Whether it's potty-training your toddler or quieting a tantrum, being parents to very young children is like expecting the unexpected. Reading the best parenting books for toddlers can give you an insight into a world of positive parenting advice and learn how to deal with situations better.
With the overwhelming amount of information available online or through experienced parents around you, it can get confusing to learn what’s right for your child. Kids gain exposure and develop at their own pace, and parents are constantly in need of understanding them better. Here are 12 best parenting books to help you guide and support your children in a positive way!
How would parenting books be beneficial for parents?
Most parenting books suggest a modern and psychological approach to raising kids, that parents can read and learn about in depth. They can benefit by learning about how to bring kids in a supportive, lovable manner and how to improve their parenting methods as time passes.It would help strengthen their bond with the kids, which is quite essential.
Some of the best parenting books for toddlers are written by professionals and experts who conduct extensive research on various concepts involved in the process of parenting. Most of these are real-life experiences of the authors, of families who they’ve interacted with, or even parent groups in their sample group sessions. The books contain tested, successful tips and advice about how to deal with different situations faced by parents, and how to overcome challenges in a positive manner.
12 Best Parenting books for toddlers
How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
This Parenting and Communication book is one of the best parenting books for toddlers as it majorly focuses on helping parents have better relationships with their children. It is highly praised by parents and professionals around the world, and has sold over 2 million copies. Each chapter talks about the authors’ real-life parenting experiences, providing specific tips for various situations.
The advice contained in the chapters are portrayed through exercises, prompts, and anecdotes which the authors recommend going through slowly. Its insights and suggestions are designed to help parents work their methods to communicate with their children in a non-threatening way and enable discussions and problem-solving in a cooperative manner.
Parenting the Strong-Willed Child: The Clinically Proven Five-Week Program for Parents of Two- to Six-Year-Olds by Rex Forehand and Nicholas Long
One of the best Parenting book for 4-year-olds, this book talks about specific factors that contribute to or cause disruptive or unruly behaviour. It provides parents with advice on how to successfully manage your child’s behaviour, manage specific behavioural problems, and ways to deal with it.
The book helps parents learn about child temperament, means for strengthening parent-child relationship, collaborative disciplining with pre-school teachers, stress and depression linked to parenting, and more. It also assists parents with developing a positive atmosphere in your family and home.
Live Love Now By Rachel Macy Stafford
Best-selling Author Rachel Macy Stafford writes about tackling challenges with kids in every-day life in her book. She encourages adults to take them up with compassion, honesty, and a lot of love. You can read about raising and guiding your child to become resilient, compassionate, and capable adults.
The book teaches adults with kids to practise giving light and love into their lives, and step aside from blocking the light from our children. It allows parents to help kids face the top stressors of today such as academic pressure, isolation, lack of purpose, parental expectations, and more. It reminds you that loving life is as important as living it, and having an understanding attitude towards one’s mental health is essential.
Becoming Attached by Robert Karen
Becoming Attached provides its readers a comprehensive history on attachment and how we relate to others as adults. Robert Karen provides a fresh insight into some of the most fundamental issues of emotional life. The parent-child bond is something that touches one deeply and the need arises to understand the relationship in a better manner.
Some of the important questions addressed in the book are about children having the feel that the world is a positive place and they have value, the risks of day care for children under one year and the risk management, the sort of experiences in infancy that will enable a person to develop healthy relationships, and more, making it one of the best parenting books for toddlers.
Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne
One of the best parenting books for toddlers, Simplicity Parenting by Kim J. Payne talks about how a faster, busier society can be too hard on a kid’s childhood. Too many things on one’s plate, too many choices, and too little time can result in the child having anxiety and having trouble making friends in school. This could lead to behavioural problems as well.
Payne’s book helps parents understand their children better and give them the space and freedom they absolutely require for their individuality to flourish. It offers parents ideas, inspiration, and a blueprint for change.
The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your
Child’s Developing Mind by Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson
Authors Daniel Siegel and Tina Bryson in their book offer twelve different key strategies that talk about helping parents focus on their kids in their brain development in a healthy manner, particularly when dealing with strong emotions. They discuss about the science of how a child’s brain works and how it matures. The book provides a detailed description of how the brain is involved in decision-making, balancing emotions, and how it is developed until the mid-twenties.
Parents can learn about the features of the right and left hemisphere of the brain, and work towards applying the tips and techniques to everyday parenting to foster healthy and vital growth. It provides strategies for dealing with respect to day-to-day struggles and shows how to cultivate healthy, emotional, and intellectual development for your child so that they can lead balanced lives.
Kids Are Worth It!: Giving Your Child The Gift Of Inner Discipline by Barbara Coloroso
Yet another classic in the parenting genre by best selling author Barbara Coloroso, She talks about how important it is for parents to treat their kids with respect and dignity. She also mentions instant-fix solutions such as punishment and reward are not the right way to go, and uses everyday family situations -such as sibling rivalry and rebellion to provide efficient strategies for giving children self-confidence and inner discipline.
She explains in her book how children will face a difficult time becoming responsible and resilient adults if their parents control, manipulate, or not provide enough freedom to their children to make their own mistakes. They cannot develop a sense of inner peace and discipline if all control comes from the outside.
Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason by Alfie Kohn
In an innovative approach to parenting, Alfie Kohn provides parents powerful alternatives to help children become their most responsible and caring selves. One of the best parenting books for 4-year-olds out there, Kohn believes in switching the dynamic from doing things to children to actually working with them in order to understand their needs and how to meet them.
Kohn argues that children need to be loved unconditionally and to make them know that they will be accepted even if they fall short. This book is more than just about discipline, it addresses the way parents feel, think, and act with their children. It questions the basic assumptions of a parent’s behaviour with their kids and changes the way they deal with them.
Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
A bestseller parenting book, Siblings without Rivalry offers serious advice for parents and guardians dealing with unpleasant conflicts that arise when siblings get into fights and disagreements. It encourages parents to step in only when needed, but take a step back often, empower them to work it out amongst themselves.
The authors combine their separate experiences into one voice, and present their personal experiences along with anecdotes from many parent groups from an 8-week session. The book contains illustrated examples of what we say and what can be said instead, questions asked by parents with suggested answers, and success stories of parents who tried the techniques from the previous week. It also encourages parents to put themselves in their kid’s place and think about how they would feel in the situation. It teaches kids to relate to each other even in the heat of battle.
The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed by Jessica Lahey
The Gift of Failure is a modern parenting book and one of the best parenting books for toddlers. It aims to give importance to the initial years when children attend school and parents must learn to allow their children to experience defeat, dissatisfaction, disappointment, and frustration that stems from problems in real-life situations which are inevitable. This will encourage them to grow up to be capable and self-reliant adults.
More often than not, parents tend to be more overprotective of their kids in the form of stepping in - or rather, interfering - to solve even the smallest of problems, taking away the kid’s chance to deal with the situation themselves. Lahey explains that even though parents see themselves as responsible for their children’s well being, they aren’t letting them to learn to solve their own issues which could ruin their confidence and make them feel little.
Positive Discipline: The Classic Guide to Helping Children Develop Self-Discipline, Responsibility, Cooperation, and Problem-Solving Skills by Jane Nelsen
A renowned psychologist, educator, and mother to seven children, Jane Nelsen writes in her book about the the process of practising positive discipline in the form of mutual respect, and not resort to any form of punishment. She teaches parents and teachers to to both firm and kind, so that children - be it a toddler or a teenager - can learn to cooperate and learn self discipline without feeling disrespected.
The book offers contains learnings on how to deal with gaps in communication, to hold children accountable for their actions without making them feel disrespected, most importantly to work on strengths and not weaknesses, challenges faced due to misconduct by teenagers, and more. It guides parents to focus on solutions with positive discipline and to have a healthy relationship with their children.
The Conscious Parent: Transforming Ourselves, Empowering Our Children by Dr. Shefali Tsabary
The essential message conveyed by Dr. Shefali Tsabary in her book is that our children bring out the version of us as parents we longed to become, and they create this deep internal transformation within us. She sets aside traditional parenting strategies that only control children and asks parents to encourage kids to connect with themselves and find their unique essence.
Despite their intentions to raise their kids well, parents may pass on emotional legacies such as their unresolved needs, unmet expectations, dreams to them that may have long lasting repercussions. This shuts them deep down and hinders their path to become their own, unique self. The book offers Dr. Tsabary’s real-life experiences with countless families and helps parents give their kids the opportunity to shine with their true self.
FAQs
Should a 4-year-old be reading?
A child’s earliest years are key for developing a solid foundation. Before getting books for your 4-year-old to read, check for their reading readiness skills. In this manner, you can help them prepare for their reding success. Kids develop at their own pace. You can begin by helping them read and write their own name, learn letter names and sounds, find rhyming words, perform syllable claps, and similar things.
What are some best parenting books for new parents?
Some of the best parenting books for new parents are:
- How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish
- Positive Discipline: The Classic Guide to Helping Children Develop Self-Discipline, Responsibility, Cooperation, and Problem-Solving Skills by Jane Nelsen
- The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed by Jessica Lahey
- Kids Are Worth It!: Giving Your Child The Gift Of Inner Discipline by Barbara Coloroso
- Live Love Now By Rachel Macy Stafford