“Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, Ed.D., brings her expertise in raising spirited children to help you understand and soothe your spirited baby. Her research-based, parent-tested strategies will help your baby sleep better and develop a calmer, more resilient brain and nervous system.” —Dr. Laura Markham, founder of AhaParenting.com, and author of Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids From the beloved bestselling author whose award-winning parenting books have sold over 1 million copies—an indispensable guide to the unique needs of Spirited Infants™. Does your baby bursts into tears when another baby in the same situation sleeps soundly? Do the strategies your friends swear by not work with your baby? Do the upsets and shrieking come out of seemingly nowhere and take forever to subside? Moms and dads who answer “yes,” are the parents of a spirited infant. Spirited infants are the outliers—the exceptions to the “rules.” They are genetically wired to be alert and intense. Raising them takes special skills and patient perseverance. In this groundbreaking new book, beloved parenting expert Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, Ed.D., offers her findings in the fields of neuroscience, sleep, temperament, self-regulation, attachment, and parent-child interactions, and shares what she has learned from hands-on experiences with families to bring this much-needed perspective to the parenting of babies under eighteen months of age, including: A plan for success with the 5-step Spirited Baby™ Methodology How to master the “NUDGE” approach to help your baby thrive Parental Permissions – practical advice for parents to help them make sure their needs are met Resources to ensure the whole family unit finds balance and happiness Raising Your Spirited Baby is a shame-free, guilt-free how-to handbook that will be embraced by parents—and everyone who supports them—as a simple, trusted companion.

The spirited child—often called "difficult" or "strong-willed"—can easily overwhelm parents, leaving them feeling frustrated and inadequate.Spirited kids are, in fact, simply "more"—by temperament, they are more intense, sensitive, perceptive, persistent, and uncomfortable with change than the average child.Through vivid examples and a refreshingly positive viewpoint, Mary Sheedy Kurcinka offers parents emotional support and proven strategies for handling their spirited child. Raising Your Spirited Child will help you: Understand your child's—and your own—temperamental traits Plan for success with a simple four-step program Discover the power of positive—rather than negative—labels Cope with tantrums and blowups when they do occur Develop strategies for handling mealtimes, bedtimes, holidays, school and many other situations Filled with personal insight and authorative advice, Raising Your Spirited Child can help make parenting the joy it should be, rather than the trial it can be.

The Essential Companion Workbook To The National Bestseller Raising Your Spirited Child, In this companion workbook, Mary Sheedy Kurcinka brings readers into her world-famous workshops, where she offers parents and educators insights, emotional support and proven strategies for dealing with spirited children. The key word that distinguishes spirited children from other children is "more" -- more intense, more persistent, more sensitive and more uncomfortable with change. Through exercises, observations and dialogue from actual groups, Kurcinka helps readers learn to identify the triggers that lead to tantrums and challenging behaviors. Included are clues to help you identify the little things that can make or break a day tips for profiling your child's temperament and your own cues that indicate intensity is rising successful strategies for reducing and eliminating power struggles By combining the intuition and compassion gained from parenting a spirited child with the wisdom of an expert who has worked with thousands of families, Mary Sheedy Kurcinka helps parents and educators view their unique challenge with perseverance, flexibility, sensitivity, and, most of all, enjoyment.

From the author of Raising Your Spirited Child, the award-winning bestseller that has helped millions, a pioneering, research-based guide for parents to help their children get the sleep they need. Does your child refuse to cooperate in the morning? Does he or she get into trouble for not listening? Are you finding that your child resists sleep and "loses it" over seemingly insignificant issues? You are not alone. An estimated 69 percent of American infants, children, and teens are sleep deprived. Studies have shown that sleep deficits can contribute to hyperactivity, distraction, forgetfulness, learning problems, illness, accidents, and disruptive behaviors. Often what our misbehaving kids really need isn't more "consequences" or more medication, but more sleep. Sleepless in America offers weary and frustrated parents a helping hand and an exciting new approach to managing challenging behaviors by integrating research on stress, sleep, and temperament with practical strategies. Dr. Mary has helped millions with her effective parenting tips and insights, and her five-step approach enables parents to help their "tired and wired" children get the sleep they so desperately need.

From the author of Raising Your Spirited Child, the award-winning bestseller that has helped millions, a pioneering, research-based guide to help parents end power struggles and begin connecting with their child. Does bedtime mean struggle time, with your child negotiating for "just another ten minutes" every single night? Do most school mornings end with your child in tears? Does your child ignore your repeated requests to get up and do their chores and homework? Every family experiences power struggles, but these daily tugs of war are not inevitable. Beloved parenting expert Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, Ed.D. addresses the everyday challenges of disciplining children, while understanding the issues behind their behavior. In Kids, Parents, and Power Struggles, Dr. Mary offers unique approaches to solving the daily, and often draining, power struggles between you and your children. She views these conflicts as rich opportunities to teach your children essential life skills such as how to calm themselves, to be assertive rather than aggressive, to solve problems, and to work cooperatively with you and others. In this book, you will find successful strategies for: · Understanding emotions · Managing intensity · Identifying triggers With Dr. Mary’s effective guidance, you'll be able to identify the trigger situations that set off the struggles and get to the root of the emotions and needs of you and your child.

In Helping Your Child with Extreme Picky Eating, a family doctor specializing in childhood feeding joins forces with a speech pathologist to help you support your child’s nutrition, healthy growth, and end meal-time anxiety (for your child and you) once and for all. Are you parenting a child with ‘extreme’ picky eating? Do you worry your child isn’t getting the nutrition he or she needs? Are you tired of fighting over food, suspect that what you’ve tried may be making things worse, but don’t know how to help? Having a child with ‘extreme’ picky eating is frustrating and sometimes scary. Children with feeding disorders, food aversions, or selective eating often experience anxiety around food, and the power struggles can negatively impact your relationship with your child. Children with extreme picky eating can also miss out on parties or camp because they can’t find “safe” foods. But you don’t have to choose between fighting over every bite and only serving a handful of safe foods for years on end. Helping Your Child with Extreme Picky Eating offers hope, even if your child has “failed” feeding therapies before. After gaining a foundation of understanding of your child’s challenges and the dynamics at play, you’ll be ready for the 5 steps (built around the clinically proven STEPS+ approach—Supportive Treatment of Eating in PartnershipS) that transform feeding and meals so your child can learn to enjoy a variety of foods in the right amounts for healthy growth. You’ll discover specific strategies for dealing with anxiety, low appetite, sensory challenges, autism spectrum-related feeding issues, oral motor delay, and medically-based feeding problems. Tips and exercises reinforce what you’ve learned, and dozens of “scripts” help you respond to your child in the heat of the moment, as well as to others in your child’s life (grandparents or your child’s teacher) as you help them support your family on this journey. This book will prove an invaluable guide to restore peace to your dinner table and help you raise a healthy eater.

"Based on groundbreaking research that has the power to change the lives of countless children--and the adults who love them." --Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts. A book that offers hope and a pathway to success for parents, teachers, psychologists, and child development experts coping with difficult children. In Tom Boyce's extraordinary new book, he explores the "dandelion" child (hardy, resilient, healthy), able to survive and flourish under most circumstances, and the "orchid" child (sensitive, susceptible, fragile), who, given the right support, can thrive as much as, if not more than, other children. Boyce writes of his pathfinding research as a developmental pediatrician working with troubled children in child-development research for almost four decades, and explores his major discovery that reveals how genetic make-up and environment shape behavior. He writes that certain variant genes can increase a person's susceptibility to depression, anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and antisocial, sociopathic, or violent behaviors. But rather than seeing this "risk" gene as a liability, Boyce, through his daring research, has recast the way we think of human frailty, and has shown that while these "bad" genes can create problems, they can also, in the right setting and the right environment, result in producing children who not only do better than before but far exceed their peers. Orchid children, Boyce makes clear, are not failed dandelions; they are a different category of child, with special sensitivities and strengths, and need to be nurtured and taught in special ways. And in The Orchid and the Dandelion, Boyce shows us how to understand these children for their unique sensibilities, their considerable challenges, their remarkable gifts.