Top 10 Parenting Books for Raising Toddlers
Do you want to know what are the best Parenting Books to manage toddler behaviour?
Here at ImagiPlay, we are all about having fun and encouraging a happy and harmonious family lifestyle. However, even the most confident parent can run into a problem with an over-assertive toddler! Believe it or not, the way we parents deal with the toddler tantrum has a direct influence on how the toddler continues to behave.
The best way to maintain a loving and harmonious home is to learn to deal effectively with those unfortunate moments when a toddler tries to exert their powers over their parent. After all, that is what a tantrum is all about, and that is why we need to learn how to deal with undesirable behaviour in a measured and logical manner.
As a new parent, I thought the headlines about taming a toddler were a little over the top, until I learnt for myself what it was all about. However, the learning experience is not to react in the manner that we may have been raised ourselves. Sometimes we need to learn from the best parenting books on the market!
To achieve a loving, harmonious and happy home life, we need to find a loving a logical way to react to our toddlers demands, and to show them that their actions and choices need to be modified in such a way as all members of the family can enjoy the desired outcome.
The best advice is to find the latest and most up to date parenting books on the subject of raising happy and loving children, and that is what we have found for you on the subject of raising toddlers.
No matter how strong willed your toddler, there is a solution. Hopefully we have brought you a wide range of researched and written advice to help you deal with whatever toddler taming issues you may be confronted with!
Top 10 Parenting Books for Raising Toddlers:
1. Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control
Despite the fact that most of us were raised to expect the consequences of our immediate actions, we need to consider the age appropriateness of imposing the same discipline on our own children. This book, by Heather T Forbes and B. Bryan Post, addresses the fact that small children have yet to learn about the connection between their actions and the outcomes of those actions.
Our role as parents should be to gently and lovingly approach the behavioural responses of our children in an understanding and coaching way. The authors describe how trauma and stress can deeply affect the development of children. Much undesirable behaviour such as aggression, lying, stealing, defiance, and lack of communication can be explained by external influences on a child during the developmental years. Parental behaviour in response to these traits can appear to be angry, even when we try our hardest to explain why these behaviours are unacceptable.
This book serves many examples of ways in which we can apply a love based approach to develop a constructive relationship with our children. This is in contrast with fear based control mechanisms associated with traditional child raising. The best part of the book in my opinion is the parenting bonus section with real stories of parents who have made changes in their homes with these loving and peaceful methods to raise children.
Click here to see where you can buy a copy of Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control.
2. Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood – from Birth to Six Years
The Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood is an updated edition of this Award Winning Guide. This excellent book is a practical parent guidebook, which is applicable from birth to six years of age. It has been researched and presented by experts in the field of child education, and child psychology, as well as practical parenting information.
The purpose of the book is to explore effective and loving strategies to assist when dealing with toddler behaviors. These methods are suitable for correcting a wide range of toddler emergencies such as tantrums, crying, arguing and fighting. These techniques can completely change the daytime routine of the whole house by avoiding those confrontations at mealtimes, bedtimes, and any other toddler tantrums routines.
This book can even help you with strategies to deal with those embarrassing public moments and those awful sibling rivalry.
Click here to buy a copy of Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood.
3. Imaginative Prayer: A Yearlong Guide for Your Child’s Spiritual Formation
By Jared Patrick Boyd
Many parents who want to introduce religion into the family, wish to introduce it within the family home, rather than with some external unsupervised source. But sometimes we struggle to make the connection with God and religion, due to our own spiritual beliefs. There are many tricky and awkward conversations that we need to have with our children, let alone trying to answer all of the tricky questions about God and Heaven.
This book explores the fact that children will inevitably use their incredible imagination and thinking to form their own spiritual foundations. Thankfully, all we need to do is guide our children along the path of religious awareness, and their incredible imaginative minds will make their own connections.
Concepts such as forgiveness, love for others, and the power of receiving God’s love are lifelong learnings for our children that are far more important than simply repeating prayers every day. If you want to guide your children towards a connection with God’s teachings, then this book is an excellent resource to help achieve that worthy goal.
Click here for a copy of Imaginative Prayer: A Yearlong Guide for Your Child’s Spiritual Formation.
4. No Bad Kids: Toddler Discipline Without Shame
As parents, we know that we should discipline our children with firmness and with love. We need to achieve a particular standard of behaviour from children, which can often result in resistance, misbehaviour, and the occasional tantrum. So if we expect these behaviours, are we prepared with how to deal with a toddler who doesn’t properly understand the implications of their actions?
This book is called “No Bad Kids” and it relates to the way in which parents need to apply discipline to young children in a way that does not imply that the child is in some way bad or unworthy of our love. Rather, this book presents a range of techniques and parenting practices that can be applied in such a way as to benefit both parents and children. It covers all types of discipline such as punishment, consequences, and setting boundaries, as well as how to deal with tantrums, and ant-social toddler behaviour that parents are likely to come up against!
Click here to see the price on No Bad Kids: Toddler Discipline Without Shame.
5. Positive Discipline for Preschoolers
By Jane Nelson
The Preschool age is a testing time for both children and parents, and there are a lot of changes happening in the home at this time. This book is another example of a useful guide to the application of toddler discipline from the perspective of gaining positive outcomes, and maintaining a loving and nurturing relationship with our children. But make no mistake, there is often a power struggle between parent and toddler, and parents need all the help we can get!
This book provides many practical examples and helpful advice for some of the many tricky subjects that come with the territory of toddler taming, such as toilet training, preparing for sleep, eating grown up food. The example in this book can help to teach parents to treat misbehaviour without the threat of punishment, yet still achieve positive changes in behaviour.
Click here to buy a copy of Positive Discipline for Preschoolers.
6. Parenting With Love and Logic
Are you interested how to raise motivated and self-confident children who can be independent and participate in the real world? Well, there is a way to do that with a loving and nurturing manner that prepares children, yet gently guides them along the road to intellectual development. We as parents need to learn how to parent effectively while allowing children to learn to be responsible for their own actions.
The challenge for all parents is how to cultivate healthy intellectual development so that our children can lead meaningful lives. But we need to establish healthy control with our children through simple measures without anger, threats, nagging, or consequences. This needs to happen at the same time as our children are building emotional intelligence and developing their individual character.
Click here to get your copy of Parenting with Love and Logic.
7. No Drama Discipline – Dan Siegel
Another example of the nurturing way to raise children is the book by Dan Siegel: No-Drama Discipline. This also describes some alternatives to using threats and consequences during our children’s development.
Without a doubt, the nurturing way to raise happy and healthy children is to allow them to understand the consequences of their actions without the threat of repercussions, until they are old enough to be truly responsible. As the title says, discipline can be reinforced without all the drama associated with bending of a child’s will, and in fact, can remove all of the tension associated with tantrums and displays of emotion, which rarely achieve the desired outcome for anyone involved!
Click here to get your copy of no Drama Discipline.
8. The Whole-Brain Child
The Whole Brain Child is a comprehensive guide to developing emotional intelligence in our children. Because the authors address the fundamental elements of neuroscience and explain how that affects everyday things such as relationships with other children and concentration and focus on daily activities. The key to brain development is to consider all of the elements of a child’s growth and development, and how to do this in a coordinated fashion. The intention of this book is to explain the facts behind the science of the brain, in order to make it easier for parents to understand their children.
This book is an excellent read if you are looking to help your kids be happy, healthy and self-confident. You might even learn a little about your own brain in the process!
Click here to buy a copy of the The Whole-Brain Child.
9. How to Talk So Kids Will Listen – and Listen so Kids will Talk
This is one of the best-selling books on how to communicate with your children, and has been a very popular book for many years. This edition has been re-released in an e-book format if you prefer to read on a computer or tablet. The hard copy is also available for a very reasonable price at Amazon.
Thousands a happy customer attest to the useful ideas and techniques presented in this book, especially how to calm down children who are upset or throwing a tantrum. The techniques in this book are excellent for correcting unwanted behaviours with a loving and understanding approach. Many readers found it to be the perfect way to rediscover a peaceful and happy home.
If you are finding that the tried and trusted methods such as time-out or if you have a child with behavioural problems, then this book, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen – and Listen so Kids will Talk is worth reading and embracing some of the techniques within!
10. The Parent Survival Guide
It will come as no surprise that being a parent can be tough. However, we also need to remember that our children are a special gift, and we need to be mindful of the need to appreciate those gifts in the time that we have to share.
But parents need all the help we can get, and the “Parent Survival Guide” provides lots of useful advice for those tricky situations, when we may not be as mindful as we should be! This book provides some helpful techniques on how to maintain our mindfulness, as well as our loving and nurturing attitude with our children at all times. Helpful hints such as setting aside special time for children as well as sacred time for parents can be a lifesaver.
Starting from as little as 30 minutes, this book contains some exercises for parents to follow, to encourage parents to be more present in children’s activities. After all, childen’s imaginations and creativity are so powerful, that we need to really focus on them 1 to 1, to make them feel special. The “Parent Survival Guide” will help you do that in a meaningful way to builds trust, love and communication with your child.
Why we made a list of top 10 books for raising toddlers
This list of the top 10 books for raising toddlers was a labour of love in many ways. In our search for a loving and nurturing home for us and our children, we acknowledge that we just cannot do everything ourselves. Sometimes we need help, and sometimes we can benefit from the experiences of others. So why not share the knowledge of raising toddlers from many of those who have done it before, and have found useful ways to make the process just a little easier.
By all means, scan through this list and choose as many or as few as you think may be applicable to your situation. We all have children at different stages of growth and development, and we all have different issues with toddler discipline and children’s behaviour!
Feel free to share your own experiences with raising children, or let us know if you have found any good books for raising toddlers – we would love to hear from you!
