I am excited to share what I have learned about reparenting from the research, my clinical practice, and my personal experience as a person and a parent!
Since becoming a parent, I have read dozens of parenting books to try to prepare to parent in a different way than I was raised. Despite how helpful and practical many of these books are, I realized one flaw they all had: not enough emphasis on the parents’ own personal healing and growth.
Oh sure, many of them encourage us to “do your own work” or mention self-care and having a village. But few discuss how to do that, instead devoting the rest of the book to the how-tos of parenting young kids.
Moreover, my favorite parenting books are secular, research-based ones. I have learned so much from experts like Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson, Dr. Becky, and Janet Lansbury. Yet what is missing is the Christian perspective. And I don’t mean “the Bible is a parenting manual” (because it’s not). What is missing is how to deconstruct the toxic messages we received from religious authoritarian parenting.
As parents, we want evidenced-based, developmentally-sound guidance, but we’re also confused about how our faith integrates with that. What do we teach our kids about emotions when all we were told was “your heart is wicked and deceitful”? How do we discipline when the research says spanking is harmful, yet all we were taught was “spare the rod, spoil the child”? How do we develop a secure attachment with our kids when our parents’ goal was to “break our will”?
Reparenting Yourself While Parenting Your Kids (official title TBD) meets readers at this intersection: parenting children in a different way while breaking cycles and healing the wounds from your own upbringing. It is not a parenting book as much as a reparenting one—a guide for how to heal your emotions, attachment, and faith so you can raise healthy, secure kids.
My book will release in Summer 2027. In the meantime, I want to share my favorite parenting and reparenting resources with you. These have been invaluable to my own growth as a parent and person and all are trustworthy and credible sources I used in my book’s research. While none of them specifically address the intersection of parenting your kids differently while healing yourself from toxic Christian parenting (that’s what my next book is for!), they all provide a healthy foundation for understanding this work.
To shop the full list of recommended books (plus more!), here is my Amazon list.
The rest of this post includes my reviews and opinions of my 8 favorite parenting books, which is available only for paid subscribers. For exclusive content and live workshops with me, you can upgrade your subscription for $5 per month or $50 per year and cancel any time. Next post I will share my 8 favorite reparenting books.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.