As busy mamas, it can be difficult to find time to read a book, let alone time for ourselves. When I became a mom, it felt impossible to find the time for reading which was one of my favorite pastimes so I needed to really be intentional and selective with which books I read. Of course, being a first time mom, naturally all my reading lists shifted to parenting books. If you are looking for a few great book recommendations on parenting and motherhood, below are a few of my favorites.
- How to Talk So Little Kids Will Listen by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish: If your child is in their toddler years or is a soon to be toddler, I can’t recommend this book enough! This book provides so many practical tools for managing challenging situations with a toddler that I have already used and can attest to because it helped me with a challenging situation with my 3-year old nephew. You won’t regret reading this book!
- Precious Little Sleep by Alexis Dubief: This book is the bible of all baby sleep. In all seriousness, this book covers everything you’ll need to know about baby sleep training and even gives two different approaches to sleep training so you can choose whichever approach feels most comfortable for you. I appreciated the way Alexis breaks down every detail about baby sleep starting with the physiological nature behind baby’s sleep cycle and how it develops as they grow. It’s an easy to read book with a light sense of humor which I very much appreciated!
- Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn: Another great book for parents who want a new approach and perspective towards their parenting style. Kohn offers a fresh perspective through different research studies, proving that conditional parenting hurts children’s confidence levels and cognitive abilities more than anything. He shares a few different examples of his own personal experiences and how we as parents can practice grace and patience with ourselves and our children. This book opened my eyes to a different way of parenting and made me become more mindful of what behaviors I was encouraging or punishing. The author’s argument is that we as parents should not have to reward or punish our children but instead love our children by providing them a safe space to explore and be themselves.
- Parenting from the Inside Out by Daniel J. Siegel. This is another great book about how our parenting styles is so deeply engrained and conditioned with us from our childhood. Siegel’s main thesis is that becoming a parent will trigger a lot of trauma from our own childhood and until we resolve our past trauma, we’ll continue to pass this down from generation to generation. In order to best parents for our children, we must start and look within ourselves.
- To Have and to Hold by Molly Millwood. This was a book recommended by a dear mom friend of mine after sharing my struggles with balancing motherhood and being a wife. This book covers how our identity evolves when we step into motherhood and all the unique challenges we face with this transition. This book helped me in a time when I felt lost and lonely, and needed the extra support to find my new identity as a mother. Millwood provides guidance on how we can rediscover our identities and nurture our relationships through our motherhood journey.
