Bea Reviews Baby Steps to STEM: Infant and Toddler Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Activities by Jean Barbre

Publisher: Redleaf Press
Source: Hoopla
Release Date: July 17th, 2017
Buying Links: Amazon* | Apple Books* | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Google Books | Kobo |* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

Innately curious, infants and toddlers love to explore, investigate, and discover—making the earliest years a perfect time to begin teaching the foundations of STEM. This book defines what science, technology, engineering, and math education looks like for this age group, and why it is so vital for children to develop STEM knowledge. Expand your understanding of STEM to lay the foundation for children to develop skills in critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity.

This book supplies fifty play-based developmentally appropriate activities for introducing STEM. All activities include extensions, inquiry questions, and tips on how to help parents strengthen children's learning at home.

Jean Barbre, EdD, holds a master's degree in child and family studies from California State University Long Beach, a master's degree in counseling from California State University Fullerton, and a doctorate degree in educational leadership from Pepperdine University. She has more than thirty years of experience working with children and families in a variety of roles and currently teaches early childhood courses in community college and California State University system as well as presents at professional conferences across the country.

Bea Reviews The Myth of the Spoiled Child by Alfie Kohn

Publisher: Beacon Press
Source: the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: March 8, 2016
Challenges: NetGalley & Edelweiss Reading Challenge
Buying Links: Amazon* | Book Depository* | OmniLit* (different edition)  | iTunes* (different edition) | Barnes & Noble
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

Somehow, deeply conservative assumptions about how children behave and how parents raise them have become the conventional wisdom in our society. It’s widely assumed that parents are both permissive and overprotective, unable to set limits and afraid to let their kids fail. We’re told that young people receive trophies, praise, and A’s too easily, and suffer from inflated self esteem and insufficient self-discipline. However, complaints about pushover parents and entitled kids are actually decades old and driven, it turns out, by ideology more than evidence.

With the same lively, contrarian style of Alfie Kohn’s bestselling books about rewards, competition, and traditional education, The Myth of the Spoiled Child systematically debunks the story that we hear with numbing regularity. Kohn uses humor, logic, and his familiarity with a vast range of social science data to challenge media-stoked fears of spoiling our children. He reveals that the major threat to healthy child development isn’t parents who are too indulgent but those who are too controlling.

Bea Reviews The Happy Sleeper by Heather Turgeon & Julie Wright

Publisher: Tarcher
Source: the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: December 26, 2015 
Buying Links: Amazon* | Book Depository* | OmniLit*  | iTunes | Barnes & Noble
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

Many parents feel pressured to “train” babies and young children to sleep but kids don’t need to be trained to sleep, they’re built to sleep. Sleep issues arise when parents (with the best of intentions) over-help or “helicopter parent” at night—overshadowing their baby’s innate biological ability to sleep well. In The Happy Sleeper child sleep experts Heather Turgeon and Julie Wright show parents how to be sensitive and nurturing, but also clear and structured so that babies and young children develop the self-soothing skills they need to

•       Fall asleep independently
•       Sleep through the night
•       Take healthy naps
•       Grow into natural, optimal sleep patterns for day and night

The Happy Sleeper is a research-based guide to helping children do what comes naturally—sleep through the night.

The Happy Sleeper features a foreword by neuropsychiatrist and popular parenting expert Dr. Daniel Siegel, author of Parenting from the Inside Out and the New York Times bestseller Brainstorm.

Bea Reviews How to Parent Your Anxious Toddler by Natasha Daniels

Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Source: the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: September 21, 2015
Challenges: NetGalley and Edelweiss ARCs
Buying Links: Amazon* | Book Depository* | OmniLit* |  Barnes & Noble
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

Everything you need to know about how to parent an anxious toddler and provide them with the life skills and coping mechanisms to help them thrive as they develop. Bath time, bedtime, mealtime and playtime are all covered in detailed chapters which explain common misunderstandings. Specific fears, phobias and separation anxiety are also addressed.

Why does your toddler get upset when his or her routine is disrupted? Why do they follow you from room to room and refuse to play on their own? Why are daily routines such as mealtimes, bath time, and bed time such a struggle?

This accessible guide demystifies the difficult behaviors of anxious toddlers, offering tried-and-tested practical solutions to common parenting dilemmas. Each chapter begins with a real life example, clearly illustrating the behavior from the parent's and the toddler's perspective. Once the toddler's anxious behavior has been demystified and explained, new and effective parenting approaches are introduced to help parents tackle everyday difficulties and build up their child's resilience, independence, and coping mechanisms. Common difficulties with bath time, toileting, sleep, eating, transitions, social anxiety, separation anxiety, and sensory issues are solved, along with specific fears and phobias, and more extreme behaviors such as skin picking and hair pulling.

A must-read for all parents of anxious toddlers, as well as for the professionals involved in supporting them.

Bea Reviews Mama's Right Here by Susan Kerner

Publisher: Star Bright Books 
Source: the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: April 1, 2015
Challenges: NetGalley and Edelweiss ARCs
Buying Links: Amazon* | Book Depository* | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble | Star Bright Books
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

Mama’s Right Here is a gentle reminder that a mother’s love never disappears. Even when a mother is absent, her presence is constant in a child’s heart. With comforting rhyme and gentle illustrations, Mama’s Right Here brings the important message to children that a mother’s love is always with them– in the way they look, and in everything they do.

Bea Reviews The Sh!t No One Tells You About Toddlers by Dawn Dais

Publisher: Seal Press
Series: Sh!t No One Tells You #2
Source: the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: September 8, 2015
Challenges: NetGalley and Edelweiss ARCs
Buying Links: Amazon* | Book Depository* | OmniLit* | iTunes | Barnes & Noble
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

They’re getting bigger. And you’re not getting any more sleep.

Second in the Sh!t No One Tells You series, in The Sh!t No One Tells You About Toddlers Dawn Dais tells it like it is – again – offering real advice for parents of growing children. Filled with tips, encouragement, and a strong dose of humor, The Sh!t No One Tells You About Toddlers is a survival handbook for parents on the edge.
Chapters include:

You Suck at This. It’s not just your imagination.

Walking Is Hard. Bruising is considerably less difficult.

Remember When You Judged Other Parents? Prepare to eat your words, with a side of karma’s a bitch.

Restaurants Are Battle Zones. Spoiler Alert: You are not the victor.

Kids Get Sick. Then everyone gets sick.

This Childhood Will Be Televised. Hello, camera phones.

Your TV Has Been Hijacked. By things with very high-pitched voices.

Coming from one empathetic parent to another, the tips in this book are real, clever, honest, and designed to make life with a terrible two- or three-year-old a little bit more manageable. Hilarious, helpful, and handy, this book will be appreciated by any parent who has asked: “Why didn’t anybody warn me that unconditional love would be so much work?”

Bea Reviews NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and The Future of Neurodiversity by Steve Silberman

Publisher: Avery
Source: the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: August 25, 2015
Challenges: COYER Summer Scavenger Hunt | NetGalley and Edelweiss Reading Challenge
Buying Links: Amazon* | Book Depository* | Kobo | iTunes | Barnes & Noble
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

A groundbreaking book that upends conventional thinking about autism and suggests a broader model for acceptance, understanding, and full participation in society for people who think differently.

What is autism: a devastating developmental disorder, a lifelong disability, or a naturally occurring form of cognitive difference akin to certain forms of genius? In truth, it is all of these things and more—and the future of our society depends on our understanding it. WIRED reporter Steve Silberman unearths the secret history of autism, long suppressed by the same clinicians who became famous for discovering it, and finds surprising answers to the crucial question of why the number of diagnoses has soared in recent years.

Going back to the earliest days of autism research and chronicling the brave and lonely journey of autistic people and their families through the decades, Silberman provides long-sought solutions to the autism puzzle, while mapping out a path for our society toward a more humane world in which people with learning differences and those who love them have access to the resources they need to live happier, healthier, more secure, and more meaningful lives.

Along the way, he reveals the untold story of Hans Asperger, the father of Asperger’s syndrome, whose “little professors” were targeted by the darkest social-engineering experiment in human history; exposes the covert campaign by child psychiatrist Leo Kanner to suppress knowledge of the autism spectrum for fifty years; and casts light on the growing movement of "neurodiversity" activists seeking respect, support, technological innovation, accommodations in the workplace and in education, and the right to self-determination for those with cognitive differences.

Bea Reviews Parenting in the Age of Attention Snatchers by Lucy Jo Palladino

Publisher: Shambhala Publications
Source: the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: May 19, 2015
Challenges: NetGalley and Edelweiss Reading Challenge
Buying Links: Amazon* | Book Depository* | OmniLit* | Kobo  | Barnes & Noble
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

Are your kids unable to step away from the screens?  Here is a practical, step-by-step guide that gives parents the tools to teach children, from toddlers to teens, how to gain control of their technology use.

As children spend more of their time on tablets and smartphones, using apps specially engineered to capture their attention, parents are concerned about the effects of so much technology use--and feel powerless to intervene. They want their kids to be competent and competitive in their use of technology, but they also want to prevent the attention problems that can develop from overuse. Lucy Jo Palladino shows that the key is to help kids build awareness and control over their own attention, and in this guide she gives parents the tools to do exactly that, in seven straightforward, evidence-based steps.
    
Parents will learn the best practices to guide children to understand and control their attention—and to recognize and resist when their attention is being "snatched." This approach can be modified for kids of all ages. Parents will also learn the critical difference between voluntary and involuntary attention, new findings about brain development, and what puts children at risk for attention disorders.

Bea Reviews Parenting Books Guide: Quick Secrets for Parenting Toddlers by Monica McBride

Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Format Read: Kindle Book
Source: Owned by the reviewer
Release Date: October 13, 2011
Buying Links: Amazon*
* associate link; making a purchase through this link results in a small commission for the blog.

Blurb from goodreads:

So you think you weathered through the worst having nursed and cared for a colicky infant? You are probably looking forward to enjoying a restful sleep after seemingly endless months of waking up every 30 minutes or so. Well, you’re in for a surprise! As soon as your child hits the toddler age, you’re faced with a whole new set of challenges that will make 9 months of being pregnant seem like a walk in the park.

Make no mistake, parenting is profoundly rewarding. As your child turns two, you will no doubt enjoy watching your toddler knock out one milestone after another. At this stage, toddlers start to walk, talk, explore and discover the world beyond the safety and comfort of their parent’s protective embrace. They will also start to develop their own unique personalities and little by little start to assert their independence.

Stating that toddlers are a handful is a gross understatement. When you really think about it, it’s quite astonishing how a tiny child can effortlessly turn our worlds upside down and inside out.

Bea Reviews Calm Mama, Happy Baby by Derek O'Neill & Jennifer Waldburger

Publisher: Health Communications
Format Read: egalley
Source: the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: October 1, 2013
Buying Links: Amazon* | Book Depository* | Barnes & Noble

Blurb from goodreads:

Every parent of a newborn feels overwhelmed by the enormity of the tasks at hand: Suddenly responsible for feedings, diaper changes, and trying to sleep, parents are stressed out and anxious. Since babies today are born even more aware, awake, and attuned than previous generations, it's easy to see why parents--especially moms--are frazzled.  

The good news is that the cause and effect between parents' mental and emotional states and their baby's mood and behavior works both ways; when parents are calm and centered, their children are calm as well. From consulting in Hollywood's poshest nurseries to leading sold-out workshops with sleep-deprived parents, Jennifer Waldburger and Derek O'Neill share their proven arsenal of methods to calm parents and their kids, often in seconds. 

With an eye-opening blend of neuroscience research, personal stories, and cross-cultural insights, "Calm Mama, Happy Baby" empowers moms (and dads) to be proactive about how they are "feeding" their babies energetically, choosing calm over stress. While many well-meaning parents spend money safety-proofing their homes, they fail to learn the most important thing to safeguard their baby's emotional health, which is to maintain peace within themselves and within the home. "Calm Mama, Happy Baby" shows parents how to:

     Stress-proof the baby's room with a paint color that soothes instead of stimulates and learn how certain music affects your baby's mood and behavior. Stop the Mommy Guilt and turn negative "Mama mantras" into positive ones. Discover why becoming a parent brings up unresolved fears and insecurities and how to put them to rest. Use the proven CALM technique to diffuse any parenting situation, from feeding problems and sleep disruptions to separation anxiety, teething, and fussiness.   

Yes, a happy baby is paramount, but when you have a happy Mama, too, then the entire household thrives. "Calm Mama, Happy Baby" paves the path from chaos to calm.

The Friday 56 #10 Calm Mama, Happy Baby

This is a fun meme to do hosted by Freda's Voice. If you'd like to join on the fun go to The Friday 56.

Rules:
*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader.
*Find any sentence that grabs you.
*Post it.
*Link it here.

I'm reading several books right now so I chose to feature the non-fiction book, "Calm Mama, Happy  Baby" by Derek O'Neill and Jennifer Waldburger. This is from 56% in the ebook.

Not every mom who prefers to keep to herself is struggling, mind you; we're referring to the idea that handling every aspect of motherhood on your own is some sort of ideal picture, and whoever paints the picture with the most color wins.