance is a…


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