How to Raise Emotionally Healthy Children

How To Raise Emotionally Healthy Children: Meeting The Five Critical Needs of Children...And Parents Too! Updated Edition Parenting is the toughest job we can ever love. Yet in these challenging times many parents find they need help to cope. This book offers practical ideas to create the families we want - families that respect one another, where all feel secure, accepted, important and included. This is the framework that helps parents examine how they treat family members and themselves. Filled with examples from toddlers to teens, parents will find this book easy and enjoyable to read. As a parent and a parent educator, my favorite chapter is chapter 4: "Becoming a Professional Parent: Child rearing is too important to leave to chance." In this chapter, Dr. Newmark discusses practical ideas to apply strategies used by professionals to the art of parenting. For example, parents need to develop a game plan and make conscious choices of how they use their time. This means having priorities straight and developing a plan to create the home and family life that is important to them. And professionals monitor their own progress and are willing to adjust plans and to get creative to meet goals. Parents are encouraged to keep a journal to note progress and challenges. We have used the book as the basis of reading groups and parents report how helpful it is because it gives parents a way to make decisions about which strategy is best for their children and the emotional health of each family member.

This book has been a tremendous help not only with my children but in my workplace as well. In the past I have always felt as though I was a reactive parent. I have a son with special needs and this book has helped open my eyes to a productive way of parenting. It is straight to the point and easy to put in practice. You will find yourself carrying the five needs into every aspect of your life.

My husband and I were very young parents with not a clue as how to raise our children. Our lives and our children's lives would have been so much easier if this book had only been written then. We go to school to learn the 3 R's, but there is no school for parenting. This book is so insightful, and makes so much sense, it should be read by every person who has or expects to have children. Thank you Dr. Newmark. Your book will have a positive effect on all the children and parents who read and use it.

How To Raise Emotionally Healthy Children: Meeting The Five Critical Needs of Children...And Parents Too! Updated Edition Dr. Newmark addresses the emotional needs of children and parents with a clear explanation of those needs, a practical plan for recognizing and fulfilling them and suggestions for collaboration at home, at school, and in the community. In my position as a school administrator I have seen firsthand the need for such a book as well as the enthusiastic response from parents and teachers when they read and discuss it. The book is organized in such a manner that it is easily read and understood. This book should be on everyone's bedside table or library shelf with frayed covers and earmarked pages.

"How To Raise Emotionally Healthy Children" is a simple, easy-to-follow guide that teaches parents how to communicate respectfully with their children. The book is based on their 5 critical needs: feeling respected, important, accepted, included and secure (don't we all want this?) and how to meet these needs. All I had to do was just shift my thinking a bit to implement the strategies. The strategies make sense and they work - not only communicating with my teenagers (yes, with teenagers) but with my husband and my co-workers, too. The bottom-line: Why didn't I think of this?