Best Parenting Books

And so it goes with raising kids. I am even loathe to use the newly minted verb “parenting”. It just smacks of smugness, don’t you think?

However, as a parenting instructor and consultant by trade (I’ve learned to live with the hypocrisy while I come up with a better career title) I read my share of “How To” books on raising children. And although most of them (the books, not the children) never make it to the shelf in my classroom (except as material for the arts and crafts Creation Station that my co-teacher sets up for the kids), there are a few shining beacons.

1. The Blessing of A Skinned Knee, by Wendy Mogul.
Ms. Mogul is a psychologist and an observant Jew, and she builds her
parenting philosophies on the foundational blocks of her Jewish beliefs.
The sub-title of the book is, “Raising Self-Reliant Children In An Indulgent
World”. She had me at “self-reliant”. I gave this book to my Mormon
co-worker after I read it because I wanted to make sure I didn’t love it just
because I am Jewish.
She immediately went out and bought seven copies, one for each of her
children.

2. Zen Buddhism For Mothers,  by Sarah Napthali
My friend Andrea gave me this book because it was recommended to her by
her therapist and she (Andrea) was hoping I would just read it for her and
give her the summary.
The therapist was right. This book offers the revolutionary idea that
maternal serenity is found when we do not make our goal to change our
child’s feelings. When we surrender to the inevitability that they are going
to feel anger, frustration, impatience, and all the emotions we feel, we
can stop working so hard to try and make them feel something they don’t
feel (happy, for example, that you said no to a cookie).
Great. Now I want a cookie.

3. The Good Enough Parent, by Dr. Bruno Bettleheim
I am a Bettleheim fan. I kinda have a crush on him, imagining him
to be a corduroy-jacketed, soup-making, Einstein-haired gentle lover
who rides a Harley. And this book – the title alone – is a bowl of matzo ball soup on a snowy day. He writes about finding purpose in our lives, and how a purpose-less life breeds unhappy children.
That said, I am caught in a complex web of emotions when it comes to Dr. B. Can I love a man who subscribed to and became a prominent proponent of the “refrigerator mother” theory of autism — the theory that autistic behaviors stem from the emotional frigidity of the children’s mothers? And,
as a result of his theory, many mothers of children on the autistic spectrum suffered from feelings of blame, guilt, and self-doubt from the 1950s throughout the 1970s and beyond: under the widespread assumption of the correctness of the prevailing medical belief that autism resulted from inadequate parenting.”?
I’ve made my decision. I can’t continue to have a crush on him unless he agrees to go to couples counseling with me and he disavows his earlier theories. Otherwise, we are over.

4. Anything by Alfie Kohn.

5. Perfect Madness, by Judith Warner.
Ms. Warner offers an intriguing provocation that perhaps my generation
(the fifty-somethings) did your generation (the thirty-and-forty-
somethings) a disservice by telling you that you can have it all. Because
trying to have it all is exhausting. My feeling is that you can have it all;
you just can’t have it all at once.

6. The Hurried Child – by Dr. David Elkind
7. The Ties That Stress – Dr. David Elkind

Some days, when I’ve seen dozens of parents and answered dozens of
questions and nodded dozens of times, I just want to hand these two books
to them and say, “read these, they’ll answer all your questions. I’ll be on
the couch, napping.”

8. You Are Your Child’s First Teacher,  by Rahima Baldwin Darcy
I am a Waldorf parent. I was a Waldorf teacher for a while. I love this
groovy stuff, written by a Waldorf teacher. You don’t have to eschew all
plastic toys or spin your own wool or live in a hollowed-out tree to get a
lot out of this book.

and finally,

9. Operating Instructions, by Anne Lamott
Okay, it’s not a parenting book, but….wait, it IS a parenting book. Anne
Lamott will assure you that we all get through the first years. I still reach
for the book every few years, just to get a fix of Anne.

Ann Brown is a parenting consultant in Portland, Oregon. You can read her blog at: www.drstrangemom.com