Book: Good Inside by Becky Kennedy, PhD.
I really enjoyed this book. The content is clear and concise. (Plus - the chapters are short, which makes it easy to read in the brief chunks of time parenting gives you.) Dr. Becky gets so specific with strategies that you can open to the chapter on the problem you are having and get the guidance you need.
Published in 2022, this book is primarily a book for parents interested in a different approach to addressing challenging behaviors. Instead of leaning on concrete consequences for problematic behaviors and timely rewards for desirable ones, this book is a guide to parenting built around understanding your kid’s developmental abilities and your role in fostering emotional maturity. It provides an easy to understand theoretical framework for this approach and offers very specific guidance on common issues like lying, sibling rivalry, sleep problems, and tantrums.
But the book isn't just for parents - It’s also offers a way of seeing others and ourselves as essentially good but often limited by poor problem-solving or short-sighted decisions.
I can also see it being useful for grandparents trying to connect with their adult children who are becoming parents and are interested in new parenting strategies.
"When we, as parents, wonder, "Is it too late?" we're assuming that the story of our relationship with our child already has an ending. In doing so, we miss something critical: that we can always layer on a new experience, and that new experience will change the ending to the chapter." (p. 55)
