Book Recommendations

Listen: Five Simple Tools to Meet Your Everyday Parenting Challenges

Listen: Five Simple Tools to Meet Your Everyday Parenting Challenges by Patty Wipfler and Tosha Schore is a practical, trauma-informed guide to raising connected, resilient children. Grounded in the Hand in Hand Parenting approach, it introduces five tools to strengthen family bonds and manage challenges with empathy:

• Special Time: Letting the child lead, while parents delight in them.

• Setting Limits: Stopping off-track behavior with love and respect.

• Staylistening: Offering warm attention during emotional outbursts.

• Playlistening: Using playful connection and laughter to ease tension.

• Listening Partnerships: Sharing listening time with another adult to release stress.

The book is organized into four parts: a new perspective on parenting, an introduction to the tools, real-life solutions for everyday struggles, and guidance for sustaining connection even in tough moments. It helps parents turn difficulties into opportunities for cooperation, healing, and growth.

Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans

Hunt, Gather, Parent follows Michaeleen Doucleff and her daughter as they learn parenting wisdom from Maya, Inuit, and Hadzabe families. These cultures emphasize:

• Cooperation over control: fostering teamwork instead of conflict.

• Emotional intelligence: responding calmly to strong emotions to teach self-regulation.

• Stress-free confidence: nurturing autonomy to reduce anxiety.

By applying these methods, Doucleff sees positive changes in her own parenting and provides practical guidance for Western parents to raise helpful, confident, kind, and emotionally balanced children.

Playful Parenting: An Exciting New Approach to Raising Children That Will Help You Nurture Close Connections, Solve Behavior Problems, and Encourage Confidence 

Have you ever paused to really observe what happens when your children play? Psychologist Lawrence J. Cohen explains that play is how kids explore the world, share deep emotions, connect with loved ones, cope with stress, and simply have fun. This is why “playful parenting” is such a powerful way to build strong, close relationships between parents and children. By engaging in play, parents can help kids:

• Express and process complex emotions

• Overcome shyness, anger, and fear

• Build confidence and appreciate diversity

• Navigate sibling conflicts

• Learn cooperation without constant struggles for control

From a baby’s first game of peekaboo to joking with a teenager at the mall, Playful Parenting serves as a comprehensive guide to using play as a tool for raising confident, resilient kids. Written with warmth, humor, and backed by research, it offers practical insights, heartwarming stories, and encouragement for parents to embrace joy and connection in everyday life.

The Continuum Concept: In Search Of Happiness Lost (Classics in Human Development)

Jean Liedloff, an American author, spent two and a half years in the South American jungle living among Stone Age Indians. Her time there shattered many Western assumptions about how life should be lived and gave her a profoundly different perspective on human nature. She reveals how modern society has drifted away from its natural state of well-being and offers practical guidance on how both children and adults can reclaim it.