11 min read
9 chapters
Between Parent and Child
Haim Ginott · 1965
The book that taught a generation of parents that how you say it matters more than what you say — and that a child's feelings are never wrong.
Parenting books
Raising kids without shouting — and the harder books about caring for parents as they age.
The shelf
Every title below carries a note on why it earns its place. Read or listen to any of them in the Clif app.
11 min read
8 chapters
Good Inside
Becky Kennedy · 2022
Clinical psychologist Dr. Becky hands you a single, radically kind idea — your child is good inside, and so are you — then turns it into scripts for tantrums, lying, whining, and every other moment that makes you doubt it.
10 min read
8 chapters
How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk
Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish · 1980
The definitive classic on parent-child communication; concrete, scriptable techniques.
11 min read
8 chapters
Hunt, Gather, Parent
Michaeleen Doucleff · 2021
A science journalist trades Western parenting exhaustion for the calm, cooperative wisdom of Maya, Inuit, and Hadzabe families — and shows you can borrow it tonight.
11 min read
9 chapters
Knocking on Heaven's Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death
Katy Butler · 2013
A journalist watches a $12,000 pacemaker keep her demented father's heart beating years past the life he wanted — and turns that grief into the clearest map we have of how modern medicine forgot how to let people die.
11 min read
8 chapters
Loving Someone Who Has Dementia: How to Find Hope while Coping with Stress and Grief
Pauline Boss · 2011
The rare grief book that refuses to promise closure — and gives caregivers something far more usable: permission to hold love and loss at the same time.
11 min read
9 chapters
No-Drama Discipline
Daniel J. Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson · 2014
It reframes discipline from punishment into teaching, and hands you a brain-based script for calming the storm before you correct the behavior.
11 min read
8 chapters
Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids
Laura Markham · 2012
Its radical claim is that you can't control your child, only yourself — so self-regulation, not discipline, is the real parenting skill.
11 min read
9 chapters
The 36-Hour Day: A Family Guide to Caring for People with Alzheimer Disease, Other Dementias, and Memory Loss
Nancy L. Mace and Peter V. Rabins · 2021
The book that turned dementia caregiving from private bewilderment into a set of learnable, humane skills — and insisted the caregiver's own survival is part of the treatment plan.
11 min read
8 chapters
The Anxious Generation
Jonathan Haidt · 2024
The definitive case that we overprotected kids in the real world and underprotected them online — read it, then read its sharpest critics.
11 min read
8 chapters
The Conscious Parent
Shefali Tsabary · 2010
It flips parenting on its head — your child isn't a project to perfect but a mirror sent to wake you up, and the real work is on yourself.
9 min read
6 chapters
The Whole-Brain Child
Daniel J. Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson · 2011
Neuroscience-based, practical strategies for nurturing a child's developing mind.
11 min read
9 chapters
They're Your Parents, Too! How Siblings Can Survive Their Parents' Aging Without Driving Each Other Crazy
Francine Russo · 2010
The rare caregiving book that admits the hardest part isn't your parent's decline — it's your brother.
11 min read
9 chapters
Travelers to Unimaginable Lands: Stories of Dementia, the Caregiver, and the Human Brain
Dasha Kiper · 2023
The rare caregiving book that stops blaming caregivers for failing and explains why their own healthy brains make dementia caregiving nearly impossible to do "right."
Start with one idea worth keeping.
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