The first book in a generation to look at boys' specific needs, parents loved its clarity and warm insights into their sons' inner world. It is the kind of book I will probably pick up again as we progress along this new path (and again as I navigate these years with my daughter). My oldest is only 7, so I’m a little ahead of my game, but this book was full of practical advice I can already see being useful! They jam-pack their schedules with AP classes, fill every waking hour with resume-padding activities, and even sabotage relationships with friends to “get ahead. Poor behavior from kids can drive any parent crazy, but reacting based on emotions can be the worst foundation for discipline.

This supportive guide provides step-by-step advice for a compassionate and emotionally aware process—one that focuses on positive connection rather than relying on gimmicks, pressure, or rewards (which usually backfire). Instead, parents are shown how to replace their own accommodating behaviors with supportive responses that demonstrate both acceptance of children's difficulties and confidence in their ability to cope. In Between, parenting expert and mother of four Sarah Ockwell-Smith uses a unique blend of the biology, psychology and sociology of adolescence as the basis for practical parenting advice that you can use to help your child through the transition from childhood to adulthood.The 14 essential conversations to have with your tween and early teenager to prepare them for the emotional, physical, and social challenges ahead, including scripts and advice to keep the communication going and stay connected during this critical developmental window. After the birth of her firstborn Sarah retrained as an Antenatal Teacher, hypnotherapist/Psychotherapist, Infant Massage Instructor and Birth and Postnatal Doula.

You’ll also discover strategies for cultivating respectful communication, effective conflict resolution, and reflective listening. navigating school settling-in procedures, coping with behaviour regressions at home, friendship issues, anxiety, tricky behaviour at school, school refusal and homework. Parenting expert and mother of four Sarah Ockwell-Smith will consider all the issues faced by parents and tweens today, with a focus on the biology, neurology, psychology and sociology of adolescence as well as plenty of practical parenting advice for common everyday situations. Sarah specialises in ‘gentle parenting’ (she is often credited as being the founder of the movement) and childism (the unconscious discrimination of children in society). Sarah has authored 14 parenting books, translated into over 30 languages, which have sold over half a million copies.The in-between childhood and teenager stage is notoriously hard to navigate for parents and children alike. In the process, you’ll learn to examine your own unhelpful patterns and ingrained reactions that reflect the generational habits shaped by your parents, so you can break the cycle and respond to your children in more skillful ways. We need to understand our own tween (8-13) history, our own parents style (authoritarian or authoritative) , our automatic reactions based on learned behaviour and figure out what we would like to change about our tween years, before we start parenting our own tweens. I have always turned to books if I wasn’t sure on how to do something, and these “tween” years are definitely something I’m not sure on. The first chapter of Between covers some neuroscience but it is quickly turned into language we can understand and ideas that are certainly already familiar to me and I finished this chapter with a much better knowledge of how tween brains are changing at this stage and how my expectations should too.

As you transition from being a little happy kid to a mature and responsible adult, your mind and body goes through significant changes we don’t fully understand or appreciate. Restraint collapse (explosive behaviour at home at the end of the school day) and other behaviour regressions. An indispensable guide for parents looking for help with their child's eating, from birth until the teenage years. Surely it was only yesterday when that warm, mewing bundle was placed in your arms, eyes fixing on yours with all the intensity and knowing of an old soul who has lived many times before, yet in a tiny body, so fragile and new. Advice abounds from multiple sources for the first five years of parenting, the beginning of childhood, you may say, yet it starts to tail off when children start school.From an evolutionary perspective, fears and anxieties surrounding being left alone at night are entirely normal and actually important. The core of his approach is a legacy from his childhood, from an astute uncle who gave him permission to feel. Importantly, your relationship during this period will help to keep both the entrance and exit of this bridge open, allowing your child to cross back over to you when they most need you. And for those parents who have previously used a more authoritarian style of parenting, there’s plenty of advice – and reassurance – on making the transition to a gentler approach.