Family Development

The baby and toddler years are a wild ride. Consider this book your essential guide—with comprehensive information on infant and toddler health and development from top pediatric experts at Mayo Clinic who have real-life parenting experience. In this third edition, key updates address the questions and issues facing today's parents. To help you make the best decisions for your family, you'll find information on screen time, vaccines, new devices, and parental depression and anxiety. Other additions help you navigate toddler nap transitions, picky eating, big feelings, and behavior issues.

Ginger’s candid approach will help moms move beyond the frustrations of not knowing how to handle issues of disobedience and into a confident, well-balanced approach to raising their children.

A guide to leaving painful, destructive relationships behind - both at home and at work. Toxic relationships are characterized by the slow erosion of self-esteem, a loss of personal identity, or a growing desire to please friends, partners, and family members who are impossible to please. In this uplifting and informative audiobook, psychotherapist Avril Carruthers shows why we get involved in toxic relationships in the first place, and instructs the listener on how to recognize if they’re involved in one.

In his groundbreaking best seller The Gift of Fear, Gavin de Becker showed millions of readers that, like every creature on earth, human beings can predict violent behavior. Now, in this exclusive audio presentation of Protecting the Gift, de Becker empowers parents to fully trust their own intuition when it comes to their children's safety. In this indispensable resource, de Becker provides keen insights into the behavior and strategies of predators. He offers practical new steps to enhance children's safety at every age level: specific questions parents can ask to effectively screen and evaluate babysitters, daycare services, schools, and doctors; a "Test of 12" safety skills children need before being alone in public; warning signs to help parents protect children from sexual abuse; and how to keep teenage girls and boys from unsafe situations with peers and adults. De Becker also shatters the myth that rules like "Never talk to strangers" will keep your children safe. By showing what danger really looks like - as opposed to what we might imagine it looks like - de Becker gives parents freedom from many common worries and unwarranted fears.

Never before has raising teens been so perplexing. If you are wondering what on earth you're doing wrong, you're not alone. But there is hope. By learning to meaningfully express love amid your teens' many changes, you can stay connected, maintain influence, and help them grow into healthy adults.

Kim West, LCSW-C, known to her clients as The Sleep Lady®, has developed an alternative and effective approach to helping children learn to gently put themselves to sleep without letting them "cry it out" - an option that is not comfortable for many parents. Essential listening for any tired parent, or any expectant parent who wants to avoid the pitfalls of sleeplessness, Good Night, Sleep Tight offers a practical, easy-to-follow remedy that will work for all families in need of nights of peaceful slumber!

Do you find it difficult communicating with your spouse? Are you tired of arguing and fighting with your spouse whenever you try to communicate? Is your spouse not talking to you anymore? You are not alone. Many couples (including us) have had to deal with these communication problems at some point in marriage, and it's not fun! But don't worry. No matter what communication problems you struggle with, you can learn how to communicate effectively with your spouse today.

With Mothers Who Can't Love: A Healing Guide for Daughters, Susan Forward, Ph.D., author of the smash #1 best-seller Toxic Parents, offers a powerful look at the devastating impact unloving mothers have on their daughters - and provides clear, effective techniques for overcoming that painful legacy.

A groundswell of women are taking back their pregnancies and childbirth and embracing a natural way. Genevieve Howland, the woman behind the enormously popular Mama Natural blog and YouTube channel, has created an inspiring, fun, and informative guide that demystifies natural pregnancy and walks Mom through the process one week at a time.

"Why me, Lord?" Amid the toddler tantrums, the mealtime melees, and the backseat blowups, have you found yourself asking God that same question? Maybe even screaming it into a couch pillow? You're not alone. Your most trying moments as a parent can quickly spiral into discouragement, hopelessness, and sometimes even resentment toward God or your family. Abbie Halberstadt, author of the bestselling M Is for Mama, shares scriptural wisdom and lessons learned from her own challenges as a mama of ten to help shift your perspective on the hardships of parenting and of life, in general.

The authors of Sh*tty Mom are back with an hilarious guide presenting common parenting scenarios with advice for getting through the year the sh*tty mom way. Told in the same tongue-in-cheek voice as the original, this sequel is full of funny parenting tips and relatable stories for contemporary moms. Sh*tty Mom for All Seasons explores the occasions throughout the year that test every mother's patience and inspire self-deprecating humor and that second glass of wine.

From her earliest memories, Minu felt like an outsider. It wasn't just her peculiar name, but also her light skin and cinnamon-swirl hair—so unlike the dark features of her Mexican family—that drew comments from neighbors and strangers. No one took her questions seriously, leaving her yearning for answers. Meanwhile, she had to endure her father's violence, her mother's negligence, and the poverty and drugs in Cashion, Arizona. Determined to carve out her own destiny, Minu embarked on a journey to uncover the mysteries of her past.

Almost everything about puberty has changed since today's adults went through it. Bewildered adults have begged for reliable and relatable information about the modern adolescent experience. This Is So Awkward answers their call. Written by a pediatrician and a puberty educator—together the hosts of a lively and popular podcast on puberty, and moms to six teens between them—this is the handbook everyone has been searching for. Eye-opening and reassuring, This Is So Awkward will help adults understand the turbulent pubescent decade and become confident guides for today’s kids.

In Grounded, we meet Doreen as she’s struggling with the realization that she’s pregnant, weighing her own dreams and professional ambitions against the life she imagines is necessary to nurture and raise children well. Doreen’s mother was a stay-at-home mom who did everything in her power to ensure her daughters had the same opportunities as the white kids in their New Jersey suburb. Years later, the influence of her mom still looming large as her own children grow up, Doreen begins to see her mother’s choices in a different light.

If you are a stepparent, you may know how challenging a role it can be. It takes more than the will to make it work. Stepparents must apply a range of skills to keep their families together, and they have to be prepared to be flexible in the process.

The essential guide for fathers of one - and two-year-olds, completely revised and updated. Learn how to make a positive impact in these milestone years of your child's development, when he or she goes from crawling to walking, and from knowing just a few words to speaking in complete sentences. Armin Brott guides you through this crucial phase of fatherhood three months at a time, in the third volume of the New Father series trusted by millions of dads nationwide.

In this story of perseverance in the face of adversity, Regina Calcaterra recounts her childhood in foster care and on the streets and how she and her savvy crew of homeless siblings managed to survive years of homelessness, abandonment, and abuse. Regina Calcaterra's emotionally powerful memoir reveals how she endured a series of foster homes and intermittent homelessness in the shadow of the Hamptons, and how she rose above her past while fighting to keep her brother and three sisters together.

The Marshalls were the model family of Tom’s River, New Jersey, living the American dream and seemingly in possession of all that money could buy. Rob Marshall, a successful insurance broker, was the big breadwinner, king of the country-club set. Maria Marshall was his stunningly beautiful wife and the perfect mom to their three great kids.Then one night, while the couple drove home from Atlantic City, Rob, his head bloodied, reported Maria had been brutally slain. Sympathy poured in - until disquieting facts began to surface....

In the tradition of Paul Tough's How Children Succeed and Wendy Mogel's The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, this groundbreaking manifesto focuses on the critical school years when parents must learn to allow their children to experience the disappointment and frustration that occur from life's inevitable problems so that they can grow up to be successful, resilient, and self-reliant adults.

Healing the Wounded Mother, an original audio by psychotherapist and Internal Family Systems (IFS) lead trainer Tamala Floyd, encourages a deeper understanding of the generational mother-child dynamic, exploring how a mother's unresolved wounds can shape the relationship she has with her own children. Embracing both the pain and possibility of change, a wounded mother can rewrite her story—not just for herself but for the generations that follow.