You'll see how prayer is your secret weapon. Through stories of parents just like you, Batterson shares five prayer circles that will not only help you pray for your kids, but also pray through your kids.Batterson teaches about how to create prayer lists unique to your family, claim God-inspired promises for your children, turn your family circle into a prayer circle, and discover your child's life themes. And he not only tells you how, he illustrates why.As Batterson says, 'I realize that not everyone inherited a prayer legacy like I did, but you can leave a legacy for generations to come. Your prayers have the power to shape the destiny of your children and your children's children. It's time to start circling.'

    In this updated edition of her bestseller she re-examines the movement and its inclusion of Adult Children from various dysfunctional family backgrounds who share the same characteristics. After decades of working with ACoAs she shares the recovery hints that she has found to work. Read Adult Children of Alcoholics to see where the journey began and for ideas on where to go from here.

    Many who once believed marriage was "the" center of life...now know that friends may be the difference between a lonely life and a lively one." In "I Know Just What You Mean," Pulitzer prize-winning columnist Ellen Goodman and novelist/journalist Patricia O'Brien provide a thoughtful, deeply personal look at the enduring bonds of friendship between women. Friends for over a quarter of a century, they bring to their book the unique mix of insight and humor that only such a long and rich relationship can produce.""You might say we've been writing this book for twenty-six years. Maybe it's the logical outcome for two writing friends. It amazes us now to look back and see what we've been building: the story of our friendship is the story of our divorces, our children, careers, loves, losses, remarriages.We rarely made a move without each other's opinion or listening ear...We moved from youth through middle-age with the requisite accumulation of both wisdom and caution that -- when shared -- made each of us stronger than we would have been alone.""Drawing on interviews with numerous women from all stages of life -- teenagers, young mothers, elderly women, women in politic and business, sports and media celebrities -- the authors reach beyond their own experiences, providing an intimate look at friendships that begin everywhere from kindergarten to nursing homes. They tell the touching, funny, and sometimes painful stories of women who don't shy away from confronting the problems and demands of friendship.""When we asked women how theydefined what a close friend is, they leaped past such qualifiers to describe the impact: being known and accepted, understood to the core; trust and loyalty you can count on, having someone on your side. Having someone to share worries and secrets as well as the good stuff of life. Someone who needs you in return.""The authors explore the problems of famous friends -- how do you stay close when your best friend is one of the richest and most powerful women in the world? They write about friendships that have endured through hardship and misfortune, survived the problems of competing with each other. Looking through history and Hollywood, real life and fiction, they get to the heart of relationships between women.""Somewhere in the meaning of the word 'trust' is the assumption that a friend has your best interest at heart. Friends can be the collaborators, the instigators who make change possible. They are often the ones who urge us to take a leap, who jump with us or help us scramble back up the other side.""Throughout the book, there is an ongoing dialogue between Goodman and O'Brien that is sure to resonate with every woman who cherishes her female friends.""Talk is at the very heart of women's friendship, the core of the way women connect. It's the given, the absolute assumption of friendship. It can be serious or funny, painful or exuberant, intense or joyous. But at the heart of the connections made is one sentence that women repeat over and over: 'I know just what you mean.'""

    The bestselling author of Why Do They Act That Way? writes the book his readers have been asking him for: how and when to say no to kids and make it stick.

    But our fears are misplaced, according to Yale early childhood expert Erika Christakis. Children are powerful and inventive; and the tools to reimagine their learning environment are right in front of our eyes.           Children are hardwired to learn in any setting, but they don’t get the support they need when “learning” is defined by strict lessons and dodgy metrics that devalue children’s intelligence while placing unfit requirements on their developing brains. We have confused schooling with learning, and we have altered the very habitat young children occupy. The race for successful outcomes has blinded us to how young children actually process the world, acquire skills, and grow, says Christakis, who powerfully defends the preschool years as a life stage of inherent value and not merely as preparation for a demanding or uncertain future.           In her pathbreaking book, Christakis explores what it’s like to be a young child in America today, in a world designed by and for adults. With school-testing mandates run amok, playfulness squeezed, and young children increasingly pathologized for old-fashioned behaviors like daydreaming and clumsiness, it’s easy to miss what’s important about the crucial years of three to six, and the kind of guidance preschoolers really need. Christakis provides a forensic and far-reaching analysis of today’s whole system of early learning, exploring pedagogy, history, science, policy, and politics. She also offers a wealth of proven strategies about what to do to reimagine the learning environment to suit the child’s real, but often invisible, needs. The ideas range from accommodating children’s sense of time, to decluttering classrooms, to learning how to better observe and listen as children express themselves in pictures and words.           With her strong foundation in the study of child development and early education and her own in-the-trenches classroom experience, Christakis peels back the mystery of early childhood, revealing a place that’s rich with possibility. Her message is energizing and reassuring: Parents have more power (and more knowledge) than they think they do, and young children are inherently creative and will flourish, if we can learn new ways to support them and restore their vital learning habitat.

    Daniel Goleman's brilliant report from the frontiers of psychology and neuroscience offers startling new insight into our "two minds"—the rational and the emotional—and how they together shape our destiny.Through vivid examples, Goleman delineates the five crucial skills of emotional intelligence, and shows how they determine our success in relationships, work, and even our physical well-being. What emerges is an entirely new way to talk about being smart. The best news is that "emotional literacy" is not fixed early in life. Every parent, every teacher, every business leader, and everyone interested in a more civil society, has a stake in this compelling vision of human possibility.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    Resettling in America, the couple swore eternal fidelity to each other, but also swore to never, ever, under any circumstances get legally married. (Both were survivors of previous bad divorces. Enough said.) But providence intervened one day in the form of the United States government, which-after unexpectedly detaining Felipe at an American border crossing-gave the couple a choice: they could either get married, or Felipe would never be allowed to enter the country again. Having been effectively sentenced to wed, Gilbert tackled her fears of marriage by delving into this topic completely, trying with all her might to discover through historical research, interviews, and much personal reflection what this stubbornly enduring old institution actually is. Told with Gilbert's trademark wit, intelligence and compassion, Committed attempts to "turn on all the lights" when it comes to matrimony, frankly examining questions of compatibility, infatuation, fidelity, family tradition, social expectations, divorce risks and humbling responsibilities. Gilbert's memoir is ultimately a clear-eyed celebration of love with all the complexity and consequence that real love, in the real world, actually entails.

    Illuminating the difference between Conflict and Abuse, Schulman directly addresses our contemporary culture of scapegoating. This deep, brave, and bold work reveals how punishment replaces personal and collective self-criticism, and shows why difference is so often used to justify cruelty and shunning. Rooting the problem of escalation in negative group relationships, Schulman illuminates the ways cliques, communities, families, and religious, racial, and national groups bond through the refusal to change their self-concept. She illustrates how Supremacy behavior and Traumatized behavior resemble each other, through a shared inability to tolerate difference.This important and sure to be controversial book illuminates such contemporary and historical issues of personal, racial, and geo-political difference as tools of escalation towards injustice, exclusion, and punishment, whether the objects of dehumanization are other individuals in our families or communities, people with HIV, African Americans, or Palestinians. Conflict Is Not Abuse is a searing rejection of the cultural phenomenon of blame, cruelty, and scapegoating, and how those in positions of power exacerbate and manipulate fear of the "other" to achieve their goals.Sarah Schulman is a novelist, nonfiction writer, playwright, screenwriter, journalist and AIDS historian, and the author of eighteen books. A Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellow, Sarah is a Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at the City University of New York, College of Staten Island. Her novels published by Arsenal include Rat Bohemia, Empathy, After Delores, and The Mere Future. She lives in New York.

    The Friels examine the seven most ineffective and self-defeating behaviors that parents display again and again. Working from the ideas that even small changes can have big results, the authors give parents concrete steps they can take to end these behaviors and improve the quality of their parenting. Whether you're contemplating starting a family, have children who haven't entered school yet, are struggling with rebellious teenagers, or are empty-nesters wondering how to be better parents to your grown children, you can't afford not to read this book. With the same clarity and concrete examples that have sold over 350,000 copies of their books, the Friels offer readers forty years of combined experience as practicing psychologists, and fifty years of combined experience as blended-family parents. The material in "The 7 Worst Things Parents Can Do" has been field-tested in the authors' own household, with hundreds of their clients, and with thousands of their workshop and Clearlife Clinic participants. It will cause immediate changes in your behavior, in your child's behavior and will improve the lives you share together.

    Helps remarried couples: recognize the personality and place of each family member; solve the puzzles of stepparenting and stepchildren relationships; learn communication skills to deal with ex-spouses; honor families of origin while developing new traditions; and invest the time to grow their stepfamily slowly rather than look for quick results.

    Nonviolent Communication partners practical skills with a powerful consciousness and vocabulary to help you get what you want peacefully.In this internationally acclaimed text, Marshall Rosenberg offers insightful stories, anecdotes, practical exercises and role-plays that will dramatically change your approach to communication for the better. Discover how the language you use can strengthen your relationships, build trust, prevent conflicts and heal pain. Revolutionary, yet simple, NVC offers you the most effective tools to reduce violence and create peace in your life—one interaction at a time.Over 150,000 copies sold and now available in 20 languages around the world. More than 250,000 people each year from all walks of life are learning these life-changing skills.

    For millions of years, humans have been seeking out tribes, be they religious, ethnic, economic, political, or even musical (think of the Deadheads). It's our nature.Now the Internet has eliminated the barriers of geography, cost, and time. All those blogs and social networking sites are helping existing tribes get bigger. But more important, they're enabling countless new tribes to be born—groups of ten or ten thousand or ten million who care about their iPhones, or a political campaign, or a new way to fight global warming. And so the key question: Who is going to lead us?The Web can do amazing things, but it can't provide leadership. That still has to come from individuals—people just like you who have passion about something. The explosion in tribes means that anyone who wants to make a difference now has the tools at her fingertips.If you think leadership is for other people, think again—leaders come in surprising packages. Consider Joel Spolsky and his international tribe of scary-smart software engineers. Or Gary Vaynerhuck, a wine expert with a devoted following of enthusiasts. Chris Sharma leads a tribe of rock climbers up impossible cliff faces, while Mich Mathews, a VP at Microsoft, runs her internal tribe of marketers from her cube in Seattle. All they have in common is the desire to change things, the ability to connect a tribe, and the willingness to lead.If you ignore this opportunity, you risk turning into a "sheepwalker"—someone who fights to protect the status quo at all costs, never asking if obedience is doing you (or your organization) any good. Sheepwalkers don't do very well these days.Tribes will make you think (really think) about the opportunities in leading your fellow employees, customers, investors, believers, hobbyists, or readers. . . . It's not easy, but it's easier than you think.

    David J. Lieberman, introduces a wonderful right-to-the-point book that shows readers how to put an end to boundary issues once and for all!A work colleague with whom you have only a casual relationship asks you to co-sign a loan for him . . . your neighbor asks you to keep her antisocial, flea-riddled cat for the weekend — again. We've all faced sticky situations like these — unreasonable demands on our time and inappropriate requests from family, friends, co-workers or casual acquaintances. We want to say No. We have the right to say No — always. And yet we don't. Maybe you tell yourself that you don’t want to make waves or ruffle feathers, or that it’s simply not worth it; but part of you simmers with anger and frustration that you didn’t speak up and do something— anything.Isn't it ironic how a two-year-old can bark a resounding and guilt-free NO! without batting an eye, yet we grown-ups often find ourselves saying Yes when we mean to say No? Or we say "Let me think about it . . .” and agonize for weeks over how to say, inevitably, No. We've all had our share of freeloaders, mooches, encroachers, interlopers, high-maintenance acquaintances — many of whom are repeat offenders. We've all had to deal with people who ask for favors that are inappropriate or unreasonable because they exceed the boundaries of our relationship with them. And we think, Why doesn't he realize he's crossing the line? The answer is: Because he doesn't know where the line is, or he doesn't care. The problem, as you're about to learn, is leaky boundaries. Some people have such permeable, poorly-defined boundaries that they have no concept of where they end and you begin. Some people will take No for an answer and that's the end of it. But some people don't. What do you do when the person on the other end of your No flat out refuses to accept your No?You'll discover exactly what to say as well as learn the underlying psychology that motivates them to always ask, and you to always give in!

    Your colleague's husband's sister can make you fat, even if you don't know her. A happy neighbor has more impact on your happiness than a happy spouse. These startling revelations of how much we truly influence one another are revealed in the studies of Dr. Christakis and Fowler, which have repeatedly made front-page news nationwide. In Connected, the authors explain why emotions are contagious, how health behaviors spread, why the rich get richer, even how we find and choose our partners. Intriguing and entertaining, Connected overturns the notion of the individual and provides a revolutionary paradigm-that social networks influence our ideas, emotions, health, relationships, behavior, politics, and much more. It will change the way we think about every aspect of our lives.

    As a celebrated cultural critic and a writer for national publications like The Atlantic and Harper's, Alan Jacobs has spent his adult life belonging to communities that often clash in America's culture wars. And in his years of confronting the big issues that divide us--political, social, religious--Jacobs has learned that many of our fiercest disputes occur not because we're doomed to be divided, but because the people involved simply aren't thinking.Most of us don't want to think, Jacobs writes. Thinking is trouble. Thinking can force us out of familiar, comforting habits, and it can complicate our relationships with like-minded friends. Finally, thinking is slow, and that's a problem when our habits of consuming information (mostly online) leave us lost in the spin cycle of social media, partisan bickering, and confirmation bias.In this smart, endlessly entertaining book, Jacobs diagnoses the many forces that act on us to prevent thinking--forces that have only worsened in the age of Twitter, "alternative facts," and information overload--and he also dispels the many myths we hold about what it means to think well. (For example: It's impossible to "think for yourself.")Drawing on sources as far-flung as novelist Marilynne Robinson, basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain, British philosopher John Stuart Mill, and Christian theologian C.S. Lewis, Jacobs digs into the nuts and bolts of the cognitive process, offering hope that each of us can reclaim our mental lives from the impediments that plague us all. Because if we can learn to think together, maybe we can learn to live together, too.