Welcome to your relationship toolkit
Welcome to your relationship toolkit
…a carefully curated collection of books and resources that have profoundly shaped my work, both as a therapist and a parent.
My hope is that these resources offer insight, validation, and tools to help you move away from compliance-driven parenting and towards a home environment where everyone feels heard, valued, and connected.
I've organized resources into categories to help you find what resonates most with your unique family dynamic.
Each resource included is one I’ve personally read and deeply connect with via my own parenting journey or in my clinical work with families navigating similar challenges. These resources reflect a range of approaches, from nervous system regulation and non-coercive guidance to attachment-based strategies and relationship-centered conflict resolution.
For Parents
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It's Not Fair: Why It's Time for a Grown-Up Conversation About How Adults Treat Children - Eloise Rickman
Highly recommend!!! Rickman challenges traditional views on adult-child dynamics and advocates for more respectful, developmentally-informed relationships that honour children's autonomy and emotional needs.
Parenting from the Inside Out - Daniel J. Siegel & Mary Hartzell
Explains how parents’ own childhood experiences shape their parenting and offers insights into cultivated connected and secure attachments.
Raising Human Beings - Dr. Ross W. Greene
Introduces the Collaborative & Proactive Solutions approach to parenting, emphasizing problem-solving and empathy over discipline.
The Power of Validation: Arming Your Child Against Bullying, Peer Pressure, Addiction, Self-Harm, and Out-of-Control Emotions - Karyn D. Hall, PhD & Melissa H. Cook, LPC.
This book teaches parents how to use validation as a powerful tool to help children build self-worth, emotional resilience, and coping skills to navigate challenges like bullying, peer pressure, and mental health struggles.
Unconditional Parenting - Alfie Kohn
Challenges traditional parenting methods and advocates for raising children with unconditional love rather than rewards and punishments.
Hold On to Your Kids - Gordon Neufeld & Gabor Maté
Argues that parental connection, rather than peer attachment, is essential for healthy child development.
Connections Over Compliance: Rewiring Our Perceptions of Discipline - Lori L. Desautels, Ph.D.
This book advocates for shifting from punitive discipline to co-regulatory, relationship-based practices, emphasizing the importance of adult self-regulation to foster sustainable behavioral changes in children.
Strange Situation: A Mother's Journey into the Science of Attachment - Bethany Saltman
This book blends memoir and science to explore attachment theory, challenging common misconceptions and offering a deeply personal look at how early relationships shape our lives.
Finding Your Calm: A Responsive Parent’s Guide to Self-Regulation and Co-Regulation - J. Milburn
This book provides parents with strategies for managing their own emotions and effectively supporting their children's emotional regulation, promoting a calm, connected, and empowered family dynamic.
The Resilience Myth: New Thinking on Grit, Strength, and Growth After Trauma - Soraya Chemaly
Chemaly challenges the conventional notion of resilience as individual grit, advocating instead for a communal approach that emphasizes interdependence, nurturing relationships, and collective care as the true foundations of strength and recovery.
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Meaningful Ideas blog - Vivek Patel
Low-Demand Parenting - Amanda Diekman
Your Kids Don’t Suck: Cultivating Closeness with your Kids through Non-Coercive, Conscious Parenting - podcast by Rythea Lee and Cara Tedstone
Untigering: Peaceful Parenting for the Deconstructing Tiger Parent- Iris Chen
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BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity - Ruth Whippman
This work combines memoir, cultural analysis, and reporting to explore the complexities of raising boys in today's society.
Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys - Dan Kindlon & Michael Thompson
This classic text explores the emotional challenges boys face, offering parents insights into how to support their sons in expressing emotions, navigating societal expectations, and developing healthy emotional lives.
The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love - bell hooks.
In this work, hooks explores the concept of masculinity within a patriarchal society and its impact on men’s emotional lives. She argues that patriarchal culture limits men’s ability to experience love and connection, perpetuating cycles of emotional suppression and violence. Hooks critiques traditional gender roles and calls for a feminist reimagining of masculinity, one that embraces vulnerability, emotional growth, and mutual relationships.
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Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls - Lisa Damour
This book examines the rising levels of stress and anxiety in girls, offering practical strategies to help parents and educators support their emotional well-being and resilience.
Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood - Lisa Damour
This book breaks down the developmental stages of adolescence, helping parents understand and support their daughters as they navigate emotional, social, and academic challenges.
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Unconditional: A Guide to Loving and Supporting Your LGBTQ Child - Telaina Eriksen.
Offering firsthand insights into supporting a child navigating their sexual orientation or gender identity, this book addresses challenges such as coming out, bullying, and building a supportive community, while emphasizing the importance of unconditional love and acceptance. The book also provides guidance on understanding gender dysphoria, advocating for inclusive policies, and recognizing signs of unhealthy relationships. Throughout, personal stories from families offer real-life perspectives, making it a valuable resource for those seeking to support their LGBTQ+ children effectively.
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Playful Parenting: An Exciting New Approach to Raising Happy, Confident, and Caring Kids - Lawrence J. Cohen
Emphasizes the importance of play in children's emotional development and offering parents creative ways to engage with their children through play to strengthen their bond, foster emotional resilience, and address behavioral challenges.
Your Child's Point of View: Understanding the Reasons Kids Do Unreasonable Things - Kelsie Olds
This book offers over fifty relatable examples of common childhood behaviors, each presented from both the adult's and the child's perspectives, providing insights into the reasons behind these actions and suggesting collaborative strategies to replace conflict with joyful connection.
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The Emotional Lives of Teenagers: Raising Connected, Capable, and Compassionate Adolescents - Lisa Damour.
Damour’s work explores the emotional ups and downs of adolescence, offering parents practical strategies to support their teens through stress, anxiety, and emotional growth while fostering connection and resilience.
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What To Read To Your Kids - Recommendations for kids of all ages but I especially like their Young Adult novel recommendations
Families & Couples
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It's Okay That You're Not Okay: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn't Understand - Megan Devine
Devine offers a compassionate approach to grieving, helping readers understand that grief is not something to fix or move past but an experience to be felt and navigated with care and support, particularly in a society that often minimizes or avoids it.
BFO - Bereaved Families of Ontario
Packed with resources for individuals, families or groups dealing with grief from the death of a loved one.
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Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love - Dr. Sue Johnson
This work introduces Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) and provides seven guided conversations to help couples strengthen their emotional bond, improve communication, and create lasting intimacy.
Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence - Esther Perel
This book explores the tension between intimacy and desire in long-term relationships, offering insights into how couples can sustain passion and eroticism while maintaining emotional closeness.
Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live) - Eve Rodsky
Rodsky shares a practical system for dividing household labor and invisible work more equitably, helping couples rebalance responsibilities and create more harmony in their relationships.
And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives - John M. Gottman, Ph.D., & Julie Schwartz Gottman, Ph.D
This book provides a research-based, practical guide to maintaining a strong, intimate relationship after having a baby, helping couples navigate the challenges of parenthood while keeping their bond and connection alive.
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Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder - Dr. Gabor Maté
This book challenges conventional understandings of ADHD, exploring its roots in childhood development and environmental factors while offering compassionate strategies for healing and self-acceptance.
The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children - Dr. Ross W. Greene
Greene presents a collaborative, problem-solving approach to parenting children with explosive behaviors, helping families move away from power struggles and toward empathy, skill-building, and long-term solutions.
Low-Demand Parenting: Dropping Demands, Restoring Calm, and Finding Connection with Your Uniquely Wired Child - Amanda Diekman
Diekman offers a compassionate approach to parenting that emphasizes reducing demands and aligning expectations, fostering a nurturing environment where neurodivergent children can thrive through radical acceptance and restored family equilibrium.
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Lost at School: Why Our Kids with Behavioral Challenges Are Falling Through the Cracks and How We Can Help Them - Dr. Ross W. Greene
This book challenges traditional discipline methods and introduces the Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS) approach, helping educators and parents support children with behavioral challenges through empathy, skill-building, and problem-solving.
Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work - Akilah S. Richards
Richards connects the practice of unschooling with racial liberation, encouraging parents to rethink traditional education and power dynamics.
For Everyone
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My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies - Resmaa Menakem
This book explores how racialized trauma is stored in the body across generations and offers somatic practices to help individuals, communities, and society heal from its effects.
Untigering: Peaceful Parenting for the Deconstructing Tiger Parent - Iris Chen
Chen explores the journey from authoritarian "tiger parenting" to a more peaceful, respectful, and connection-based approach, helping parents break cycles of control and embrace their children's autonomy.
Between the World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates
Coates writes a powerful letter to his son, exploring the realities of race, identity, and systemic injustice in America through personal narrative and historical analysis.
How to Raise an Antiracist - Ibram X. Kendi
A deeply personal and research-based exploration of how parents can raise children with an awareness of racial injustice and a commitment to antiracism.
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Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture - Virginia Sole-Smith
This book offers a deeply researched exploration of how diet culture influences parenting, providing strategies for parents to confront their own body biases, recognize the pervasive nature of diet culture, and empower their children to navigate these challenges, fostering a healthier and more inclusive approach to body image and self-esteem.It's No Accident: Breakthrough Solutions to Your Child's Wetting, Constipation, UTIs, and Other Potty Problems - Steve Hodges, M.D., with Suzanne Schlosberg
Hodges explores the hidden causes of childhood toileting issues, revealing how constipation is often the root of wetting accidents, UTIs, and other potty-related struggles, while offering evidence-based solutions for parents.