Winner Parenting & Family The 2020 Best Book Awards
From renowned parent expert Caroline Maguire, Why Will No One Play with Me? is a groundbreaking program that has helped thousands of children struggling with social skills to make friends, find acceptance, and have a happy childhood.
Every parent wants their child to be okay--to have friends, to be successful, to feel comfortable in his or her own skin. But many children lack important social and executive functioning skills that allow them to navigate through the world with ease.
In-demand parenting expert and former Hallowell Center coach Caroline Maguire has worked with thousands of families dealing with chronic social dilemmas, ranging from shyness to aggression to ADHD, and more. In this groundbreaking book, she shares her decade-in-the-making protocol--The Play Better Plan-- to help parents coach children to connect with others and make friends. Children of all ages--truly, from Kindergarten to college age-- will gain the confidence to make friends and get along with others, using tools such as:
Social Sleuthing: learn to pay attention to social cues
Post-Play Date Huddles: help kids figure out what to look for in a friendship
Reflective Listening: improve your child's relationship with their peers
With compassion and ease, this program gives parents a tangible, easy-to-follow guide for helping kids develop the executive function and social skills they need to thrive.
A highly useful handbook for pregnancy and the first three months after birth that covers essential information for moms-to-be, helping them plan for childbirth and optimize their whole health (physical, mental, emotional) during this time. Based on interviews with 400+ health care providers, parents, and subject matter experts, it includes topics, checklists, and exercises that are presented in bite-sized chapters for easy reference.
At a time when more women than ever live far away from their closest family and friends, new moms-to-be need a resource like this to give them confidence and help them achieve peak vitality and health during this special season of their lives.
Author Dianna He Murray, MBA, PCC, is a mom, executive coach, and healthcare industry veteran who helps leaders define and pursue what matters most. She is also certified in plant-based nutrition and a registered pre- and postnatal yoga teacher who empowers new moms to become advocates for their own health during pregnancy and beyond.
2021 AML Creative Nonfiction Winner 2021 International Book Awards Finalist 2021 Author Elite Finalist
What happens when an ambitious girl grows up to be a mother?
Maleah thinks being a stay-at-home mom makes her inferior to women with paying jobs. Plagued with unrelenting thoughts of inadequacy, she struggles to heal from postpartum depression without medication. Her search to save her body, her marriage, and her family leads to an unexpected revelation.
Lies of the Magpie sweeps readers into the heart and mind of an accomplishment-driven woman who worries that being a mother isn’t enough. Flowing with humor, witty observation, and sensitivity, the narrative escorts readers to a surprising epiphany of the liberating and healing power of motherhood.
Nearly 30 people in the United States die in drunk-driving crashes every day — that night, Jennifer was one of them.
On Shattered Wings is the powerful story of the people left behind and their powerful life lessons for us all, an unforgettable true story of a family’s struggle to survive overwhelming sorrow amidst ongoing unexpected and startling events. Along the way, they discover the value of faith, the insignificance of regrets, and the realization there can be joy again through harnessing pain into healing action for themselves and others.
When military spouses say "I do" to their service members, they are often clueless about the military lifestyle that lies ahead-specifically, raising a family while the service member deploys several weeks, months, and years throughout their career.
Growing Your Family is a raw testimony of how one immigrant military spouse and ambitious career woman is raising her family with grit, grace, and style. Sharing her extraordinary experience in creating her home from the scratch and with nothing, saying countless tearful goodbyes with young children, and helping her military family thrive in the COVID-19 pandemic, Pearl provides rare gems of wisdom and her unadulterated perspective on how to make the military lifestyle work. This seasoned childcare professional's humor will keep you hooked and laughing aloud as you follow Pearl to unknown corners of Ghana in Africa, to the exotic culture in Japan, and to the sophisticated lifestyle in the US.
Growing Your Family offers priceless guidance and heart-to-heart encouragement to the clueless or tired military spouse.
"PLAYING FOR KEEPS” in business is a self-help memoir that provides a “cheat sheet” for your career success.
Best-Selling and Award-Winning Author, Mom and Mentor Therese Allison is recognized as a groundbreaking pioneer and female executive, who broke the glass ceiling in a mostly male business niche (insurance brokerage). Her goal now is to empower women (and men) to “WIN” in business and life by landing a dream job, building business allies, achieving financial success and creating a work/life balance.
Based on 35 years of years of success in business and life, Allison uncovers how she became financially independent at age 38 when her company (McKenna & Associates) was sold to AON, and then retired early at age 43 to spend quality time with her children.
“Smart” Parenting: 101 Ways to Parent with Alexa contains tips and tools for parents everywhere trying to survive parenthood...and, oh yes, make their home safe, warm, and full of joy for their children. Shared through the lens of a mom navigating all of the challenges (that's a nice word for it, right?) that come with parenting, these 101 simple ways to use Alexa enable you to parent “smarter” and remind you how to laugh along the way. Whether you have a baby, toddler, or teenager, these hacks will help you connect with each child's individual needs and give you confidence in your parenting approach!
Tips include screen-free entertainment for the entire family, routines & schedules, managing big emotions, baby activity tracking, household management, and so much more!
Nobody’s Child: A Biography is an urban drama. It takes place in the Brooklyn, Queens & Harlem sections of New York City, from the beginning of the Second Great Migration to the present day. It is a family drama rooted in the life experiences of a mother, my mother Brenda. It’s about overcoming drug addiction, complicated black family dynamics, surviving domestic violence, and the healing of family trauma. It’s about choices parents make and how those choices affect their children and everyone else around them. And, It’s also about secrets kept and the far-reaching, dysfunctional affects those secrets have on families. Finally, it’s about LOVE. Love between mothers and daughters, mothers and sons, love between women, sisters and friends, husbands and wives and fathers and their daughters.One thing is certain… no life is perfect. This story is about imperfect lives, the ones lived by my family, mainly my mother – a most beautiful, God-fearing soul.
The struggle is real, but the help is sincere for adolescent students in Crying, Learning, and Laughing: Why Students Visit the Teen Center. The author recounts the stressful, but the often fun position as a case manager in a Teen Center. Students' daily interactions in a School-Based Youth Services Program add color to the murky topics of teen dating violence, child abuse, and mental health issues. The unexpected crises don't hinder the adolescents' high energy, but it brings insight for the curious reader. Interesting and helpful, Crying, Learning, and Laughing explore the often chaotic life of teens and how social workers in schools shine a light during dark times.
Stacey Simms' parenting philosophy is "not perfect, but safe and happy." Does that make her the world's worst diabetes mom? Some people on social media thought so. But her stories and the lessons they impart show that diabetes laughs in the face of perfection. Raising a happy and healthy child with type 1 diabetes, as well as any siblings, requires flexibility, planning, and a great sense of humor above all else. It's a journey full of challenges, but you are not alone!
A Personal Guide on How to Lead through Mental Illness, Unimaginable Grief, and Loss
Taking the Cape Off shares Fire Chief Pat Kenny's journey to overcome his perceived failure as a leader in his most cherished duty, that of being a protector. His "Cape" failed to protect his 20-year-old son Sean from dying by suicide after a lifelong battle with mental illness. His anguish was complicated by his role as the leader of a fire department.
This is not a story of darkness but rather one of hope as he reveals the path he took to move forward with his life and return to a leadership role. In this book, he will share:
How you as a leader can address the stigma attached to mental illness in the workplace, at home, or with friends, utilizing professional resources and relying on your faith.
How you can develop the leadership communication skills necessary to help you both personally and professionally when faced with any health crisis.
How to foster a continuing, loving relationship with your deceased loved one's memory by acknowledging the signs you receive from the hereafter.
Growing up in a financially strapped, South Georgia farming family, Julie Lavender learned to appreciate small yet meaningful affirmations of love when her parents found ways to visibly demonstrate their feelings. Later, when she had her own children, Julie delighted in finding creative ways to express her love for them, as well as for the children whose lives she touched through teaching school and volunteering in the children's ministry at her church.
In 365 Ways to Love Your Child, Julie encourages moms, dads, and anyone who works with children to show kids every day with simple but meaningful gestures and activities how very much they are loved. Join Julie in expressing tangible acts of love to show your kids they are valued by their parents and, most especially, by God.
Applying her wit and humor to marriage and family life, award-winning columnist Lisa Smith Molinari shares her real-life family's humorous coming of age story, from marriage through raising kids to empty nest. Written in episodes, contained in seasons, her memoir is a sitcom for book lovers!
Lisa leaves her law career to become a navy wife and Supermom, but somewhere between "I do" and "deploying again," waves of chaos threaten to overtake her. She has a husband who knows his chardonnay but can't identify a Phillips-head screwdriver, three quirky kids with their own agendas, a perpetually shedding dog, and a minivan full of cold french fries. Will she survive the endless minutiae of modern family life, or will she end up on the laundry room floor eating chocolate frosting out of a can?
Can a mother be both loving and selfish? Caring and thoughtless? Deceitful and devoted? These are the questions that fuel psychologist Dr. Judy Rabinor’s quest to understand her ambivalence toward her mother.
While leading a seminar exploring the importance of the mother-daughter relationship, Dr. Judy Rabinor, an eating disorder expert, is blindsided by a memory of a childhood trauma. Realizing how this buried trauma has resonated through her life, she sets off to heal herself. The Girl in the Red Boots weaves together tales from Rabinor’s psychotherapy practice and her life, helping readers understand how painful childhood experiences can linger and leave emotional scars. In the process, Rabinor traces her own journey becoming a wounded healer and ultimately making peace with her mother, and herself.
Not a traditional self-help book outlining “steps” to reconcile or forgive one’s mother, The Girl in the Red Boots is a poignant memoir filled with hard-won life lessons, including the fact that it’s never too late to let go of hurts and disappointments and develop compassion for yourself—and even for your mother.
What would you do if your child were diagnosed with a life-threatening illness? When his 12-year-old daughter Lilli was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia two weeks before Christmas, Travis Hicks was in the worst shape of his life. Overweight and overworked, Hicks watched his daughter Lilli fight for her life against an aggressive blood cancer. Inspired by his daughter’s strength, Travis took up yoga and walking while giving up sweet tea, a blasphemous adjustment for this Southerner. After wondering, “What’s the worst that could happen if I were to start running?” Hicks ultimately became a long distance runner, shed over 40 pounds, and restored his health in time to help his daughter through the fight of her life. Read this father’s story of life, health, family, and faith to understand the impact of pediatric cancer on a family and their community.
When He Was Anna: A Mom's Journey Into the Transgender World is a mother's brutally honest story of the stress and confusion that consumed her family in the early years of her child's transition from female to male.
In the end, there is one certainty--the struggle is real; so is the love.
Finalist Parenting & Family The 2020 Best Book Awards
In the world of pediatric care, sleep safety guidelines are controversial and often misguided. Health professionals broadly discourage all forms of cosleeping, which, along with the potentially devastating consequences, makes deciding how and where your baby should sleep both confusing and frightening. Parents who cherish the closeness, security, and warmth of cosleeping are finding themselves conflicted, concerned, and exhausted.
Cosleeping, a term which encompasses sleeping in the same room or on the same bed as your infant, is a common parental instinct driven by physiology and seen throughout human history. Despite mainstream opposition, thousands of parents continue the practice, whether intentionally, accidentally, or out of necessity.
So, why do current medical guidelines insist that cosleeping is unsafe? What is the difference between SIDS and SUID, and are they related to cosleeping? What should parents do to make a safe sleep space for their infant? If a family chooses to cosleep, how should they respond to reproach from friends, family, or medical professionals?
Finalist Parenting & Family The 2020 Best Book Awards
When a child faces a physical health crisis, friends and family rally around to provide support. But when a child is diagnosed with mental illness, their families often find themselves struggling alone. Having raised a mentally ill daughter, award-winning author Andrea Berryman Childreth has first-hand experience with the shame and stigma these families face, hiding behind a mask of normalcy while feeling completely helpless and out of control at home. ON THE EDGE provides a realistic and practical guide to parenting a child with mental illness. Real life stories combine with an overview of common diagnoses, advice on navigating your health insurance or school system, and help with setting expectations at home to give practical steps to bring order to the chaos and hope to the future.
Finalist Parenting & Family The 2020 Best Book Awards
Shortly after Teresa gave birth to her second son, Nick, he was diagnosed with Down syndrome. Early infant and child intervention helped Nick reach developmental milestones in his own time. But there was more to come when Nick hit third grade. A wave of fire alarm-pulling along with other serious and dangerous behaviors signaled that this was something more than just Down syndrome.
At last, a book that takes a deep dive into the complexities that families face raising a child with a dual diagnosis of Down syndrome and autism (DS-ASD) and other intellectual and developmental disabilities.
A New Course is a hybrid of a memoir combined with valuable lessons following each chapter and in the appendix. It’s a must read for families, school faculty, therapists, physicians, and support groups wanting to understand a parent’s perspective.
Finalist Parenting & Family The 2020 Best Book Awards
Think about autism differently.
That's what Vivian M. Lumbard does. She's a mom to teenage twins with high-functioning autism challenges. As a retired air traffic controller, she is familiar with long-term and short-term goals, changing plans on a moment's notice, as well as being able to laugh when stressed. All of which comes in handy when raising a child with autism.
Autism awareness is on the rise. But what about autism understanding? Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) manifests differently for each individual. Yet stereotypes hinder understanding and impact our choices as parents and educators. Using examples from her family's life, she reframes common ASD stereotypes and competencies to highlight commonalities with the neurotypical world.
Vivian advocates an approach of loving, parenting and supporting the whole, unique child and offers a chapter of helpful tips based on her experiences. See how she applies those tips while staying at home during COVID-19.
Frank. Compassionate. Intimate. Sometimes humorous. Join her as she shares her family's journey.
Finalist Parenting & Family The 2020 Best Book Awards
Award-Winning Author, Stacey Lytle, has been a "homeschoolin' momma" for what feels like a lifetime. She has shared her love of learning with her own kids, and the children of countless others through the years. In this book, The Joyful Journey of a Homeschool Mom, Stacey shares a small sampling of the life she has treasured as a homeschooling mother--the roller-coaster ride of raising and teaching a large family--and highlights of some of the crazy moments of motherhood. In Stacey's words, she says of this book, "It would tickle me pink to find that your heart was lighter, your stomach muscles slightly fatigued from laughter, and your spirit blessed, as a result of the words on the pages of this book."This book is an opportunity to hear frank and friendly stories from Stacey's experiences as a homeschooling mother. If you ask Stacey, she'd say you can't separate parenting and teaching--and she wouldn't have it any other way. So, enjoy this advice from a household that has as many children as there are days of the week!
Finalist Parenting & Family The 2020 Best Book Awards
Welcome My Love is an inspirational book that is perfect for expectant mothers and families to read aloud to precious little ones while in the womb to familiarize them with the voices of their loved ones and to enhance the bonding experience.
Around week 25 of pregnancy, ears are rapidly developing, and a baby can recognize their mother's voice. Reading loving, soothing, and welcoming words stimulates an interest in sounds. Also, it helps with the development of listening skills while helping to prepare little ones for their birth passage. It's never too early to start telling your baby how loved they are.
Welcome My Love is an excellent book to gift for baby showers, baby sprinkles, baby announcements, gender reveals, baby baptisms, and more. Also, Welcome My Love is perfect for pairing with Bibs Plus baby bibs, blankets, onesies, and other offerings. It celebrates the joy of new life while laying the earliest foundation for a little one's literacy.
