Raising Resilient and Compassionate Children : A Parent's Guide to Understanding Behaviour, Feelings and Relationships

by Marion Rose, Lael Stone

How can we raise children who can move through life’s challenges in healthy ways, while being compassionate and considerate of others?

Historically parenting has focused on raising children who are ‘well behaved’, through the use of rewards and punishments, without understanding the true causes of children’s behaviour.

In their first authored collaboration, Marion Rose and Lael Stone share the compassion and wisdom they’ve acquired from a combined 40 years of experience working with families. Informed by an Aware Parenting lens, they provide a framework and methodology for parents to understand the root causes of the most common parenting challenges including sleep issues, aggression and anxiety.

They offer a truly empathic and modern approach to feelings, supporting parents to welcome children’s tears and rages rather than suppressing them. This trauma-informed approach can then be applied to all areas of parenting, including healing parents’ own childhood hurt and trauma. This book invites parents to change the way in which they perceive, understand and respond to children.

Praise for Raising Resilient and Compassionate Children

"I highly recommend Raising Resilient and Compassionate Children. The authors present all the important information about the Aware Parenting approach in a single, very readable, book. They explain how to offer children empathy, unconditional love, and full acceptance of their emotions. In addition, they clearly describe the underlying reasons for behavior problems and suggest many alternatives to punishments and rewards.

"To supplement the theory, the book includes rich examples illustrating typical scenarios which parents might encounter with their children (some of wich are real-life experiences with the authors' own children). These examples and anecdotes provide parents with practical tools to cope successfully with challenging situations, and they also help to explain children's behavior.

"I was especially touched by the deep compassion for parents, which shines through on every page. The authors fully understand why it's sometimes hard for parents to respond patiently and lovingly to their children. In the final section called "reparenting ourselves," they offer helpful exercises for parents to explore their own childhood and heal from their own early wounds." ─Aletha Solter, Ph.D., founder of Aware Parenting

About the Authors

Marion Rose

Marion Rose has been studying psychology and consciousness since 1987 and has a PhD on postnatal depression and the mother-infant relationship from Cambridge University. After a decade in academia, including researching infant development as a post-Doctoral Research Fellow and teaching and supervising MA students, as well as working as a psychotherapist, Marion saw that a more powerful way to create change was to work directly with parents in birth and parenting. Marion has been practicing Aware Parenting since 2002 and is the mother of two adult children. She has been an Aware Parenting instructor since 2005 and is a Level Two instructor and the Regional Coordinator for Australia and New Zealand and mentors people to become Aware Parenting instructors. As well as co-hosting The Aware Parenting Podcast with Lael, Marion also co-hosts The Aware Parenting and Natural Learning Podcast with Joss Goulden.

Lael Stone

Lael Stone is an educator, TEDx speaker, author, mother, and parenting counsellor who has been working with families for over 20 years.

Genres: Parenting

276 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 11, 2022

Reviews

[EmG ReadsDaily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Encouraging and practical suggestions to understand feelings and behaviour, for both the adult and child.

[Ida · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really loved this book. Sometimes chapters of passages were hard to read but that just made me realize that i had some issues there. It might not completely be my cup of tea, but i learned so much from them. I did however wonder at times of they had a good editor. Seems like this could have been a much smoother read of they did.

[Clare · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having been introduced to Lael Stone via the Imperfects Podcast, I knew I had to read any book she was involved in. I don't have any children yet, but this is incredibly insightful for useful strategies in situations where big feelings arise. I love the concept of aware parents as opposed tonthe authoritative method many of us were raised on.

[Mel Sweeney (mels.bookshelf_) · Rating 1 out of 5]

I took some small things away from this book, but overall found it quite un-relatable and hard to read. The aim of the book is to introduce an aware/gentle/conscious style of parenting, and guide parents through challenges of raising children using this method. The style of parenting is great and I 100% believe this is a positive way to raise children... However, I found it hard to read (I found myself skimming towards the end) and the examples given were unrealistic and at times a bit strange.
Knowing I want to adopt this style of parenting in raising my children, I think this book just wasn’t the writing and communication style that resonated with me. Just not for me.

[Jaimee · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of helpful parenting information with a focus on Aware Parenting. A bit repetitive but I suppose that was the point to try and drive home the skills and knowledge about Aware Parenting and how it can be applied to ourselves and our children. I particularly liked the set phrases/what to say in different situations. A good read.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting look into how children are affected by different parenting styles, and how poor parenting can set them up for failure to propagate those same behaviours down to their kids.

As with all these self help books there's no 1 way of doing it you have to take the bits that work for you.

[Mike Turner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I took away some really good stuff from this book. Some of the wording and phrasing used did put me off but the principals are really worthwhile.