The best behaviorism books

Cats often don’t get enough space in books about pet behaviour. This is the easiest-to-read scientific book about cats that you will ever need. Students, make sure it is in your university library. It cuts the information into easy chunks and yet keeps all the references that you might need to follow up. Trudi is a top cat behaviourist in the UK with a background as a veterinary nurse, so she really, really understands what makes cats tick.

This book was the one that opened my eyes to a whole new world of research, relationships, and parenting. It drove me to a new life studying psychology, and upended everything I thought I knew about parenting. This book changed my life trajectory, and the trajectory of my family—forever.

(With honourable mentions for Unconditional Parenting, The Myth of the Spoiled Child, The Homework Myth, and No Contest, all by Kohn).

In this fascinating book, Meg Daley Olmert explores the biological element of human relationships with other animals, and in particular the role of the hormone, oxytocin. Oxytocin helps humans and other animals feel calmer, allowing us to be more curious and friendly. Oxytocin lowers one’s heart rate and reduces stress hormones. Humans who live with or regularly spend time with nonhuman animals live longer and stay healthier. Further, contact with animals can elicit oxytocin in both of those involved, human and nonhuman.

This book also made me cry, because I related to it so much. When my dog’s behavior kept getting worse on a leash, and then when she bit someone, I felt very much alone. I felt like no one understood what I was going through, and I didn’t understand what was wrong with my dog. I wish this book existed then. It contains all the lessons it took me years to learn. Phenix explains what it means for a dog to be above the threshold and how to use counterconditioning to unring that bell. She also debunks the myth that walking a dog more will solve the problem. Not true when those uncontrollable triggers encountered on walks stack on top of one another, pushing the dog over the threshold and increasing their reactivity.

Dogs Are From Neptune is an excellent book and tool for working with fearful and reactive dogs. Jean Donaldson provides instructions and real-life implementation of desensitization and counter-conditioning techniques for a variety of dog behavior problems – such as fear of strangers, food guarding, leash-reactivity, fear of handling, and high prey drive.

This is a slightly different take on my list with a more practical teaching lesson. I have had so many children come up to Chaco and pull his hair or stick their hands in his mouth without permission. Luckily there haven’t been any injuries, but what if it was another dog that wasn’t so well behaved? It's important to train your children how to behave around dogs from an early age.

Dr. Sophia Yin passed away in 2014. This book is on passive training which I implement regularly with fearful and reactive dogs. Passive training is how people teach their dogs, often unknowingly, 24-7. By understanding how your behavior affects your dog, you can teach and modify your dog’s behavior in a kind way without active instruction.

As a new art teacher, I started to doubt the usefulness of the endless praise given by other art teachers.

The repetitive use of "good job" lost its meaning and encouraged students to crave more praise. I believed that art had no right or wrong way of execution, and that even professional critics had varying opinions on what constituted good or bad art.

As a result, I avoided praising work based solely on my personal preferences.

Alfie Kohn's book on praise was a great relief for me as it solved my concerns about endless praise in the classroom. Now, I explain to students that advice does not require praise.

This approach fosters creativity and experimentation, without the unrealistic expectation of having students feel the need to like everything they draw.

This is a joyful book to read – a clever pastiche of Graham Greene’s Wind In the Willows it explains the principles of Transactional Analysis in a way that more ‘technical’ books on the subject can’t reach. Once again it is about awareness of how you are speaking and impacting on others and how shifting your approach can help them shift their thinking.

The ‘story’ format is hypnotic...and I love the hypnotic quality of stories that convey learning in an almost imperceptible way. The poet Seamus Heaney, Nobel Laureate, a countryman of mine summed up the power of poetry (and by implication I think) of stories, in this way:

“I can’t think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is change people’s understanding of what is going on in the world.”

Enjoy this practical training manual compiled from interviews with over a hundred real dads of daughters. No matter if you’re becoming a father of a daughter, a new dad, or experienced dad of a daughter, you will find this book both useful and most definitely validating. One of my favorite things is that it’s written in small chunks which are easy to digest. You don’t need to read the book cover to cover, but rather pick out the sections in which you’re most interested. You can scan these little gems not mentioned in other parenting books. These are helpful (and often humorful) tips that only real fathers would know.  

As a financial coach, I have met many women who feel alone with their financial challenges, or unable to talk openly about their finances. Women With Money includes the voices of women Chatzky interviewed about their money challenges and goals, and their comments help to humanize the subject. Chatzky’s discussion of our money beliefs is very solid, as is her advice about putting our money to work. Some topics, like investing in real estate, won’t be applicable to all readers, at least not right away. But overall, Chatzky, a longtime personal finance journalist, deftly communicates core personal finance topics in a clear and accessible way. 

In Beyond Behaviors, Mona Delahooke makes a clear, strong case for parents’ self-compassion and for parents’ compassionate responses to their children’s “bad” behavior. Using solid brain science evidence and case histories from her decades of working with very challenging kids, Dr. Delahooke illustrates that children begin to thrive when they feel understood—not judged, not punished—when they lose control. The reader comes to see that misbehavior is a precious clue to a child’s troubled inner reality. A parent’s impatience, irritation, annoyance, or anxiety not only exacerbates the problem, increasing the child’s suffering, but is also a sad, wasted chance at providing the sense of security the child needs, which is a necessary first step on the road to doing better. 

Are we able to use free time, once secured our livelihood, to make life happier?

The Joyless Economy provides a negative answer, as the title already suggests.

The book is premonitory because Scitovsky wrote in the 1970s referring to the United States, while today Americans say they are less happy, despite the economic and technological progress since then..

Scitovsky was still original in explaining this puzzle: the pursuit of happiness in the comfort of material goods and social approval has prevailed over the pleasure of learning, as children do when they play, and then over the pursuit of ambitious life goals.

I loved this book because, although drawing on the psychology and neurosciences of the time, it gives valuable insights for understanding today's world, such as consumerism and the education crisis.

Do you ever feel like everyone is watching you? What about all those other times when you feel like a fly on the wall – observing while not being noticed? Which is true? Are we invisible or is the world critiquing our every move?

It turns out…people notice us much more than we think (and, much less than we think). And as tends to happen with brain tricks, it is the opposite of how we think it should work. Once you understand this, you can easily leverage those insights to increase your influence.

As Vanessa shares in this great book, even being in the audience at a presentation can impact what the speaker says and how their own perspectives will change. Great news for the introverts – silent influence is real.

This book explores the bigger picture of a child’s well-being by examining the two ingredients of emotional intelligence: intrapersonal awareness (understanding yourself) and interpersonal awareness (understanding others). Parry doesn’t give the reader a set of strict techniques and rules to follow. Instead, it is more of a philosophy to develop a child’s emotional resilience by making them feel safe and valued. My main takeaways from the book were to be more present with my child, to question my own behaviour and reactions to her behaviours, to create a loving environment where my child’s feelings (no matter how trivial they may seem) would be validated, to create boundaries, and truly listen before replying. The lessons I learnt from the book will stay with me forever. 

Cats can be very stressed and unhappy without cat rescuers knowing it. This book will help you be a better rescuer. Cats don’t always show their emotions in a way that we can see. This is a serious book from International Cat Care, the best website for cat rescuers.  If you have a passion for rescuing cats, read it. Many cat rescuers need their knowledge updated and this is a good book.

I found French Children Don’t Throw Food funny and inspiring in equal measures. The author humorously describes the differences in French and Anglophone parenting styles in a self-deprecating style. It’s not an overly prescriptive book, rather it is mainly the author detailing her own personal experiences, as an American mother living in Paris. The author highlights her pain and struggles of getting her child to eat, relax, and be on its own, compared to French children who seem to, in general, do it all with minimum effort from their parents. It’s a fun, easy to read book, which has many interesting observations and research. I found the style of French parenting and general attitude mirrored some of my approaches with dogs.

As I’m writing this, my golden retriever Edie is resting her head in my lap, eyes closed in contentment. Domesticated dogs have learned to love humans because we feed and shelter them, of course, but now that I’m living with my third golden retriever, I’m certain there’s something deeper happening. I just can’t prove it. But canine behaviorist Clive Wynne is using his own scientific lab, DNA tests, measuring oxytocin levels, and embarking (pun oh so intended) on a globe-hopping research trip with a stop at a wolf sanctuary (!) to prove that I’m right - dogs really do care about us. I feel so smug.

The type of attachment people form with their dogs, parents, friends, etc. will impact the relationship in a profound way.  I vividly remember as a young person how my friends would influence the way I would dress, talk, feel, and so behave. The authors of the book describe this phenomenon as ‘pier attachment’ where children nowadays tend to look to their peers for guidance more so than their parents. This is a remarkable force that affects every child as they seek acceptance and direction from one another, which in turn can build their self-esteem or destroy it.  The book Hold on to Your Kids, explains how this attachment has come about, and what as parents, we can do about it.

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