Resources

Encouraging Parents, Courageous Children

The Crucial Cs Handbook

Betty Lou Bettner, Ph.D.

Dr. Bettner’s latest book shares the relevance of The Crucial Cs (Connect, Capable, Count, Courage) to the challenges of parenthood and also lays out the core theory of Alfred Adler’s timeless approach. 

• Developing warm and comforting relationships between adults and children that produces a sense of belonging.
• Teaching skills that move children from dependence to independence that builds self-confidence.
• Allowing children to be helpers within families, schools and communities that produces opportunities to feel needed and happy.
• Making sure that children are aware of the social strengths required for friendships, for solving problems and for learning from mistakes.
• How to implement a family meeting that lays the foundation that includes The Crucial Cs, and produces encouraging parents and courageous children.

$17

Never Enough

When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic-And What We Can Do About It

Jennifer Breheny Wallace

In the ever more competitive race to secure the best possible future, today’s students face unprecedented pressure to succeed. Parents, educators, and community leaders are facing the same quandary: how can we teach our kids to strive towards excellence without crushing them? 

In Never Enough, award-winning reporter Jennifer Breheny Wallace investigates the deep roots of toxic achievement culture, and finds out what we must do to fight back. Through deep research and interviews with today’s leading child psychologists, Wallace shows what kids need from the adults in the room is not more pressure, but to feel like they matter, and have intrinsic self-worth not contingent upon external achievements. 

Packed with memorable stories and offering a powerful toolkit for positive change, Never Enough offers an urgent, humane view of the crisis plaguing today’s teens and a practical framework for how to help.

$29

To purchase one of the titles below, please email books@familyleadershipcenter.org 

Raising Kids Who Can:

Become Responsible, Self-Reliant, Resilient, Contributing Adults and How to Use Family Meetings to Make It Happen

Betty Lou Bettner, Ph.D. and Amy Lew, Ph.D.

The “family meeting” is a key concept among parenting experts and family counselors, and this is the first book to show how regular family meetings can help nurture responsible and caring children who grow into capable, independent adolescents and adults. 

“This book offers a useful, sensible, caring, respectful approach that all families can benefit from. My family held its first meeting last night and we plan on continuing. This book gave me the impetus and inspiration to get it going.” -Ellen Bass, coauthor of The Courage to Heal

$15

Grandkids as Gurus

Lessons for Grownups

Susan Lebel Young

From the author: “I thought I knew. I was sure I knew. Oldest of seven children with a whole lot of babysitting under my belt, mother of two active children, elementary school teacher, therapist, holding Master’s degrees in both Education and Mental Health Counseling, for sure. I could be a deep and wise elder for my grandchildren.  But when they arrived, little precious packages with their own wisdom and agenda and trajectory for growth, I sat in awe and complete unknowing of what to do, what to say, how to be a grandparent. As Winnie the Pooh says, “sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.

These tiny beings did, do. When I sat in my heart and not in adult brain, I let them teach. I wrote their stories. Through the stories I began to see the source of their strength and, thankfully mine. I love sharing it as Grandkids as Gurus: Lessons for Grownups.”

$20

Responsibility in the Classroom: 

A Teacher’s Guide to Understanding and Motivating Students

Amy Lew , Ph.D. and Betty Lou Bettner, Ph.D.

“In Responsibility in the Classroom Amy Lew and Betty Lou Bettner present a theoretical construct and practical, accessible strategies and suggestions for developing caring, respectful relationships between teachers and students and among students, and a cooperative classroom community. They provide a framework to help teachers understand childrens behavior and develop strategies for achieving the Crucial Cs: feeling connected, capable, knowing that you count, and developing courageTheir approach is an optimistic oneDeveloping the Crucial Cs becomes a guiding principle in creating a sense of community in the classroom.” – Pamela Seigle, Director, Reach Out to Schools, Social Competency Program, The Stone Center at Wellesley College.

$10

A Parent’s Guide to Understanding and Motivating Children

Amy Lew, Ph.D. and Betty Lou Bettner, Ph.D.

From the Raising Kids Who Can Series; A very clear, practical  and concise guide to parenting all kinds of children.

“This is a clear and concise guide for all parents. In a very practical way it helps the parents understand their child’s behavior and misbehavior. It is a very encouraging book. It is a great relief for someone to put into words the worries we all have as parents and to illustrate techniques that will help in the solution of everyday problems. It deals especially well with creating cooperation within families. I believe it could become your constant companion in the struggle that we all have in trying to bring up our children to be responsible, caring, and likable adults. Highly recommended.” – Ruth Farrell, Parents’ Network of Ireland

$10

The “Creative Force”: How children create their personalities

Betty Lou Bettner, Ph.D

A book that gives insight into personality development based on Adlerian theory.

“This is a special book that will allow anyone to briefly develop insight and understanding into their personality. Must reading for parents and teachers.” – Jon Carlson, Psy.D., Ed.D., Distinguished Professor, Governors State University, University Park, Illinois, author of 35 books and founding editor of the Family Journal.

“In my opinion there is no book that explains in a better, clearer, more exact way how life style is built…. Thank you, Betty Lou, for this great book.” – Peter Pollak, Adler Pollak Institute for Adlerian Psychology, Germany.

$12

The Six Essential Pieces of the Parenting Puzzle

Betty Lou Bettner, Ph.D.

This thoughtful book systematically portrays the development and popularization of the brilliant observations of Dr. Alfred Adler and the subsequent diffusion of his theories into most branches of modern mental health care. The six key principles, introduced by Dr. Adler over a century ago, are a sense of belonging and social connection, personality development, a sense of intrinsic worth, understanding the hidden motives of misbehavior, avoiding feelings of inferiority, and sharing responsibility by healthy group interactions.

$10

Raising Kids Who Care About Others

Betty Lou Bettner, Ph.D.

This is a clear, timely, helpful, and encouraging book, with a message that is needed by all parents and caregivers.

$10

Cinderella, The Sequel

Amy Lew, Ph.D. and Betty Lou Bettner, Ph.D.

“When the fairy tale ends and real life begins.” A quick and valuable book for couples’ therapists and anyone in a relationship seeking to understand themself and their relationship better.

$10