About Growing Up

The field has learned a lot about how life experience shapes us— particularly our experiences with parents or caregivers.  The books here are not intended as primers on development; instead, they give a window into what psychologists call “attachment” and what happens when attachment runs into trouble.

One book that is both readable and informative is Love at Goon Park by Deborah Blum.  She describes the work of Harry Harlow, who was a controversial mid-20th Century psychologist who did pioneering experiments with monkeys.  Animal rights advocates are rightly disquieted by Harlow’s work, but the ideas he pioneered changed conventional thinking.  This is a great book for anyone who is trying to better understand how adversity in their childhood reverberates across a lifetime.

The Deepest Well by Nadine Burke-Harris is a book for the general public about the adverse impacts of childhood adversity.  The main takeaway is that when bad things happen as a kid, it has very real impacts in body, mind, and spirit.  Dr. Burke-Harris is a pediatrician, and she describes what she’s learned and how it shapes her work.

About Parenting & Children

My friend and colleague John Carr, LICSW has said that there are five things that any parent needs to be able to do: love, nurture, teach, protect, and let go.  Each one of these responsibilities can get messed up in its own way, and getting good advice depends on knowing what went awry.  (John Carr wrote a great book called Becoming a Dad: The First Three Years, which I happily recommend.)

A good book for a general outlook on parenting is Raising Human Beings by Russ Greene, Ph.D.  He describes his perspective on how to build a constructive, collaborative relationship with your child.

Paul Tough wrote How Children Succeed, which describes what we’re learning about how to support kids.  (Not to give it away, but you’re going to need to park the helicopter. Kids need both love and healthy opportunities to face challenges.)

Neuroscience, so de rigueur, has found its way to parenting.  Dan Seigel, Ph.D. is a prominent neuropsychologist, and this book is intended to help parents teach their kids about managing their emotions in constructive ways.  The Whole Brained Child is worth a read. 

If you are in the process of a divorce, there is a lot to think about and it’s easy to lose your mind in the shuffle— even more so if there are kids involved. An online resource to help navigate this comes from the Tavistock Group. A book that’s worth a read is The Good Divorce by Constance Ahrons, Ph.D. It was written in the 1990s, but generally it’s aged well if you can overlook the heteronormativity.

If you’re trying to parent your way with a blended family, then I recommend reading The Stepfamily Handbook by Karen Bonnell, MS and Patricia Papernow, Ed.D.  They do a great job of explaining some of the unique dynamics and challenges in a stepfamily.

Kids don’t grow up in a vacuum.  No matter how sheltered they may be, they still swim in our history. Good parents have a role to play in making sense of it.  If you identify as white, I suggest reading White Kids by Margaret Hagerman, Ph.D.  There is a longer tradition of black writers guiding the next generation on how to deal with racism.  James Baldwin (The Fire Next Time) or Ta Nehisi Coates (Between the World & Me) are two good examples.  A less widely known book is Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome by Joy DeGruy, which talks about the multi-generational traumatic effects of slavery on the development of black culture and black families.