Resources
Recommended Reading
Check out some of our favorite parenting and childhood development books*. We have categorized them to help guide you to what you need now. If there is a topic, title or category that you would like to see or think is missing, please contact us. We love the contributions from our community!
Book Categories
General Parenting
Parenting with Courage and Uncommon Sense By Linda E. Jessup & Emory Luce Baldwin
The evidence-based, results-oriented approach to parenting with kindness, firmness and respect. “An excellent book about good parenting. The book provides a wealth of useful examples and crucial skills. The “take-away” points make these ideas highly usable for today’s families. Since 1982, this practical, time tested philosophy has set the right course for over 20,000 parents and their families.” – Marguerite Kelly, Washington Post columnist
The Self-Driven Child: the science and sense of giving your kids more control over their lives by William Stixrud and Ned Johnson
Life in the Family Zoo by John M. Platt, Ed.D.
A humorous, anecdotal guide to surviving parenthood and producing responsible, happy children along the way. Easy, practical step-by-step techniques that take you beyond the birth process and into the next 18 years with positive and encouraging methods dealing with children’s misbehavior.
Ain’t Misbehavin’: Tactics for Tantrums, Meltdowns, Bedtime Blues and Other Perfectly Normal Kid Behaviors, By Alyson Schafer
This book will make you laugh and give you very practical, immediate strategies to help solve the problem in the short-run and understand and meet the underlying goal of the behavior in the long-run. A wonderful resource book! You don’t have to read it cover to cover – just read the first chapter and then jump to the section where you need help right now!
On Raising Children With Emotional And Academic Skills
On Family Meetings
Raising Kids Who Can: Become Responsible, Self-Reliant, Resilient, Contributing Adults and How to Use Family Meetings to Make It Happen by Betty Lou Bettner, Ph.D. and Amy Lew, Ph.D.
This is a very easy to read and helpful book for showing families how to lead family meetings and raise strong, caring families.
On Personality Development and Temperament
Redirecting Children’s Behavior by Kathryn Kvols
This book is full of good parenting ideas. My favorite part is in the appendix in the back. Kvols lists sometimes annoying and perfectly normal behaviors of children, by age. It is a wonderful spot to discover that some of the challenges we worry about are actually perfectly developmentally normal.
On Parenting Preschoolers
On Parenting Teens
On Talking With Kids (at all ages) About Sex
On Your Personal Development
On Marriage
*We use affiliate links for each of the books on this recommended reading list. Thank you for supporting the Family Leadership Center, a qualified 501(c)(3) charitable organization.