Best and Most Recommended Parenting Book

As a society and as individuals, we say our relationships with our kids and our kids' wellbeing are some of the very most important things in our lives.

Yet, what have we done to take an educated approach to our relationships with our kids and our responsibilities of raising them to be healthy, resilient and well adjusted adults? 

Reading and applying the simple process described in this book is one of the best ways—and one of the simplest ways—you can improve your relationship with your child AND improve your child's well-being and life skills.

Parenting is one of my clinical specializations, and a relationship with which I love to assist people.

My formal training in parenting education began in 1997 when I was employed as a parenting educator. I have found that assisting parents in improving their parenting and their relationships and communication with their children can have long-lasting, far-reaching and incredibly meaningful impacts on both parents and children, and that those improvements often have positive ripple effects in the other areas of their lives.

As a result, parenting it is an area in which I have continued to study and obtain advanced training and certification over the past 20+ years, so that I can provide the highest quality and most up-to-date therapy services to individuals and families.

In those 20+ years of training and working with parents, the book I recommend most often and most highly is Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child by John Gottman PhD with Joan DeClaire.

The reason I recommend this book so highly and more often than any other parenting book to those I work with is that many research studies have shown that emotional intelligence (a.k.a. Emotional Intelligence Quotient or EQ) is the best predictor of how a child will turn out.

This book teaches and simplifies the research-validated process of enabling your child to develop that emotional intelligence using decades of research from parent-child pairs in whom the child developed high levels of emotional intelligence.

Children with whom their parents effectively used this process show a multitude of positive outcomes including being better able to control their impulses, delay gratification, motivate themselves, cope with life’s ups and downs, regulate their own emotional states, bounce back from stress, take on responsibility, and carry on productive activities among many other positive behaviors and benefits.

Most parents are aware that there are a LOT of parenting books out there. However, this is one of the most research-based parenting books available, and it gives you tools to better understand your style and to focus on the interactions, relationship factors and communication that matter the most with your child.

This book can be applied with a child of any age and research has shown that even a non-custodial parent using this process can be enough to develop emotional intelligence in their child. I literally have entire bookshelves full of parenting books.

However, this one is my very favorite and I highly recommend it to you.

If you recognize that you could use additional assistance, support and guidance beyond what this book can provide, please reach out to me through the contact form on this page to reach me most quickly, or you may also email or call me to request to schedule a 45 minute phone consultation to explore how I could assist you.

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Please note that I will receive a small amount on purchases made from my website in return for directing people to the books I recommend most highly as a therapist. However, I have been recommending these books and others to my clients, friends and family as long as I have been working in the social work and therapy professions. And, I would (and will) continue to recommend these particular books even if I don’t receive any compensation whatsoever.

What is EMDR therapy and Modified Protocol, Attachment-Focused EMDR therapy?

What is EMDR?

EMDR is an acronym for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy, which is a powerful and effective method of therapy for treating trauma.

Trauma may be best be defined as “a psychological, emotional response to an event or an experience that is deeply distressing or disturbing” [1].

EMDR therapy incorporates eye movements or other forms of bilateral stimulation into an in-depth, comprehensive, mind-body approach to processing pieces of distressing experiences that are stuck in the mind and body—in a way that positively transforms the memory, physiological sensations, emotions and beliefs associated with the experience [2].

EMDR has extensively been researched over the past few decades as a treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and is considered to be an evidence-based therapy for trauma [3 & 4].

In addition to treating PTSD, EMDR is also used to treat the mental and emotional effects of a wide variety of smaller traumas that manifest as anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, phobias, creativity blocks, and relationship difficulties [2].

What differentiates EMDR therapy from something like medication per se is that EMDR therapy enables us to treat and address the causes of the issues rather than just treating symptoms.

What is Modified Protocol, Attachment-Focused EMDR?

The development of Attachment-Focused EMDR began in 1991. This modified protocol of the therapy was developed by Laurel Parnell by whom I was trained personally.

Dr. Parnell developed AF-EMDR for clients who have typically been less responsive to traditional EMDR protocols, who had experienced things such as childhood physical or sexual abuse, neglect, early losses, birth trauma, medical trauma, parental drug or alcohol abuse, caregiver misattunement, or secondary trauma [2].

AF-EMDR therapy might be a good fit for you if you struggle with anxiety, depression, not feeling fully alive, not enjoying life, difficulty making important decisions and taking action, intense emotional reactions to certain situations or people, difficult relationships in the family with whom you grew up, or issues in your relationships as an adult.

Processing and healing can occur much more rapidly than with talk therapy alone, and clearing these negative effects often results in people experiencing greater joy, peace, meaning, depth, openness, and connection in their lives and relationships.

If any of these sound like things you have experienced or things with which you struggle, please contact me through the contact form on this page to reach me most quickly, or you may also email or call me to request to schedule your 45 minute phone consultation.

In my experiences, Attachment-Focused EMDR is a more client-centered, flexible and intuitive method of EMDR.

I have found that Attachment-Focused EMDR enables and creates healing in ways that simply are not possible with talk therapy alone.

EMDR enables us to effectively work through a wide variety of triggers or things we haven’t been able to let go of, and genuinely move forward in our lives and relationships.

References:

1. http://centerforanxietydisorders.com/what-is-trauma/

2. http://parnellemdr.com/emdr-and-af-emdr/?fbclid=IwAR2ZvmEa7uxLvVm072RTVpA5SMXdOtM3j4dJc8H2ks1a-tghX-RuAgRFtqs

3. http://www.emdr.com/efficacy/

4. https://www.emdrhap.org/content/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Research_2015.pdf