Raising secure and confident kids using best parenting practices from the past. Does it ever seem to you like kids these days are in control of their parents? Having a strong sense of yourself as a parent is key to raising a resilient, independent, thoughtful, and solution-focused child. But over the last several generations, parents have been immersed in the well-intentioned idea that parenting should be child-centered rather than adult-centered. Many parents have begun to follow their children’s lead rather than insist that children adapt to parental prerogatives. Parental authority has come to be seen as a bad thing. The 8 keys presented in this book focus on valuing your own authority as a parent; cultivating your child’s character; applying discipline instead of punishment; strategies to motivate compliance; fostering emotional development; problem-solving; conflict management; and effective communication. They will help parents raise self-directed children who are active learners, feel good about themselves, take initiative, and have a strong moral compass.

Compassionate and effective strategies for raising a child with ADHD. Parenting children with ADHD, whether diagnosed or undiagnosed, can be challenging and complex. But just as a child who struggles with reading can learn to decode words, children with ADHD can learn patience, communication, and solution-seeking skills to become more confident, independent, and capable. This book, rich with optimism, tips, tools, and action plans, offers science-based insights and systems for parents to help cultivate these skills. Combining expert information with practical, sensitive advice, the eight “key” concepts here will help parents reduce chaos, improve cooperation, and nurture the advantages—like creativity and drive—that often accompany all of that energy. Based on author Cindy Goldrich’s seven-session workshop entitled Calm and Connected: Parenting Kids with ADHD©, this book focuses on developing and strengthening effective interpersonal skills in both parents and children as a way to improve conflict resolution. Following the parenting principle to “Parent the child you have,” Goldrich offers advice to help readers tailor their parenting to meet the needs of their unique child. The book also leads parents to recognize the value of being a leader and a guide to children, building parents’ confidence in their decision-making, and giving children a sense of safety, security, and confidence. The principles outlined in 8 Keys to Parenting Children with ADHD are appropriate for parenting kids of all ages—until they have “launched” and are on their own.

Inspiring strategies from a wellness expert for keeping fit, relieving stress, and strengthening emotional well-being. We all know that exercise is good for physical health, but recently, a wealth of data has proven that exercise also contributes to overall mental well-being. Routine exercise alleviates stress and anxiety, moderates depression, relieves chronic pain, and improves self-esteem. In this inspiring book, Christina Hibbert, a clinical psychologist and expert on women's mental health, grief, and self-esteem, explains the connections between exercise and mental well-being and offers readers step-by-step strategies for sticking to fitness goals, overcoming motivation challenges and roadblocks to working out, and maintaining a physically and emotionally healthy exercise regimen. This book will help readers to get moving, stay moving, and maintain the inspiration they need to reap the mental health benefits of regular exercise. The 8 keys include improving self-esteem with exercise, exercising as a family, getting motivated, changing how you think about exercise, and the FITT principle for establishing an effective exercise routine.

Bring an end to emotional eating by getting to the root of the problem. Most books about emotional eating tend to focus on how to strengthen self-restraint or how to identify what triggers it. The former can make the problem worse, while the latter may be different each time it occurs. Both approaches fail to help emotional eaters understand why they feel compelled to do something that they don’t want to do in the first place. This understanding is the key to changing this behavior. Howard Farkas, who has more than two decades of professional and teaching experience as a clinical psychologist specializing in emotional eating, explains the underlying motive that drives the behavior: emotional eating is not a passive failure of self-control, but an active impulse to reject the control of dieting. This defiant need “to be bad” usually leaves the person feeling guilty and anxious about their eating, and recommitting to their diet until the cycle repeats, and the compulsive eating recurs. 8 Keys to End Emotional Eating provides a detailed plan for breaking this pattern. By explaining the root cause that drives the desire to binge, Farkas offers practical skills to help you learn to change your mindset about dieting and end the impulse to binge. His road map for the future will help readers maintain healthy eating habits for years to come.

Tips and strategies for parents of kids who are “different” than all the rest. A quirky child experiences difficulty fitting in and connecting with others usually due to an interpersonal style or behavior that stands out from the other kids. Maybe they are obsessed with a topic of interest or spend excessive hours a day reading, playing video games, or playing with just one toy. These kids are not so far afield as to fall on the autism spectrum, but they are unique, and their behaviors are not addressed in typical parenting books. This book defines quirky markers and offers strategies for parents to understand their children’s brains and behaviors; to know what is developmentally appropriate, and what isn’t; to understand how to reach their kids; and to help facilitate their social functioning in the world. It will calm the hearts and minds of parents who worry that their child doesn’t fit in and offer hope to parents who need strategies to support their quirky child’s overall development.

Guidance for dealing with this common and frustrating form of behavior. Many people often say “yes” to something when they’d rather say “no.” They offer cooperation through words but follow up with how they really feel—in actions that contradict their words. That’s passive-aggression. At its heart, passive-aggression is about being untrue to oneself, which makes it impossible to have a clean relationship with others. Passive-aggression as a communication method doesn’t make someone “bad.” It is simply a strategy learned in childhood as a coping mechanism, a hard-to-break habit. Changing passive-aggressive behavior requires knowledge, tools, and practice, as outlined here. The book offers effective methods for transforming passive-aggression into healthy assertiveness to communicate in constructive ways through eight keys: Recognize Your Hidden Anger; Reconnect Your Emotions to Your Thoughts; Listen to Your Body; Set Healthy Boundaries; Communicate Assertively; Interact Using Mindfulness; Disable the Enabler; and Problem-Solve for Better Outcomes. Hands-on exercises are featured, enabling readers to better understand themselves.

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.