+I will not bore you with the benefits of reading books. You all know how reading books continue to educate us long after passing school age. Reading for parents is even more important as they are the makers of the next generation – pun intended. Educated, informed parents raise confident, happy and successful children – All parents wish for their children to be that. Here are my 5 book recommendations that will benefit parents.
5 Books All Parents Must Read
- Burn Anger Before Anger Burns You written by J.P. Vaswani
- Thanks a Thousand written by A.J. Jacobs
- French Children Don’t Throw Food written by Pamela Druckerman
- 21 Lessons for the 21st Century written by Yuval Noah Harari
- Stand Out of Our light written by James Williams
These 5 book recommendations broadly cover the following areas
- Personal growth in dealing with anger
- How gratitude elevates our life
- Parenting
- Child Education
- How technology has affected our Focus and concentration.
- To make children understand and appreciate, parents must adhere to values.
Parents must lead by example.
As a parent, I found the following books beneficial.
Book Recommendation #1-Burn Anger Before Anger Burns You
Thoughts that go through a parent’s mind every day.
Am I impatient?
There is so much I have to deal with every day. I get tired and angry. I lost my cool again in front of my child.
In this book, the author and spiritual leader Late Sh. J.P. Vaswani addresses these issues. He has written how forgiveness is key in dealing with anger.
As humans we deal with anger in these two ways:
Express our anger through words and actions. In this case, the anger is out for the time being. it comes back on another issue or situation.
Psychiatrists say that we must express anger but this expression is a temporary way to deal with it.
Suppress our anger by not talking about it. By doing this resentments build-up. It can prove to be physically, mentally and emotionally unhealthy for the person.
The author then talks about the solution to the unsuccessful ways we deal with our anger daily.
The solution:
Forgiveness is an effective way to deal with anger. He then shares a few tips on how one can forgive people who have caused us this loss of patience.
“Forgive, and be free! Every night, before you retire, replay the day’s happenings. Were you cheated by someone? Did someone offend you, hurt you or treat you badly? Call out that person’s name and say, ‘‘X, I forgive you!’’ You will sleep peacefully.”
Why should you read this book?
Forgiveness isn’t easy especially when someone has hurt our feelings. If we hold onto anger then it ends up causing various issues in the body. It could be ranging from stress, anxiety, blood pressure, stomach related ailments and much more.
As parents, we would like our children to learn the art of forgiveness, but how can we teach them if we do not forgive people ourselves.
Let’s resolve that we will apply the principles from this book and learn to forgive. Only calm and peaceful parents can raise calm and peaceful children.
Book Recommendation #2-Thanks a Thousand
Thanks a Thousand is written by A. J. Jacobs.
Sharing an excerpt from the book
“Finally, I settle down with something I can’t live without. Coffee is intertwined with politics, economics and history. The enlightenment was born in Europe’s coffee houses. Over the centuries, Coffee has helped create international trade and shape our modern economy. I have decided to do this project in reverse, starting with my local café and working my way backwards to the birth of the Coffee to thank each one of them, around one thousand of them.”
Happiness does not lead to gratitude, gratitude leads to happiness.
– David Steindl Rast
This book talks about the power of gratitude.
If you are someone who wants to lead a wholesome life then I recommend this book for you.
Why should you read this book?
As parents, we have given our children all the facilities possible. The drawback of fulfilling every wish of theirs is our children forget to value things. As adults, we forget to feel grateful for people and opportunities we get every day.
Recently, a Wharton study concluded that people who say the phrase, “I am grateful” are seen as more genuinely thankful than people who simply say “Thank You”.
It states that the phrase, “Thank you” is too often seen as robotic. You should switch it up with other gratitude phrases. It results in content and a happier state of mind.
Here is why I am a fan of expressing gratitude every day. It helps with forgiving ourselves, our failures and boosts humility.
Book Recommendation #3-French Children Don’t Throw Food
This is the autobiography of an American journalist, Pamela Druckerman, who moves to Paris because of her husband’s job and raises her family there.
This book is soon to be adapted into a major motion picture starring Anne Hathaway.
As Pamela Druckerman struggled with her career and family, she faced guilt that she wasn’t doing enough on both fronts. Looking around she saw attractive french women who were managing their careers and children like she had never seen before.
How french women go back to their career leaving children in the hands of high-quality daycares and nannies. They did all that without feeling any guilt whatsoever.
She observed that French children were extremely well-behaved. They knew how to wait for food or their mom to finish a conversation with another adult. French babies self-learnt to sleep through the entire night.
This book was a revelation for me.
I recommend it to all the mothers out there.
Why should you read this book?
So far, I have seen mothers feel guilty about not giving enough time to their children. Choosing their careers over children, or choosing children over career and feel guilty about the decision.
This book will help the mothers get perspective on their guilt.
It will show them astonishing ways of french mothers dealing with motherhood.
Book Recommendation #4-21 Lessons for the 21st Century
This book is written by Yuval Noah Harari. He is an acclaimed author of books like “Sapiens”, and Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg are some of the admirers of this book.
“In a world deluged by irrelevant information, clarity is power.”
Yuval Noah Harari
I find this book useful for parents as it makes us think if our children are prepared for the year 2050. Fast spinning world and businesses based around algorithms. Do we know what is happening?
Maybe not! Explains why we feel overwhelmed most of the time.
One of the most pressing topics for me was:
“We believe we have a lot of knowledge, but we don’t and that’s dangerous.”
Make one think on how much that smartphone in our hand and high speed helps in making us sufficient and self-reliant.
Another question it tackles is how can we prepare ourselves and our children for the year 2050?
According to experts schools should switch to teaching the ‘the four Cs’ –
- Critical thinking,
- Communication
- Collaboration
- Creativity
This will prepare children to deal with change, to learn new things and preserve their mental balance in unfamiliar situations.
To keep up with the world of 2050, we will need, not merely to invent new ideas and products – but also need to reinvent ourselves again and again.
This and many such amazing insights in the book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.
Why should you read this book?
If you have made this far into the blog then it means you are an aware parent who wants to raise well-informed and independent children.
Book Recommendation #5-Stand Out of Our Light
This book is written by James William, who is a strategist turned philosopher.
At Netflix, we are competing for our customer’s time, so our competitors include Snapchat, YouTube, sleep, etc.
– Reed Hastings, CEO, Netflix
This is an insightful and intriguing work by James Williams.
In this book, he talks about the threat the next-generation faces in the hands of technology and how the use of technology is affecting our productivity.
When a person is focused and gets interrupted, it takes on an average twenty-three minutes for them to regain their focus.
He feels that we are setting ourselves up for failure by setting our goals as per what we consume on the internet.
Why should you read this book?
If you want to lead a purposeful and self-driven life and not get swayed by what circulates on the media, then I recommend this book to you. It’s time we stop technology to not stand in our light.
Conclusion
As parents, awareness of the values is important.
But the most important part is when we make these values an effortless part of our lives.
We all breathe in and breathe out.
Let’s breathe in the books and breath out the values to become a role model for our children.