Recommended Reading for Parents of a Middle Schooler
The Everything Tween Book: A Parent’s Guide to Surviving the Turbulent Pre-Teen Years
(2003) Linda Sonna. This book provides sound, professional advice on understanding and dealing with rebellion, improving communication, disciplining, managing sibling spats, helping your tween face peer pressure, ensuring good health, and teaching sex education.
Not Much Just Chillin’: The Hidden Lives of Middle Schoolers
(2003) Linda Perlstein. As a report from the front lines of the most formative-and least understood-years of children’s lives, this book examines all facets of being an ordinary “tween”. She discusses such issues as consumerism, romance, and the phenomenon of instant messaging–all to give parents of young children an idea of what lies ahead. Perlstein interweaves information about how middle-school children learn best and what parents can do to help.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families: Building a Beautiful Family Culture in a Turbulent World
(1998) Stephen R. Covey, Sandra Merrill Covey. This book presents a practical and philosophical guide to solving the problems–large and small, mundane and extraordinary–that confront all families and strong communities. By offering revealing anecdotes about ordinary people as well as helpful suggestions, Covey discusses how and why to have family meetings, the importance of keeping promises, how to balance individual and family needs, and how to move from dependence to interdependence.
Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls
(2003) Rachel Simmons. Dirty looks and taunting notes are just a few examples of girl bullying that girls and women have long suffered through silently and painfully. With this book Simmons elevated the nation’s consciousness and has shown millions of girls, parents, counselors, and teachers how to deal with this devastating problem
Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence
(2003) Rosalind Wiseman. With its revealing look into the secret world of teenage girls and cliques, enlivened with the voices of dozens of girls and a much-needed sense of humor, this book will equip you with all the tools you need to build the right foundation to help your daughter make smarter choices and empower her during this baffling, tumultuous time of life.
A Mind at a Time
(2003) Mel Levine. Children have different ways of learning Levine has isolated eight areas of learning (the memory system, the language system, the spatial ordering system, the motor system, etc.) He provides chapters describing how each type of learning works and advises parents and teachers on how to help kids struggling in these areas.
Raising An Emotionally Intelligent Child
(1998) John Gottman. A guide to teaching children to understand and regulate their emotional world. The authors identify a five-step “emotion coaching” process to help teach children how to recognize and address their feelings.
Dreamers, Discoverers and Dynamos : How to Help the Child Who Is Bright, Bored and Having Problems in School
(1999) Lucy Jo Palladino. Explains how parents can identify and appreciate the Edison Trait–intelligence, active imagination, and a free-spirited approach to life–and offers eight steps to help support its benefits and minimize its problems.
How To Talk So Kids Can Learn (1996) Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish. This breakthrough book demonstrates how parents and teachers can join forces to inspire kids to be self-directed, self-disciplined, and responsive to the wonders of learning.
Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too
(1998) Adele Faber, Elaine Mazlish. Techniques for ending sibling squabbles and encourage children to interact in positive ways.
Good Friends Are Hard to Find: Help Your Child Find, Make and Keep Friends
(1996) Fred Frankel, Barry Wetmore. This guide teaches parents clinically-tested techniques for helping their 5- to 12-year-olds make friends and solve problems with other kids. Also provided is concrete help for handling teasing, bullying, and meanness, both for the child who is picked on and for the tormentor.
Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls
(2002) Mary Pipher, Ph.D. Pipher poses the provocative question: Why are American adolescent girls falling prey to depression, eating disorders, and suicide attempts at an alarming rate? The answer hit a nerve. We live in a look-obsessed, sexist, girl-poisoning culture. And despite the advances of feminism, girls continue to struggle to find their true selves. Reviving Ophelia issues a call to arms and offers parents compassion, strength, and strategies with which to revive these Ophelias lost sense of self.
Ophelia Speaks : Adolescent Girls Write About Their Search for Self
(1999) Sara Shandler. In a clever response to the bestselling Reviving Ophelia, Shandler reveals telling portraits of teenage girls in this book, a compilation of essays, poems, and true-grit commentary from a cross section of teenage girls throughout the country. The book succeeds because it gives voice to their deepest concerns and their too-often frenzied lives. The topics covered run the gamut, but they include parental expectations, racial relations, faith, and eating disorders. The book also gives practical insight for parents who may find it hard to relate to their teenage daughters.
Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys
(2000) Michael Thompson Ph.D., Dan Kindlon Ph.D. Through moving case studies and cutting-edge research, Raising Cain paints a portrait of boys systematically steered away from their emotional lives by adults and the peer “culture of cruelty”–boys who receive little encouragement to develop qualities such as compassion, sensitivity, and warmth. They reveal a nation of boys who are hurting–sad, afraid, angry, and silent. This book addresses the crucial question “What do boys need that they’re not getting?”
Raising Boys: Why Boys Are Different-And How to Help Them Become Happy and Well-Balanced Men
(1998) Steve Biddulph, Paul Stanish. Citing such gender specific risks facing boys as a higher percentage of learning disabilities to greater threats of violence and suicide, Biddulph maps out parenting strategies for three distinct stages of growth, from birth to six years, from six to 14, and from14 to adult.
Strong Mothers, Strong Sons: Raising the Next Generation of Men
(1995) Ann F. Caron. A practical, informative guide for mothers on raising secure, healthy sons. Caron examines male development and uses anecdotes and examples from real day-to-day situations to address the specific concerns and problems encountered by mothers who are raising sons.
Raising Your Spirited Child: A Guide for Parents Whose Child Is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, Persistent, Energetic
(1998) Mary Sheedy Kurcinka. By reframing challenging temperamental qualities in a positive way, and by giving readers specific tools to work with these qualities, Kurcinka has provided a book that will help all parents, especially the parents of spirited children, understand and better parent their children.
Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa
(2000) Joan Jacobs Brumberg. Winner of four major awards, this newly updated edition presents a history of women’s food-refusal dating back as far as the sixteenth century. Incisive, compassionate, illuminating, it offers real understanding to victims and their families, clinicians, and all women who are interested in the origins and future of this complex, modern and characteristically female disease.
Helping Your Anxious Child: A Step-By-Step Guide for Parents
(2000) Ronald M. Rapee et al. This step-by-step guide tackles the why, how, and what now of anxiety disorders.
“Help Me, I’m Sad”: Recognizing, Treating, and Preventing Childhood and Adolescent Depression
(1998) David G. Fassler, Lynne S. Dumas. Discusses how to tell if your child is at risk for depression; how to spot symptoms; depression’s link with other problems and its impact on the family; teen suicide; finding the right diagnosis, therapist, and treatment; and what you can do to help.
Taking Charge of ADHD, Revised Edition: The Complete, Authoritative Guide for Parents
(2000) Russell A. Barkley. A treasured parent resource since its publication, this book empowers parents by arming them with up-to-date knowledge and expert guidance. This book includes a step-by-step plan for behavior management that has helped thousands of children with ADHD, hard data that clear up current controversies about increased diagnosis and stimulant use, new strategies that give children greater chances of success at school and in social situations, and advances in genetic and neurological research that enhance our understanding of what causes ADHD.
Helping Your Kids Cope with Divorce the Sandcastles Way
(1999) M. Gary Neuman, et al. Kids tend to blame themselves when parents divorce. This book details ways to increase communication, understanding, and togetherness between parents and kids. The book is also packed full of suggestions on everything from the best way to break the divorce news to a child to facing the holidays, visitation, custody arrangements, anger, discipline, co-parenting, single parenting, overcompensation, sorrow, custody fights, and much more.