Resources for Parents

This will probably end up being a long page over time, but to start with I’d like to share a few resources that have been super helpful in my journey thus far as a parent and as a teacher. If you find even a single resource from here to be helpful in your path, the effort to put this together would’ve been worthwhile.

So, in no particular order :

Shefali Tsabary’s inspired writing on parenting: The Conscious Parent: Transforming Ourselves, Empowering Our Children. I have highlighted so many passages from this book, that I’ll need half a day to just go back and do the pruning. I genuinely hope to see this book gain wide currency.

Her recent book The Parenting Map can be considered a good sequel – has a lot of hands-on practical advice.

Dan Siegel & Tina Bryson : No-Drama Discipline: the bestselling parenting guide to nurturing your child’s developing mind. An easy read, and  loved Their much more well-known work is The Whole-Brain Child Workbook: Practical Exercises, Worksheets and Activities to Nurture Developing Minds, which I found very insightful.

Edward de Bono’s Teach Your Child How to Think.

Kim Payne’s Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids.

Alison Gopnik’s The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children.

William Stuxrud & Ned Johnson’s The Self-Driven Child: The Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives. This one is particularly hard for most of us parents who feel we are the authors & creative directors of our children’s lives (and therefore, outcomes).

Jessica Lahey’s The Gift of Failure: How the best parents learn to Let Go so their children can succeed.

Ron Lieber’s The Opposite of Spoiled – Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money. I penned a few takeaways here.

Laura Markham’s Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting

Jo Boaler’s excellent book on how beliefs and mindsets need to be nurtured early on in any home / school setting: Limitless Mind. I penned a few takeaways here.

Angela Duckworth’s excellent book on the profound relevance of grit, and how large a role it plays in shaping our personalities: Grit – The Power of Passion and Perseverance.

John Gatto’s insightful critique of modern-day “schooling” : Dumbing us Down. Given that I’ve always had a strong rebellious streak, and a stronger distaste for conventional schooling, Gatto’s book resonated with me at a very fundamental and personal level.

Gatto’s Weapons of Mass Instruction is less powerful, but still a great read to understand how ‘school’ as we know it came to be (the origin story, from Prussia, to UK/America, how it is poorly designed from ab-initio etc) :

The founding story of Acton Academy – Courage to Grow: How Acton turns Learning Upside Down. If you are inspired by their work and live in the US, Acton Academies are active in several cities across the country. Look them up here.

Ainsley Arment’s The Call of the Wild and Free: Reclaiming the Wonder in Your Child’s Education

Barbara Oakley’s Learning How to Learn: A guide for kids and teens

Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, by McDaniel, Roediger & Brown – a first-rate study about learning and memory, and how much of what we take for gospel about how to learn turns out to be largely wasted effort. This book is based on the work of two cognitive scientists who have spent their lives studying these subjects, and ought to be on the required reading lists of parents and teachers alike. Here are a few of my key notes and takeaways on this book.

Podcasts

There are some truly incredibly things happening in the world of education and schooling. As a parent, I learned a ton from the conversations that I heard in The New Schools podcast. Scroll through the page & take a look at the range of conversations

I don’t know of any podcasts dedicated to being a parent – of course some of the authors of the books above have had worthwhile conversations, but so far the book format remains the best resource.