Birth and Parenting Skills: New Directions in Antenatal Care. Mary Nolan & Julie Foster, editors. $49.95

A research-based account of the current status of antenatal education in the UK, Birth and Parenting Skills focuses on the key challenges faced by educators everywhere, and offers innovative suggestions for how these challenges might best be met. It describes approaches to accessing vulnerable groups of parents and how collaboration between medical, midwifery and educational models might result in a better service for pregnant women and their families. Effective and best practices are viewed within the principles and practices of adult education and how they should inform antenatal education.

Charting the Bumpy Road of Coparenthood: Understanding the Challenges of Family Life. James McHale, $39.50

Filled with interviews with new parents and observations of new parents and their babies, this major new study offers key information that clinicians, policymakers, and parents need to know about creating consistent and coordinated co-parenting strategies during pregnancy and in a child’s earliest years. Author James McHale, explains how parents work together—or don’t—to care for infants and young children, and how the quality of their co-parenting alliance affects toddlers’ social and emotional development.”

Developmental Parenting: a Guide for Early Childhood Practitioners. Lori Roggman, Lisa Boyce & Mark Innocenti, $32.50

When parents are warm, responsive, encouraging, and communicative—the key elements of developmental parenting—they lay the foundation for young children's school readiness, social competence, and mental health. That's why every early childhood professional needs this comprehensive, practical guide to building a developmental parenting program for the families they serve.

Unlike other approaches that limit parents to a "student" role, the proven parenting-focused model in this book shows home visitors how to put parents and other caregivers confidently in charge of guiding and supporting their young children's development. With this research-based and reader-friendly book, early childhood professionals will learn to put parents in charge of guiding their child's development—resulting in strong parent-child bonds, healthy families, and improved school readiness.

Everyday Parenting: a Professional's Guide to Building Family Management Skills. Thomas Dishion, Elizabeth Stormshak & Kathryn Kavanagh, $21.95

The EVERYDAY PARENTING program can be used for guiding individual family therapy, leading parent groups, and training counselors to work collaboratively with parents. This session-based approach is divided into three areas of skills based on the concept of mindful parenting: supporting positive behavior, setting healthy limits, and building family relationships by helping parents change interaction patterns that occur daily in families and relationships. An accompanying CD contains printable forms and handouts.

The Evidence-Based Parenting Practitioner's Handbook. Kirsten Asmussen, $40.95

THE EVIDENCE-BASED PARENTING PRACTITIONER'S HANDBOOK provides a comprehensive overview of the knowledge necessary to effectively deliver evidence-based parenting interventions within community and health settings. Using clear examples of how this knowledge can inform frontline work with parents.

Emphasizing the ways in which practitioners can evaluate and translate messages from research into applied work with parents and families, the book is suitable for all those involved in the delivery of evidence-based parenting support, including frontline practitioners, service managers, heads of children's services and policy makers.

Family HOPE Parent Handbook. Karolyn King-Peery & Lynn Wilder, $16.95

Positive behavior support for families of children with challenging behavior.

How to Listen So Parents Will Talk & Talk So Parents Will Listen. John Sommers-Flanagan & Rita Sommers-Flanagan, $46.00

Embracing the uniqueness of every parent, family situation, and practitioner, HOW TO LISTEN SO PARENTS WILL TALK AND TALK SO PARENTS WILL LISTEN helps professionals address the parent-child problems that families often find puzzling or challenging and for which they seek support and guidance.

The book features many specific interventions and methods for helping parents implement developmentally appropriate and scientifically supported strategies for building healthy parent-child relationships and working through the most common conflicts encountered in families and will help you develop positive relationships with parents so that constructive two-way dialogue can be established. Even the most difficult and resistant parents can be successfully engaged through the helpful strategies, advice, and tools found in this practical guide.

The Incredible Years: a Trouble-Shooting Guide for Parents of Children Aged 3-8. Carolyn Webster-Stratton, $24.95

A practical and informative handbook, filled with examples of everyday problem situations and concerns. The Incredible Years provides guidelines to help parents deal with behavioral problems of children aged 3-8 years. Webster-Stratton's book is frequently used as the basic text in parent education groups.

Is This a Phase? Child Development & Parent Strategies, Birth to 6 Years. Helen Neville, $29.95

This reassuring and practical guide explains what to expect at every developmental stage between birth and age 6. Pediatric nurse and parent educator Helen Neville walks parents and caregivers through three dozen topics common in the first six years of life. Accurate, reliable and authoritative, Is This a Phase looks at child development and temperament and how they affect the family.

The Journey to Parenthood: Myths, Reality and What Really Matters. Diana Lynn Barnes & Leigh Balber, $42.50

New and expectant parents need support and confidence. The Journey to Parenthood is designed to provide that. It assists in exploring and analyzing thoughts and feelings about childbirth and being a parent. This book is about being realistic. It draws on the experiences of many parents from a wide range of backgrounds, to look at the different perceived expectations and cultural pressures imposed on new and expectant parents. It is full of helpful guidance to lead parents towards discovering the role that is right for them. Highly recommended for parents, health and social care professionals, therapists and counselors.

Little Volcanoes: Helping Young Children and Their Parents to Deal with Anger. Warwick Pudney & Éliane Whitehouse, $29.95

Young children can erupt like little volcanoes when they are feeling angry. It can be overwhelming and difficult to deal with, and can produce angry feelings in the parent or caregiver too.

This book is packed with advice and strategies for those working with children under five on how to understand and manage anger in children, and how to help their parents or caregivers to deal with anger. The authors outline the different reasons children may feel angry so that their emotions can be fully understood, and offer strategies to combat negative feelings and minimize outbursts. These include putting in place behavioural boundaries and helping a child to feel secure. Simple activities and exercises are also given to help children and adults to express their anger positively. In addition, a selection of poems and stories will help adults to pass on the lessons of the book to children.

Once Upon a Group: a Guide to Running and Participating in Successful Groups.  Maggie Kindred & Michael Kindred, $17.95

Once Upon a Group is a short, light-hearted guide to groupwork suitable for experienced or novice childbirth educators, parenting education instructors, and parent support group leaders. The book provides an easily-digestible way of understanding group dynamics, the practicalities of running a group, and how to participate in one. It covers how and where to set up a group, including the type of room used, the size of the group and the arrangement of chairs, and the importance of boundaries and rules within a group. It also covers issues such as communication, sensitivity, listening, leadership, decision-making, labeling and stereotyping, diversity, and how to apply the ideas in the book to different settings.

Parents with Intellectual Disabilities Past, Present and Futures. Edited by Gwynneth Llewellyn, et al, $59.95

The first international, cross-disciplinary book to explore and understand the lives of parents with intellectual disabilities, their children, and the systems and services they encounter.  The book presents a unique, pan-disciplinary overview of this growing field of study and offers a human rights approach to disability and family life. Informed by the newly adopted UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006), the book provides comprehensive research-based knowledge from leading figures in the field of intellectual disability.

Pathways to Competence for Young Children: a Parenting Program (Book and CD-ROM). Sarah Landy & Elizabeth Thompson, $63.50

With Pathways to Competence for Young Children: a Parenting Program, professionals can help parents understand and manage their child’s behavior and take an active role in guiding social-emotional development. Developed from Sarah Landy’s highly regarded child development book, Pathways to Competence, this manual-and-CD set shows how to set up, lead, and evaluate a parenting program for parents of children from birth to age 7.

Everything professionals need to conduct a Pathways to Competence Parenting Group is included: more than 140 parent handouts (easy to print from the CD-ROM inside this book), instructions on structuring and leading sessions, problem-solving tips, and evaluation guidelines. With this engaging and effective program, parents will discover how to strengthen their relationships with their children and foster the healthy social-emotional development children need to manage life’s challenges.

Also: Pathways to Competence: Encouraging Healthy Social and Emotional Development in Young Children, 2nd Edition. Sarah Landy, $65.95

Picking Up the Pieces after Domestic Violence: a Practical Resource for Supporting Parenting Skills. Kate Iwi & Chris Newman, $38.95

This practical guide provides techniques and exercises to help practitioners work in a structured and focused way with parents in the aftermath of a violent relationship. It sets out a framework for assessing risks and needs, and covers how to build strengths, set goals, and plan an intervention pathway. Advice, exercises and handouts that are easily photocopied will help parents understand the impact of domestic violence and develop their relationship with their child. The resource also covers how to use discipline, talking to children, understanding child development, and how to build resilience and empathy. Guidance on working with both the perpetrator and the victim of domestic violence is included.

This invaluable resource will benefit child and family social workers, children's centre workers, therapists, counsellors and anyone supporting a family recovering from the trauma of domestic violence.

The Role of the Father in Child Development. Edited by Michael Lamb, $114.00

The definitive reference on the importance role fathers play in child development today.

Sidestepping the Power Struggle: a Manual for Effective Parenting. Alison Miller & Allison Rees, $35.00

Sidestepping the Power Struggle is a comprehensive, detailed and extremely readable guide to parenting. While it is fun and easy to read, it brings a large measure of hope to those many parents who sometimes are at their wits’ end. Sidestepping the Power Struggle helps parents to understand their child’s inborn temperament. Understanding a child’s true nature makes deciding how to deal with the everyday problems and the major problem much less stressful. For parents who want to make a difference, this book is a well-balanced blend of theory, practical ideas and appropriate anecdotes.

Skills for Families, Skills for Life: How to Help Parents and Caregivers Meet the Challenges of Everyday Living. Amy Simpson, Paula Kohrt, Linda Shadoin, Joni Cook-Griffin & Jane Peterson, $24.95

This revised and expanded edition of Skills for Families, Skills for Life can help family practitioners and other professionals incorporate the teaching of life skills into the assessment of and treatment planning for the families they work with. More than one hundred thirty basic to complex skills in thirteen caregiving areas are outlined in step-by-step detail. Skills areas have expanded to include:

• Relationships
• Mental Health Needs
• Preventing Abuse
• Community Safety
• Housing
• Money Management
• Informal and Formal Supports
• Education

An enclosed CD-ROM allows you to print skill sheets to use as checklists, make notes, and list resources as you counsel individual families. A new chapter also helps you locate public and private, local and national sources of assistance for families.

Skills Training for Struggling Kids: Promoting Your Child’s Behavioral, Emotional, Academic, and Social Development. Michael Bloomquist, $20.50

Challenging kids don't behave badly on purpose — they are simply struggling to "catch up" in key areas of psychological and cognitive development. If your child or teen's emotional or behavioral difficulties are getting in the way of success at home, at school, or in social situations, this is the book for you. Dr. Michael Bloomquist has spent decades helping parents to understand acting-out kids and support their healthy development. In these pages, he presents tried-and-true ways you can build your 5 - to 17-year-old's skills to:

• Follow rules and behave honestly.
• Curb angry outbursts.
• Make and maintain friendships.
• Express feelings productively.
• Stay on task at school.
• Resolve conflicts with siblings.
• Manage stress.

Loads of checklists, worksheets, and troubleshooting tips help you select and implement the strategies that meet your child's specific needs. You'll also build your own skills for parenting effectively when the going gets tough. Systematic, compassionate, and practical, the book is grounded in state-of-the-art research. The road to positive changes for your child and family starts here.

Also available:

Practitioner Guide to Skills Training for Struggling Kids, by Michael Bloomquist, $37.50

Addressing frequently encountered emotional, behavioral, and academic difficulties, this essential guide shows how to help parents implement proven skills-building strategies with their kids (ages 5–17). The author draws on over 25 years of research and clinical practice to provide a flexible program for individual families or parent groups. The focus is on teaching kids the skills they need to get their development back on track and teaching parents to cope with and manage challenging behavior. Featuring vignettes and troubleshooting tips, the Practitioner Guide is packed with ideas for engaging clients and tailoring the interventions. In a large-size format for easy photocopying, it contains more than 60 reproducible handouts and forms.

STAR Parenting Tales and Tools: Respect and Guidance Strategies to Increase Parenting Effectiveness & Enjoyment. Elizabeth Crary, $26.95

STAR Parenting offers you the tools and the process you need to be the best parent you can be for your child.

Supporting Postnatal Women into Motherhood: a Guide to Therapeutic Groupwork for Health Professionals. Lynn Bertram, $49.50

This book describes setting up and managing a discussion group for new mothers to provide support and introduce women to others at the same life stage in a safe environment. It shows how facilitating this structured activity can be positive and empowering for all concerned. It is practical and stimulating reading for everyone involved professionally with postnatal women. Contents include:

• Background and preparations for a postnatal group
• The world of motherhood
• Maternal health
• Planning the group
• Managing the group
• Expectations and reality
• Roles of motherhood
• Changes in relationships
• Parenting style
• Focus on feelings
• Building self-esteem

Transforming Behavior: Training Parents & Kids Together. Mary Cook, $75.95

Looking for a proven, flexible, and cost-effective way to address challenging behavior, social skills development, and family conflict? Look no further than this ready-to-use group therapy program, ideal for clinicians working in a range of settings with children 8–12 and their parents.

With 22 adaptable modules (11 for children, 11 for parents), this field-tested program gives professionals everything they need to lead group therapy sessions that improve the lives of whole families. The TRANSFORMING BEHAVIOR program is easy to implement, with a comprehensive manual and a CD-ROM with dozens of printable worksheets, quizzes, sample scenarios, and other practical handouts for parents and children. A program with long-term benefits for children and parents, TRANSFORMING BEHAVIOR will transform whole families and equip children with social-emotional skills they'll use for their entire lives.