Based on the female-centered Midwifery Model of Care, Ina May’s Guide to Natural Childbirth gives expectant mothers comprehensive information on everything from the all-important mind-body connection to how to give birth without technological intervention. Filled with inspiring birth stories and practical advice, this invaluable resource includes:• Reducing the pain of labor without drugs--and the miraculous roles touch and massage play• What really happens during labor• Orgasmic birth--making birth pleasurable • Episiotomy--is it really necessary? • Common methods of inducing labor--and which to avoid at all costs• Tips for maximizing your chances of an unmedicated labor and birth• How to avoid postpartum bleeding--and depression • The risks of anesthesia and cesareans--what your doctor doesn’t necessarily tell you• The best ways to work with doctors and/or birth care providers• How to create a safe, comfortable environment for birth in any setting, including a hospital• And much moreIna May’s Guide to Natural Childbirth takes the fear out of childbirth by restoring women’s faith in their own natural power to give birth with more ease, less pain, and less medical intervention.

    Now revised for the first time since its initial publication, this groundbreaking guide will show you:How to avoid being a permissive parentHow to listen so kids will talk to you and talk so kids will listen to you        How to teach your children to "own" their problems and to solve themHow to use the "No-Lose" method to resolve conflictsUsing the timeless methods of P.E.T. will have immediate results: less fighting, fewer tantrums and lies, no need for punishment. Whether you have a toddler striking out for independence or a teenager who has already started rebelling, you'll find P.E.T. a compassionate, effective way to instill responsibility and create a nurturing family environment in which your child will thrive.

    Nina Planck, one of the great food activists, changed the way we view old-fashioned foods like butter with her groundbreaking Real Food. T hen she got pregnant. Never one to accept conventional wisdom blindly, Nina found the usual advice about pregnancy and baby food riddled with myths and misunderstandings. In Real Food for Mother and Baby, Nina explains why many modern ideas about pregnancy and infant nutrition are wrongheaded and why traditional foods are best. While Nina can be controversial—her op-ed in the New York Times on vegan diets for infants was one of the paper’s most e-mailed articles— she’s no contrarian. Readers applaud her candor; they also trust her research and welcome her advice. Nina’s basic premise hasn’t changed—whole foods are best—but some of the details are surprising. Pregnant women need meat and salt, not iron supplements. Nursing will be easier if you act like the mammal you are. Delaying the introduction of certain solid foods doesn’t prevent allergies. Cereals are not the best foods for tiny eaters; meat and egg yolks are better. From conception to two years, the body’s overwhelming needs are for quality fat and protein, not for carrots and low-fat dairy. Even as she casts a skeptical eye on the conventional wisdom, Nina is reassuring. She shows you how to keep your baby healthy on good, simple food. Real Food for Mother and Baby will be the new classic on eating for two.

    Your "smart but scattered" 4- to 13-year-old might also have trouble coping with disappointment or managing anger. Drs. Peg Dawson and Richard Guare have great news: there's a lot you can do to help. The latest research in child development shows that many kids who have the brain and heart to succeed lack or lag behind in crucial "executive skills"--the fundamental habits of mind required for getting organized, staying focused, and controlling impulses and emotions. Learn easy-to-follow steps to identify your child's strengths and weaknesses, use activities and techniques proven to boost specific skills, and problem-solve daily routines. Helpful worksheets and forms can be downloaded and printed in a convenient 8 1/2" x 11" size. Small changes can add up to big improvements--this empowering book shows how. See also the authors' Smart but Scattered Teens and their self-help guide for adults. Plus, an academic planner for middle and high school students and related titles for professionals.

    Siegel, MD, author of The Whole Brain ChildJust as sturdy scaffolding is necessary when erecting a building and will come down when the structure grows stable, good parenting provides children with steady and warm emotional nourishment on the path toward independence. Never-ending parental problem-solving and involvement can have the opposite effect, enabling fragility and anxiety over time.In The Scaffold Effect, world-renowned child psychiatrist Harold Koplewicz introduces the powerful and clinically tested idea that this deliberate build-up and then gradual loosening of parental support is the single most effective way to encourage kids to climb higher, try new things, grow from mistakes, and develop character and strength. Explaining the building blocks of an effective scaffold from infancy through young adulthood, he expertly guides parents through the strategies for raising empowered, capable people, including:- Lay a solid foundation: The parent-child relationship needs to be made from the concrete mixture of emotional availability, positive reinforcement, clear messaging, and consistent rules. From this supportive base, your will forge a bond that will survive adolescence and grow stronger into adulthood.- Empower growth: Skyscraper or sprawling ranch--the style of your child's construction is not up to you! Scaffold parenting validates and accommodates the shape the child is growing into. Any effort to block or control growth will actually stunt it.- Stay on their level: Imagine being on the ground floor of a house and trying to talk to someone on the roof. The person on the roof will have to "talk down" to you or yell. If your child's building and your scaffold are on the same level, you can speak directly, look each other in the eye, and keep the lines of communication open.Drawing on Dr. Koplewicz's decades of clinical and personal experience, The Scaffold Effect is a compassionate, street-smart, and essential guide for the ages.All of the author's proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to the Child Mind Institute.

    And yet, it is parents’ lack of self-awareness and confused priorities that are dangerously undermining children’s development.Through the author’s own original field research, including hundreds of rich, revealing conversations with children, parents, teachers, and coaches, a surprising picture emerges.Parents’ intense focus on their children’s happiness is turning many children into self-involved, fragile conformists.The suddenly widespread desire of parents to be closer to their children—a heartening trend in many ways—often undercuts kids’morality.Our fixation with being great parents—and our need for our children to reflect that greatness—can actually make them feel ashamed for failing to measure up. Finally, parents’ interactions with coaches and teachers—and coaches’ and teachers’ interactions with children—are critical arenas for nurturing, or eroding, children’s moral lives.Weissbourd’s ultimately compassionate message—based on compelling new research—is that the intense, crisis-filled, and profoundly joyous process of raising a child can be a powerful force for our own moral development.

    O'Connell addresses the pervasive imposter syndrome that comes with unplanned pregnancy, the second adolescence of a changing postpartum body, the problem of sex post-baby, the weird push to make "mom friends," and the fascinating strangeness of stepping into a new, not-yet-comfortable identity. O'Connell brings us into the delivery room rendering childbirth in all its feverish gore and glory, and shattering the fantasies of a "magical" or "natural" experience that warp our expectations and erode maternal self-esteem.And Now We Have Everything is an unflinchingly frank, funny, and intimate motherhood story for our times, about needing to have a baby in order to stop being one yourself.

    It took her more than a decade to realize what she was actually trying to write: how this affected her relationship with her mother. When it was finally published, the essay went viral, shared on social media by Anne Lamott, Rebecca Solnit, and many others. The outpouring of responses gave Filgate an idea, and the resulting anthology offers a candid look at our relationships with our mothers. While some of the writers in this book are estranged from their mothers, others are extremely close. Leslie Jamison writes about trying to discover who her seemingly perfect mother was before ever becoming a mom. In Cathi Hanauer’s hilarious piece, she finally gets a chance to have a conversation with her mother that isn’t interrupted by her domineering (but lovable) father. André Aciman writes about what it was like to have a deaf mother. Melissa Febos uses mythology as a lens to look at her close-knit relationship with her psychotherapist mother. And Julianna Baggott talks about having a mom who tells her everything. As Filgate writes, “Our mothers are our first homes, and that’s why we’re always trying to return to them.” There’s relief in breaking the silence. Acknowledging what we couldn’t say for so long is one way to heal our relationships with others and, perhaps most important, with ourselves. Contributors include Cathi Hanauer, Melissa Febos, Alexander Chee, Dylan Landis, Bernice L. McFadden, Julianna Baggott, Lynn Steger Strong, Kiese Laymon, Carmen Maria Machado, André Aciman, Sari Botton, Nayomi Munaweera, Brandon Taylor, and Leslie Jamison.

    She invites you to meet some of the kids she has taught in her thirty-year career.Join her as she explains everything about sex to a classroom of thirteen-year-olds. As she works in the school ‘Inclusion Unit’, trying to improve the fortunes of kids excluded from regular lessons because of their terrifying power to end learning in an instant. Or as she nurtures her multicultural poetry group, full of migrants and refugees, watches them find their voice and produce work of heartbreaking brilliance.While Clanchy doesn’t deny stinging humiliations or hide painful accidents, she celebrates this most creative, passionate and practically useful of jobs. Teaching today is all too often demeaned, diminished and drastically under-resourced. Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me will show you why it shouldn’t be.

    Despite a perfect storm of hostile forces that are robbing children of a healthy childhood, courageous parents and teachers who know what s best for children are turning the tide. Johann Christoph Arnold, whose books on education, parenting, and relationships have helped more than a million readers through life s challenges, draws on the stories and voices of parents and educators on the ground, and a wealth of personal experience. He surveys the drastic changes in the lives of children, but also the groundswell of grassroots advocacy and action that he believes will lead to the triumph of common sense and time-tested wisdom. Arnold takes on technology, standardized testing, overstimulation, academic pressure, marketing to children, over-diagnosis and much more, calling on everyone who loves children to combat these threats to childhood and find creative ways to help children flourish. Every parent, teacher, and childcare provider has the power to make a difference, by giving children time to play, access to nature, and personal attention, and most of all, by defending their right to remain children."

    Family psychologist, best-selling author, and parenting expert John Rosemond uses his thirty-six years of professional experience working with families to develop the quintessential "how to" book for parents. Rosemond's step-by-step program, based on biblical principles, traditional parenting approaches, and common sense, covers a wide range of discipline problems applicable to children from toddler to teen.Sections include:Essential Discipline Principles Essential Discipline Tools Perplexing Problems and Simple Solutions Not Your Everyday Problems General Questions and Answers (Troubleshooting)Filled with real-life examples that anyone who's ever been around children can relate to, this book is sure to be one of the most valuable, helpful resources parents have ever stumbled across.

    The Importance of the First Three Years of Life

    When you're faced with a perplexing development, reach for this complete Guide by the baby experts at the renowned Mayo Clinic By doctors who are also parents.Yikes, you're suddenly parents, home alone with your brand-new baby! Where's your own mother or smart friend;where's your pediatrician; when you desperately need reassurance and advice? Mayo Clinic Guide to Your Baby's First Year is a steady, ever-present source of both information and wisdom. When you're faced with a perplexing development, reach for this complete Guide by the baby experts at the renowned Mayo Clinic. When you wonder what might happen next, check the "Month-by-Month Growth and Development" pages of this trusted companion.

    This book is a straightforward, no-nonsense answer to one of the biggest challenges new parents face when they welcome a brand new baby home. This book is written for exhausted parents, giving them immediate access to the information they need. Reassuring and easy to understand, Dr. Kennedy addresses head-on the fears and misinformation about the long-term effects of crying and takes a bold stand on controversial issues such as co-sleeping and attachment parenting. With polarizing figures and techniques dominating the marketplace—and spawning misinformation across the internet—Dr. Kennedy's methods and practices create an extensively researched and parent-tested approach to sleep training that takes both babies' and parents' needs into account to deliver good nights and days of sleep, and no small dose of peace of mind. The Good Sleeper is a practical, empowering—and even entertaining—guide to help parents understand infant sleep. This research-based book will teach parents the basics of sleep science, determine how and when to intervene, and provide tools to solve even the most seemingly impossible sleep problems.

    Her successful parenting approach harnesses the power of this basic fact: Your baby is unique and will grow in confidence if allowed to develop at his or her own pace. The key to successful parenting is learning to observe your child and to trust him or her to be an initiator, an explorer, a self-learner with an individual style of problem solving and mastery.Now you can discover the acclaimed RIE approach. This practical and enlightening guide will help you: Develop your own observational skills Learn when to intervene with your baby and when not to Find ways to connect with your baby through daily caregiving routines such as feeding, diapering, and bathing Effectively handle common problems such as crying, discipline, sleep issues, toilet training, and much more.