top of page

Helpful Books For Parents & Carers

Navigating the journey of parenting and caregiving can be both rewarding and challenging. To support you in this important role, we've curated a collection of insightful books designed to provide practical advice, emotional support, and evidence-based strategies.

Whether you're seeking guidance on child development, mental health, or effective communication, these resources are tailored to equip you with the knowledge and confidence to foster a healthy and nurturing environment for your children. Dive into these recommended reads to enrich your parenting or caregiving experience.

The Complete Guide To Therapeutic Parenting by Jane Mitchell and Sarah Naish

This is the go-to guide for practitioners, parents and carers who want to expand their understanding and skills for therapeutic parenting - a deeply nurturing parenting style particularly effective for children who have experienced trauma or adversity. It provides an easy to understand explanation of the latest theory and research in trauma and neuroscience, and explains how these relate to everyday parenting strategies. It provides clarity on complex areas, such as early developmental trauma in children, and insights into key challenges, including managing transitions, sibling relationships, challenging behaviour, the teenage years, and how to find time and space for self-care.

Hold On To Your Kids by Gabor Maté & Gordon Neufield

Children take their lead from their friends: being 'cool' matters more than anything else. Shaping values, identity and codes of behaviour, peer groups are often far more influential than parents. But this situation is far from natural, and it can be dangerous - it undermines family cohesion, interferes with healthy development and fosters a hostile and sexualised youth culture. Children end up becoming conformist, anxious and alienated. In Hold on to Your Kids, acclaimed physician and best-selling author Gabor Maté joins forces with Gordon Neufeld, a psychologist with a reputation for penetrating to the heart of complex parenting. Together they pinpoint the causes of this breakdown and offer practical advice on how to 'reattach' to sons and daughters, establish the hierarchy at home, make children feel safe and understood, and earn back your children's loyalty and love. This updated edition also addresses the unprecedented parenting challenges posed by the rise of digital devices and social media

The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (and Your Children Will be Glad That You Did) by Philippa Perry

Relationships can be complicated to navigate — and many of us wish our relationships were stronger. In this book, leading psychotherapist Philippa Perry teaches what supports and what damages connections. You’ll learn how your upbringing shaped you, tools to handle children’s feelings and plenty of judgment-free resources to have the best possible relationships with the people who matter most to you

Trauma Through a Child's Eyes: Awakening the Ordinary Miracle of Healing by Peter A. Levine & Maggie Kline

What parents, educators, and health professionals can do to recognize, prevent, and heal childhood trauma, from infancy through adolescence—by the author of Waking the Tiger. Trauma can result not only from catastrophic events such as abuse, violence, or loss of loved ones, but from natural disasters and everyday incidents like auto accidents, medical procedures, divorce, or even falling off a bicycle. At the core of this book is the understanding of how trauma is imprinted on the body, brain, and spirit—often resulting in anxiety, nightmares, depression, physical illnesses, addictions, hyperactivity, and aggression. Rich with case studies and hands-on activities, Trauma Through a Child’s Eyes gives insight into children’s innate ability to rebound with the appropriate support, and provides their caregivers with tools to overcome and prevent trauma

Brain-Body Parenting by Mona Delahooke

Raising kids is understandably challenging. When children act out through emotional outbursts, tantrums and out-of-control behavior, parents often jump in with correction. Backed by her clinical research in neuroscience and child psychology, author and psychologist Mona Delahooke offers a new approach to parenting. This radical approach focuses on the biology beneath the behavior, and empowers parents with the tools they need to work on themselves — while helping their children develop self-regulation skills.

What Happened To You by Bruce R. Perry & Oprah Winfrey

What are the root causes behind our reactions and behaviours? Authored by Oprah Winfrey and brain and trauma expert Dr. Bruce Perry, this book can help you learn to shift questions from “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?” Designed to help adults and children move from self-blame to self-acceptance and self-love, this book shows how early experiences shape our lives and provides insights into difficult-to-understand behavioural patterns.

bottom of page