Best Books
Here’s a quick list of books for further readings about kids and parenting!
Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason
Alfie Kohn
Most parenting guides begin with the question “How can we get kids to do what they’re told?”, and then proceed to offer various techniques for controlling them. In this truly groundbreaking book, nationally respected educator Alfie Kohn begins instead by asking “What do kids need, and how can we meet those needs?” What follows from that question are ideas for working with children rather than doing things to them.
How to Talk so Kids Will Listen & Listen so Kids Will Talk
Adebl Faber & Elaine Mazlish
The ultimate “parenting bible” (The Boston Globe) with a new foreword—and available as an ebook for the first time—a timeless, beloved book on how to effectively communicate with your child from the #1 New York Times bestselling authors. Enthusiastically praised by parents and professionals around the world, the down-to-earth, respectful approach of Faber and Mazlish makes relationships with children of all ages less stressful and more rewarding.
Square Peg: My Story and What It Means for Raising Innovators, Visionaries, and Out-of-the-Box Thinkers
L. TODD ROSE
In the seventh grade, Todd Rose was suspended-not for the first time-for throwing six stink bombs at the blackboard, where his art teacher stood with his back to the class. At eighteen, he was a high school dropout, stocking shelves at a department store for $4.25 an hour. Today, Rose is a faculty member at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too
Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish
Parents and best-selling authors Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish were determined to figure out how to help their children get along. The result was Siblings Without Rivalry. This wise, groundbreaking book gives parents the practical tools they need to cope with conflict, encourage cooperation, reduce competition, and make it possible for children to experience the joys of their special relationship. With humor and understanding—much gained from raising their own children—Faber and Mazlish explain how and when to intervene in fights, provide suggestions on how to help children channel their hostility into creative outlets, and demonstrate how to treat children unequally and still be fair.
The Case Against Homework: How Homework Is Hurting Our Children and What We Can Do About It
Kylene Beers & Robert E. Probst
In this book, Bennett and Kalish draw on academic research, interviews with educators, parents, and kids, and their own experience as parents and successful homework reformers to offer advice to frustrated parents. You’ll find out which assignments advance learning and which are time-wasters, how to set priorities when your child comes home with an overstuffed backpack, how to talk and write to teachers and administrators in persuasive, non confrontational ways, and how to rally other parents to help restore balance in your children’s lives.
The Homework Myth: Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing
Alfie Kohn
So why do we continue to administer this modern cod liver oil-or even demand a larger dose? Kohn’s incisive analysis reveals how a set of misconceptions about learning and a misguided focus on competitiveness has left our kids with less free time, and our families with more conflict. Pointing to stories of parents who have fought back-and schools that have proved educational excellence is possible without homework-Kohn demonstrates how we can rethink what happens during and after school in order to rescue our families and our children’s love of learning.
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
Carol S. Dweck
After decades of research, world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., discovered a simple but groundbreaking idea: the power of mindset. In this brilliant book, she shows how success in school, work, sports, the arts, and almost every area of human endeavor can be dramatically influenced by how we think about our talents and abilities. People with a fixed mindset—those who believe that abilities are fixed—are less likely to flourish than those with a growth mindset—those who believe that abilities can be developed. Mindset reveals how great parents, teachers, managers, and athletes can put this idea to use to foster outstanding accomplishment.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
STEPHEN R. COVEY
When it was first published in 1989, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People was an almost instant bestseller–and quickly became a permanent part of the cultural lexicon. With over 25 million copies sold worldwide in over 40 languages since its first publication, this book continues to help millions of readers become more effective in both their personal and professional lives.
Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World ~Tony Wagner
Tony Wagner
In this groundbreaking book, education expert Tony Wagner provides a powerful rationale for developing an innovation-driven economy. He explores what parents, teachers, and employers must do to develop the capacities of young people to become innovators. In profiling compelling young American innovators such as Kirk Phelps, product manager for Apple’s first iPhone, Wagner reveals how the adults in their lives nurtured their creativity and sparked their imaginations, while teaching them to learn from failures and persevere. Wagner identifies a pattern—a childhood of creative play leads to deep-seated interests, which in adolescence and adulthood blossom into a deeper purpose for career and life goals. Play, passion, and purpose: These are the forces that drive young innovators.
Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation
Tony Wagner
Most Likely to Succeed presents a new vision of American education, one that puts wonder, creativity, and initiative at the very heart of the learning process and prepares students for today’s economy. “In this excellent book…Wagner and Dintersmith argue…that success and happiness will depend increasingly on having the ability to innovate” (Chicago Tribune), and this crucial guide offers policymakers and opinion leaders a roadmap for getting the best for our future entrepreneurs.
