Parenting books: not all bad, surely?

[commanderchaos]

For me, I love Naomi Stadlen's 'What Mothers Do'. Also have found Alfie Kohn's 'Unconditional Parenting' and Jesper Juul's 'Your Competent Child' fantastically helpful - not for following slavishly, but useful reminders that we are bringing up our children who are, after all, people too.

What are yours?

I don't have any parenting books at all. I read a stack of them when I was pregnant and when dd was very little, thought they were all too prescriptive or "one-size-fits-all", and threw them all away. There is no single method of child-rearing, and trusting my own judgement has always felt better to me than trusting the judgement of someone who doesn't know my child.

And for everything else ... there's Mumsnet

a recommendation from here actually which is "how to talk so kids will listen, and listen so kids will talk"

I loved Toddler Taming by Chris Green.

I dont think it is going too far to say that it saved me a breakdown, just by reminding me to listen to DS and understand WHY he was saying and doing what he was. It cut the tantrums in half instantly and made the ones he was having less stressful for me