100 books like First Feelings

By Stanley I. Greenspan, Nancy Thorndike Greenspan,

Here are 100 books that First Feelings fans have personally recommended if you like First Feelings. Shepherd is a community of 10,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Oneness and Separateness: From Infant to Individual

Alice Sterling Honig Author Of Secure Relationships: Nurturing Infant/Toddler Attachment in Early Care Settings

From my list on deeply understanding infant and toddler development.

Why am I passionate about this?

Dr. Alice Sterling Honig, Professor Emerita of Child Development at Syracuse University, has spent over a half century working with and studying young children and creating numerous courses on how best to nurture early development. She has lectured widely in many countries and is the author of over 600 articles and chapters, and dozens of books on children and their caregivers. For nearly 40 summers she conducted an annual workshop  “Quality caregiving for infants and toddlers”. As a licensed  New York State psychologist, she has worked with families to ameliorate troubles in development and behavior. In Beijing, she was invited to give the “Dr. Alice Honig award” to a prominent Chinese pediatrician. She was awarded the Syracuse University Chancellor’s Citation for Academic Excellence.

Alice's book list on deeply understanding infant and toddler development

Alice Sterling Honig Why did Alice love this book?

Vividly and poetically, Dr. Kaplan describes the emotional development of infants, including the choreography of each stage, through ‘holding on and letting go,’ and ’no-saying’ in the Separation / Individuation stage, to a psychological rebirth by the end of the toddler period. The writer carefully delineates the struggles of each baby toward this rebirth as a person who can handle the contradictions of his or her own feelings and those of the parents.

By Louise Kaplan,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Provides insight into the process by which an infant is separated from oneness with its mother, revealing the impact of this separation on human behavior throughout life.


Book cover of Rethinking the Brain: New Insights into Early Development

Alice Sterling Honig Author Of Secure Relationships: Nurturing Infant/Toddler Attachment in Early Care Settings

From my list on deeply understanding infant and toddler development.

Why am I passionate about this?

Dr. Alice Sterling Honig, Professor Emerita of Child Development at Syracuse University, has spent over a half century working with and studying young children and creating numerous courses on how best to nurture early development. She has lectured widely in many countries and is the author of over 600 articles and chapters, and dozens of books on children and their caregivers. For nearly 40 summers she conducted an annual workshop  “Quality caregiving for infants and toddlers”. As a licensed  New York State psychologist, she has worked with families to ameliorate troubles in development and behavior. In Beijing, she was invited to give the “Dr. Alice Honig award” to a prominent Chinese pediatrician. She was awarded the Syracuse University Chancellor’s Citation for Academic Excellence.

Alice's book list on deeply understanding infant and toddler development

Alice Sterling Honig Why did Alice love this book?

By three years of age, toddler brains are two and half times as active as those of adults and they stay that way for a decade. New brain imaging techniques reveal how powerful adult-child positive interactions are for enhancing brain development from birth. With large print, charming infant and toddler photos, and easy-to-read charts, this book should galvanize parents and program personnel to support care providers’ frequent, sensitive, and enriching social interactions from birth onward to enhance and optimize early brain development.

By Rima Shore,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Book by Shore, Rima


Book cover of Childhood and Society

Alice Sterling Honig Author Of Secure Relationships: Nurturing Infant/Toddler Attachment in Early Care Settings

From my list on deeply understanding infant and toddler development.

Why am I passionate about this?

Dr. Alice Sterling Honig, Professor Emerita of Child Development at Syracuse University, has spent over a half century working with and studying young children and creating numerous courses on how best to nurture early development. She has lectured widely in many countries and is the author of over 600 articles and chapters, and dozens of books on children and their caregivers. For nearly 40 summers she conducted an annual workshop  “Quality caregiving for infants and toddlers”. As a licensed  New York State psychologist, she has worked with families to ameliorate troubles in development and behavior. In Beijing, she was invited to give the “Dr. Alice Honig award” to a prominent Chinese pediatrician. She was awarded the Syracuse University Chancellor’s Citation for Academic Excellence.

Alice's book list on deeply understanding infant and toddler development

Alice Sterling Honig Why did Alice love this book?

Erikson’s classic theoretical rubric clearly describes the positive and negative poles of social development across the life span. For the earliest years, these poles are: Trust vs. Mistrust; Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt, and Initiative vs. Guilt. Freudian psychosexual theories of development and cross-cultural practices are also discussed.

By Erik H. Erikson,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

The original and vastly influential ideas of Erik H. Erikson underlie much of our understanding of human development. His insights into the interdependence of the individuals' growth and historical change, his now-famous concepts of identity, growth, and the life cycle, have changed the way we perceive ourselves and society. Widely read and cited, his works have won numerous awards including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

Combining the insights of clinical psychoanalysis with a new approach to cultural anthropology, Childhood and Society deals with the relationships between childhood training and cultural accomplishment, analyzing the infantile and the mature,…


Book cover of Ghosts from the Nursery: Tracing the Roots of Violence

Alice Sterling Honig Author Of Secure Relationships: Nurturing Infant/Toddler Attachment in Early Care Settings

From my list on deeply understanding infant and toddler development.

Why am I passionate about this?

Dr. Alice Sterling Honig, Professor Emerita of Child Development at Syracuse University, has spent over a half century working with and studying young children and creating numerous courses on how best to nurture early development. She has lectured widely in many countries and is the author of over 600 articles and chapters, and dozens of books on children and their caregivers. For nearly 40 summers she conducted an annual workshop  “Quality caregiving for infants and toddlers”. As a licensed  New York State psychologist, she has worked with families to ameliorate troubles in development and behavior. In Beijing, she was invited to give the “Dr. Alice Honig award” to a prominent Chinese pediatrician. She was awarded the Syracuse University Chancellor’s Citation for Academic Excellence.

Alice's book list on deeply understanding infant and toddler development

Alice Sterling Honig Why did Alice love this book?

Building on the brilliant work of Dr, Selma Fraiberg, who published Ghosts in the Nursery, detailing the consequences for impaired mother-infant relationships when the mother has had traumas in her past and then is “unable” to hear her own baby’s cries and need for nurturance, these authors go further. They provide specific details of how, during the first three years of life, insecure attachments, violence, abuse, terror, neglect, and prenatal ingestion of drugs, lead to impaired brain development, emotional disturbances, and later violent behaviors.

By Robin Karr-Morse, Meredith S Wiley,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Ghosts from the Nursery as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This new, revised edition incorporates significant advances in neurobiological research over the past decade, and includes a new introduction by Dr. Vincent J. Felitti, a leading researcher in the field. When Ghosts from the Nursery: Tracing the Roots of Violence was published in 1997, it was lauded for providing scientific evidence that violence can originate in the womb and become entrenched in a child’s brain by preschool. The authors’ groundbreaking conclusions became even more relevant following the wave of school shootings across the nation including the tragedy at Columbine High School and the shocking subsequent shootings culminating most recently in…


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

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

From my list on raising an emotionally 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

Erica's book list on raising an emotionally resilient child

Erica Komisar Why did Erica 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.

By Selma H. Fraiberg,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Synopsis coming soon.......


Book cover of Touchpoints-Birth to Three

Joni Levine Author Of 365 Toddler Activities That Inspire Creativity: Games, Projects, and Pastimes That Encourage a Child's Learning and Imagination

From my list on toddler development and behavior.

Why am I passionate about this?

My passion has always been caring for and educating young children. I spent over 20 years in the classroom as a child care professional and much of that time was with toddlers. I discovered that the stereotype of the terrible twos was truly misguided. I chose books that will shed new light on why toddlers behave the way that they do. These books will show the reader what an important time this is in a child’s growth and learning. I believe that these books will help convince you that toddlers are not terrible; they are terrific!

Joni's book list on toddler development and behavior

Joni Levine Why did Joni love this book?

T. Berry Brazelton has been recognized as an expert on parenting and child development. I used to eagerly wait to read his newspaper column that offered concise advice on child care. In this book, Brazelton covers the milestones of typical development and he discusses common concerns of this age range. Although this book focuses on emotional and behavioral development, his background in pediatrics allows him to write about physical development as well. You will learn, in detail, what to expect of young children up to age three in this comprehensive book.

By T. Berry Brazelton, Joshua D. Sparrow,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Touchpoints-Birth to Three as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

All over the U.S. and in over twenty countries around the world, Touchpoints has become required reading for anxious parents of babies and small children. T. Berry Brazelton's great empathy for the universal concerns of parenthood, and honesty about the complex feelings it engenders, as well as his uncanny insight into the predictable leaps and regressions of early childhood, have comforted and supported families since its publication in 1992. In this completely revised edition Dr. Brazelton introduces new information on physical, emotional, and behavioural development. He also addresses the new stresses on families and fears of children, with a fresh…


Book cover of Children's Minds

Sue Palmer Author Of Toxic Childhood: How The Modern World Is Damaging Our Children And What We Can Do About It

From my list on child development and education.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a primary head teacher, then literacy consultant, I wrote many books about education but at the age of 50 I changed tack. A meeting with a researcher who’d discovered an alarming decline in young children’s listening skills led to eight years’ research on the effects of modern lifestyles on children’s development. It involved many interviews with experts on diet, sleep, play, language, family life, childcare, education, screen-time, marketing influences and parenting styles – and a great deal of reading. By the time Toxic Childhood was first published in 2006 I’d realised that, in a 21st century culture, society should be paying far more attention to child development, especially in the early years. I hope to go on spreading that message until my dying breath.

Sue's book list on child development and education

Sue Palmer Why did Sue love this book?

I read Children’s Minds during the school summer holidays in 1979 and vividly remember sitting in the sunshine in Edinburgh’s Meadows, in floods of tears over Margaret Donaldson’s call to arms in her closing pages. Children’s Minds is a wonderful introduction to the science of child development (indeed, it profoundly affected the course of that science, particularly in terms of the development of thought and language). It’s wise, perceptive and a great read.  

By Margaret Donaldson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Children's Minds as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Margaret Donaldson's seminal work on child development, first published in 1978, has become a classic inquiry into the nature of human thought.

In this concise and brilliantly readable book, Margaret Donaldson shows that context is key when it comes to the development of language and thought, and how the right support can ensure children are skilled in these areas before they even start school. She revisits earlier theories of child development, notably those of Jean Piaget, to expose flaws in the accepted wisdom on child psychology and to suggest a range of new strategies to help children combat difficulties.

As…


Book cover of The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling

Barry J. Robinson Author Of A Seagull Named Papa

From my list on thinking differently about yourself and the world.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have a passion for becoming a better human being and helping others to do the same. I spent 28 years in parish ministry attempting to remind people of the call of Jesus and the needs of the human heart. I left ministry and operated a private practice as a registered psychotherapist for almost 20 years. I am now retired and an author of three books. I'm still working at the task of becoming a better human being and helping others to do the same. The books I have recommended in my book list are all examples of people with similar mindsets.

Barry's book list on thinking differently about yourself and the world

Barry J. Robinson Why did Barry love this book?

The Soul's Code is a penetrating psychological and spiritual study of how we get to be who we are and the necessity of listening deeply to the call of your own life.

It will surprise and move you to be more aware of those formative experiences that are intrinsic to human experience. This book assisted me greatly in hearing my own soul's voice and inspiring me to write my own book about this experience.

By James Hillman,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Soul's Code as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Plato and the Greeks called it 'daimon', the Romans 'genius', the Christians 'Guardian Angel' - and today we use terms such as 'heart', 'spirit' and 'soul'. For James Hillman it is the central and guiding force of his utterly unique and compelling 'acorn theory' which proposes that each life is formed by a particular image, an image that is the essence of that life and calls it to a destiny, just as the mighty oak's destiny is written in the tiny acorn.

Highly accessible and imaginative, The Soul's Code offers a liberating vision of childhood troubles and an exciting approach…


Book cover of Parent Nation: Unlocking Every Child's Potential, Fulfilling Society's Promise

John A. List Author Of The Voltage Effect: How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale

From my list on changing the world and/or yourself.

Why am I passionate about this?

My passion is using field experiments to explore economic questions. Since the early 1990s I have generated more than 200 papers published in academic journals using the world as my lab. That’s what we do as academics. The problem is that locked away in these journals is an enormous amount of wisdom and insights that can not only help the realm of academia, but also change the world as we know it. The brilliant authors of these books unlock the ideas and knowledge found in the academic papers that are full of jargon and math, aimed towards a narrow audience, and put them in language aimed towards the masses where real change can be implemented.  

John's book list on changing the world and/or yourself

John A. List Why did John love this book?

Parents are the foundation of our society. However, too many parents do not receive the support they need to meet the needs of their children.

Dr. Dana Suskind, my incredible wife, combines the latest science on the key role of parents in the development of children’s brains with stories of the experience of parents left shouldering this vital responsibility. Leaving parents unsupported is detrimental not only to children and families, but also society.

This book is essential for all members of society to read in order to understand why and, importantly, how we must support parents. Parent Nation provides a blueprint for a more sustainable future.

By Dana Suskind,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

***INSTANT New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today Bestseller***

World-class pediatric surgeon, social scientist, and best-selling author of Thirty Million Words Dr. Dana Suskind returns with a revelatory new look at the neuroscience of early childhood development—and how it can guide us toward a future in which every child has the opportunity to fulfill their potential.

Her prescription for this more prosperous and equitable future, as clear as it is powerful, is more robust support for parents during the most critical years of their children’s development. In her poignant new book, Parent Nation, written with award-winning science writer…


Book cover of How to Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes: Science-Based Strategies for Better Parenting--From Tots to Teens

Emily Edlynn Author Of Autonomy-Supportive Parenting: Reduce Parental Burnout and Raise Competent, Confident Children

From my list on books for feeling better about your parenting.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a child psychologist, mother of three, and parenting writer who reads way too much parenting content. My personal mission is to be a voice of science-based, compassionate, and realistic parenting guidance to counteract the pitfalls of modern parenting advice. As a psychologist, I know much of this advice lacks good science and even common sense. As a mother, I find a majority of parenting advice oppressive in its unrealistic expectations and a source of unnecessary guilt, shame, and feelings of failure—especially for mothers. I love highlighting the work of other parenting experts who share my mission: to empower and uplift parents with good information and authentic support. 

Emily's book list on books for feeling better about your parenting

Emily Edlynn Why did Emily love this book?

I love Wenner Moyer’s warmth and humor interwoven with good old-fashioned science about how to parent kids to be decent human beings.

I devoured the book on Kindle and then immediately bought a hard copy so I could easily pull it off the shelf for reference. And I often do.

She is the furthest from preachy or self-righteous while giving rationales and tips for how to raise empathic kids who aren’t racist, sexist, or completely self-absorbed. It’s a must for every parent’s bookshelf.

By Melinda Wenner Moyer,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked How to Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

As featured in The Guardian, How to Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes is a clear, actionable, sometimes humorous (but always science-based) guide for parents on how to shape their kids into honest, kind, generous, confident, independent, and resilient people . . . who just might save the world one day.

As an award-winning science journalist, Melinda Wenner Moyer was regularly asked to investigate and address all kinds of parenting questions: how to potty train, when and whether to get vaccines, and how to help kids sleep through the night. But as Melinda's children grew, she found that one huge area…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in child psychology, emotions, and toddlers?

10,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them. Browse their picks for the best books about child psychology, emotions, and toddlers.

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