Books like The New Six-Point Plan for Raising Happy, Healthy Children

I love the Growing Kids God’s Way series! The first book saved my sanity when my twins were infants. The sleep training and daytime routines helped me go from 2 ½ hours of non-consecutive sleep each night, to both twins sleeping 12 hours per night with four 2-hour naps during the day.

I read the entire series which goes from newborns to teenagers. These are very practical books with topics such as potty training, highchair manners, and structured routines. They also have all their parenting videos on the site which are fantastic.

You really can’t go wrong with a parenting book by Dr. James Dobson. I’ve listened to his radio show Focus on the Family for years, and he is a godly man full of parenting wisdom.

There are actually two versions of this book — the original and The New Dare to Discipline. I first read the original and really liked it. However, I could tell on the newer, revised version that Dobson had made it less strict, I assume to appease those who thought he was an authoritarian. I personally liked the original version better, but both are good. Dobson is a good storyteller and basically gives lots of examples of why you must be consistent with discipline. 

Serena Miller is one of my favorite fiction writers. However, once when researching to write a novel based on the Amish, she couldn’t help notice that the Amish had the happiest, nicest children she had ever seen. So, she changed from writing a fictional novel to writing a book about how the Amish parent.

I recommend this book because it reminds you that your children don’t need video games, smartphones, or tablets to entertain themselves. The Amish children can easily, happily entertain themselves with very few simple toys. And they know how to cook and do practical skills as small children. Great inspiration.

This book is great for parents of babies and toddlers under the age of three. Dr. White contends that if you don't have your babies under control by the time they are 14 months old, you're headed for those terrible twos. Under control means: Do they lie still for you while being diapered? Do they hit and kick? Do they take no for an answer? He believes that basic obedience should be established by this young age.

In addition to training your child to obey, he also goes through the stages of development for children up to 36 months. He goes over things like how to react to a child’s intentional cry, sleep problems, and whining. I found this to be a very practical book.

This book was another total game-changer and I will never stop recommending it. It totally benefits from being written by a parent, rather than a clinician, but fearlessly tackles the terror faced by mothers and fathers when their child starts to struggle with a serious mental health crisis. It also offers a fearless road map out of this dark place. Suzanne writes beautifully too which makes the book easy to read despite its difficult subject matter. Suzanne now heads up the charity and Facebook support group, Parenting Mental Health, which is a safe haven for many parents where they can honestly express what it’s like to be in this very scary place.

No other book – and arguably no other personality – has done more to help loosen the lock-hold helicopter parenting has on our kids than Free-Range Kids and Lenore Skenazy. The book is a primer on ways to give your kids the freedom to grow up while it tears apart many of the paranoid parenting myths: from child predators lurking on every corner to the overblown dangers of choking on uncut grapes. Even better, Skenazy is hilarious and her book is great fun to read.

Based on the latest research on brain development and extensive clinical experience with parents, Dr. Laura Markham’s approach is as simple as it is effective. Her message: Fostering an emotional connection with your child creates real and lasting change. When you have that vital connection, you don’t need to threaten, nag, plead, bribe—or even punish. This remarkable guide will help parents better understand their own emotions—and get them in check—so they can parent with healthy limits, empathy, and clear communication to raise a self-disciplined child. If you’re tired of power struggles, tantrums, and searching for the right “consequence,” look no further. You’re about to discover the practical tools you need to transform your parenting in a positive, proven way.

This is one of the best books on raising resilient, emotionally healthy children. Generation Alpha is being bombarded by traumatic events which they learn about on YouTube, television, and from grownups around them talking about these events and the news. But there is a way to raise emotionally, healthy children even today and the key is teaching them resilience. There are so many great insights in this book but it’s practical and easy to digest. Our children have lost some of their resilience during the pandemic. It’s up to us, as adults in their lives – parents, teachers, counselors, and coaches – to re-instill a sense of security in our child’s lives but also the idea that once you’ve been through tough times other setbacks in life can seem easier to get through.

This is the book that started the whole “learn about parenting” movement. Yes, it has been published for 60 years, but children’s needs have not changed in the past million years, and the premise of non-punitive parenting and relationship skills taught in the book, are still present today in other books under different names. The skills are still essential to learn for building solid parent-child relationships. In this book, parents learn assertiveness skills, active listening skills, and problem-solving skills as well as ideas to resolve value differences with older children. It is totally non-punitive and essential for every parent who wants to meet their children’s social and emotional needs as well as build excellent relationships with their children, without being permissive.

Mary Sheedy Kurcinka has been working with parents of difficult children for decades now, except she doesn’t think of the kids that way. Instead of ‘difficult,’ she says, we should learn to think of these kids as ‘spirited.’ When we want to describe our kids as irritable, negative, demanding, and strong-willed, she recommends that we admire their sensitivity, insight, confidence, and insistence on getting what they need. This book is packed with practical ideas for creating a peaceful and loving home environment, and for helping parents learn to soothe their own reactions to behavior that might otherwise be experienced as aggravating, trouble-making, embarrassing, and provocative.