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If you’re a fan of Montessori and want to bring the follow the concept at home, this is a great resource. Simone outlines what is really meant by autonomy and choice in the Montessori approach, and how to make that work for your family. Lots of great ideas, tips, and insight packed into this easy to read and beautifully illustrated book.
Alfie Kohn pioneered the growing mindset shift around praise and rewards. Namely, not only do children not need it, it is detrimental to their sense of self and their self worth. He has written a number of critically acclaimed books and articles blasting the current outcome-based school system for this reason. This is at the top of my must-read list for new parents. It’s a life changing book.
If there is one take-away from the book, it’s this: parenting has almost nothing to do with your child, and everything to do with you, your understanding of yourself, and your commitment to changing yourself (not your child!). I think they should hand this book out in the maternity ward. It should be required reading for every person responsible for the care of others. This perspective is sorely needed: change in your life/family begins with you.
If you’re looking for neuro-scientific proof that responsive parenting is critical to our children’s development, then this book is for you. Dr. Dan Siegel is a world renown professor of clinical psychiatry at UCLA. He has written a number of parenting books – all of them great – but this one gets at the core of parenting – namely, looking at ourselves before we look to our children to change.
If you find yourself sleep deprived, anxious and confused about your baby’s sleep, and asking yourself, ‘Is this normal?!’, then this is the book for you. It normalizes infant sleep admist a sleep-training obsessed culture. It’s a refreshing alternative to this idea that your baby should be sleeping through the night and is chalk full of advice on how to cope when they aren’t.
This book challenges a lot of the ways we think we’re supposed to respond to normal childhood behaviour in the best way possible. I’ve never seen so many very specific examples compiled into one book in such an organized way before. Whereas many parenting books touch on the over-arching concepts, this book dives right into the specifics and how to handle them. It’s a great book to invest in and flip back to often.
There’s a reason this book is all the rage, and many of you will probably at least have heard of it even if you’ve never gotten around to reading it. I agree with almost everything written; it is a great approach to reducing conflict, increasing connection, and implementing rhythm in your family, without ever actually tackling those issues directly. But you really have to be ready to implement the changes he recommends. These concepts do work … if you are self-discplined enough to make them and stick to them!