The New York Times bestselling, groundbreaking manifesto on the critical school years when parents must learn to allow their children to experience the disappointment and frustration that occur from life’s inevitable problems so that they can grow up to be successful, resilient, and self-reliant adults Modern parenting is defined by an unprecedented level of overprotectiveness: parents who rush to school at the whim of a phone call to deliver forgotten assignments, who challenge teachers on report card disappointments, mastermind children’s friendships, and interfere on the playing field. As teacher and writer Jessica Lahey explains, even though these parents see themselves as being highly responsive to their children’s well being, they aren’t giving them the chance to experience failure—or the opportunity to learn to solve their own problems. Overparenting has the potential to ruin a child’s confidence and undermine their education, Lahey reminds us. Teachers don’t just teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. They teach responsibility, organization, manners, restraint, and foresight—important life skills children carry with them long after they leave the classroom. Providing a path toward solutions, Lahey lays out a blueprint with targeted advice for handling homework, report cards, social dynamics, and sports. Most importantly, she sets forth a plan to help parents learn to step back and embrace their children’s failures. Hard-hitting yet warm and wise, The Gift of Failure is essential reading for parents, educators, and psychologists nationwide who want to help children succeed.

REFERENCE WORKS. For more than twenty years, "The 10 Greatest Gifts I Give My Children" has helped parents find the joy in parenting. But they aren't the only ones who can benefit from Vannoy's wisdom: In the years since this book was first published, Vannoy has used the same principles to help businesses create healthier and more fulfilling workplaces. By mirroring Vannoy's parenting approach, business managers can create more focused and productive employees. With self-esteem, compassion, balance, humor, communication, integrity, responsibility, conscious choice, and full expression of emotions, families as well as colleagues can build better relationships--and in the process find greater success, loyalty, and overall wellbeing.

"I commit that by the end of this book, you'll know more and be uncertain less; see more and deny less, accept more and hesitate less; act more and worry less. How can I be so sure? Because if nature selected you for the job of protecting a child, odds are you're up to it."--Gavin de Becker In his groundbreaking bestseller The Gift of Fear, Gavin de Becker showed millions of readers that like every creature on earth, human beings can predict violent behavior. Now, in Protecting the Gift, de Becker empowers parents to trust fully their own intuition when it comes to their children's safety. In this indispensable resource, de Becker provides keen insights into the behavior and strategies of predators. He offers practical new steps to enhance children's safety at every age level: specific questions parents can ask to screen effectively and evaluate baby-sitters, day-care services, schools, and doctors; a "Test of Twelve" safety skills children need before being alone in public; warning signs to help parents protect children from sexual abuse; and how to keep teenage girls and boys from unsafe situations with peers and adults. De Becker also shatters the myth that rules like Never Talk to Strangers will keep your children safe. By showing what danger really looks like--as opposed to what we might imagine it looks like--de Becker gives parents freedom from many common worries and unwarranted fears. All parents face the same challenges when it comes to their children's safety: whom to trust, whom to distrust, what to believe, what to doubt, what to fear, and what not to fear. De Becker helps parents find some certainty about life's highest-stakes questions: How can I know ababy-sitter won't turn out to be someone who harms my child? What should I ask child-care professionals when I interview them? What's the best way to prepare my child for walking to school alone? How can my child be safer at school? How can I spot sexual predators? What should I do if my child is lost in public? How can I teach my child about risk without causing too much fear? What must my teenage daughter know in order to be safe? What must my teenage son know in order to be safe? And finally, in the face of all these questions, how can I reduce the worrying? A generation ago, in Baby and Child Care, Dr. Benjamin Spock told parents that they already possessed most of the important knowledge about their children's health. Similarly, when it comes to predicting violence and protecting children, de Becker demonstrates that you already know most of what you need to know-- parents have, he says, "the wisdom of the species."

First published in 2007 with the title: I thought it was just me: women reclaiming power and courage in a culture of shame.

The author believes that every child's greatest emotional need is to have a strong emotional bond with at least one adult. When we have a bond with a child we have influence with a child. The author teaches us that when we strengthen our parent-child bond we meet the child's need for connection and our need for influence.--From back cover.

Believe it or not, the Catholic family isn’t primarily a human institution. It’s a divine one. By uniting with the sacramental life of the Church, your common, ordinary, crazy family becomes something sacred, a “domestic church." Family therapist and parent Gregory Popcak and his wife, Lisa, are back with Parenting Your Kids with Grace. Building on their best-selling book Parenting with Grace, first published twenty years ago, this new volume draws on the same parenting principles and provides up-to-date research to guide parents through each stage of child development from birth to age ten. Practical, faithful, and humorous, Parenting Your Kids with Grace addresses four key questions: Are Catholic families called to be different from other families in the way we relate to one another in the home? If so, how? What does an authentic, family-based approach to Catholic spirituality look like in practice? What can the latest research tell us about creating a faithful home and raising faithful kids? How can Catholic families be outposts of evangelization and positive social change? By checking our basic assumptions about parenting against both the Church’s vision and what science can teach about living out that vision in healthy ways, we can discover God’s plan for parenting healthy, godly kids.

Manners, fundamental social skills for success in life, are among the greatest gifts parents can give. From self-respect and respect for others to knowing how to behave in public, this comprehensive, practical guide helps parents instill age-appropriate manners as their child’s world expands from toddlerhood through the teen years. This is a must-have resource for every family.