The best books to help you (and your teen) understand their mind (and yours)

If you’ve ever heard that the “marshmallow research” shows that the ability to delay gratification aged 3 determines your life success and skills later, this book will put you right! It is far more positive, interesting and practical than that and you need to read the whole book, not just the headlines. There are techniques you can put into practice to improve your (and your family’s) habits in relation to pretty much anything. I use it to help develop healthy screen-time behaviours – for myself, too! And I refer to it regularly when giving talks and training to teachers and parents.  

If you want to change and improve your habits – whether dealing with existing bad habits relating to alcohol, chocolate, or screen time (I’m looking at myself…) or understanding and improving your behaviour with exercise or work/life balance (still looking at me) – I recommend starting with The Marshmallow Effect and then following immediately with The Power of Habit. The very worst that can happen is that your bad habits continue but you understand why! But much more likely is that you gain insights that will change your life for the better. It’s a perfect blend of science, common sense, and practical application.

When I do in-service training in schools – or talks for parents – easily the thing the audience most commonly and keenly asks about in the Q&A relates to what I’ve said about introverts and their experience in school. Despite this, although I do discuss it in several of my books, I haven’t written a book about it, for one good reason: Quiet Power is all you need! Susan Cain also wrote a book called Quiet but Quiet Power is the one I recommend specifically to parents, teachers, and young people themselves because it is written with young people specifically in mind and contains tips for teachers and students. Introverts are poorly served in most schools but with proper understanding (including by themselves) they – I mean “we”, as I’m strongly introverted myself – could thrive better. We do not need to change the environment to suit one group of people – there is room for everyone to shine, with a few simple strategies and some deep understanding. 

Most teachers will know this book and most schools either explicitly or implicitly teach growth mindset to students. So it would be helpful for parents to have this insight, too. But you might have heard growth mindset being “disproved” – that is not true! Some people had taken the conclusions too far and made too many claims or misunderstood, but if you actually read Dweck’s work in this book you’ll see what she actually said. It is quite a densely-written book, which is possibly why some people have skimmed it and reached certain conclusions. What you could do is a) take my word for it that the research is strong and meaningful and b) read the “grow your mindset” tips at the end of each chapter. Or settle down and read it all! 

For my recommendation, it was a choice between this and How We Learn by Benedict Carey but I had to choose The Organized Mind because I had so many page markers stuck in it! Yes, this is a book I’ve referred to over and over again because it reveals so much about how our busy minds work and why when they get too busy they don’t work so well. I think for most people nowadays, especially students, parents, and teachers, recognizing, understanding, and dealing with “brain bandwidth” overload is fascinating, revealing, and empowering. For me this book was transformative. It got me into the whole science of brain bandwidth, which is now one of the most popular parts of my talks for parents and teachers. Once you know about it you’ll spot examples of it in action many times a day!