Spiritually nourishing approaches to help you become more insightful, inspired parents and raise soulfully engaged children. Kipnes and November share their hard-won parenting techniques and spirit-filled activities, rituals and prayers to help you cultivate strong Jewish values and cherished spiritual memories in your own family.

Raising Jewish children in today's secular culture poses unique and serious challenges. How do parents pass on a positive, vital sense of identity, religion, and heritage without turning their kids off or overwhelming them? How do you explain what it means to be Jewish if you are ambivalent about it yourself? And perhaps most important, how do parents who have had little or no formal religious training themselves pass on rich, multilayered traditions that may have been missing from their own childhood experiences? In Becoming a Jewish Parent: How to Explore Spirituality and Tradition with Your Children, Daniel Gordis has written an invaluable guide for parents who are interested in introducing Judaism into their homes so that their children can grow up loving, understanding, and cherishing their heritage. Filled with delightful and inspiring anecdotes, thoughtful information about the history, holidays, and traditions that shape Judaism, as well as a useful glossary and incredibly thorough reference section, this book is a vital resource that you will want to refer to again and again. Becoming a Jewish Parent tackles major issues in contemporary life and offers thoughtful approaches and insights to dealing with such complicated subjects as using ritual to make space for feeling, talking about God when we have doubts, incorporating girls into what has been primarily a male tradition, and becoming part of a community that supports your ideals. Becoming a Jewish Parent is the book to turn to at every phase of a family's spiritual quest. If being a good parent means having a subtle, sophisticated, and appropriate sense of what is "honest" when it comes to love, sex, police, thegovernment, or other complicated issues, the same is clearly true with God. We could, when our children ask about God, tell them about all the things we're not sure about, all the reasons we could come up with to doubt that God is "out there."

With the seemingly insurmountable pressures placed on families today, many parents lack the spiritual foundation and practical knowledge to chart a clear-cut course in child-rearing. Parents question whether nurturing their children's souls is even possible in the fast-paced materialistic culture in which we live. Utilizing the insight that springs from her knowledge of Torah wisdom, her personal experiences and the experiences of those she has counseled, Slovie Jungreis-Wolff, a longtime parenting coach and advisor to young couples and families teaches in detail how to approach the entire gamut of issues, with a special emphasis on strengthening the child's morality and character. Parents will learn how to: • Instill simchas hachayim, "true joy," in their children • Value chessed, kindness, in a self-absorbed world • Create a mikdash me'at, a home filled with calm and reflection • Teach children gratitude and appreciation • And much more... From discipline to sibling rivalry to effective communication skills, Raising a Child with Soul offers unique concepts and pragmatic ideas that can be understood and applied to both Jewish and non-Jewish households.

A deeply affecting, funny, insightful meditation that challenges readers to find the spiritual meaning of parenting. Every day, parents are bombarded by demands. The pressures of work and life are relentless; our children’s needs are often impossible to meet; and we rarely, if ever, allow ourselves the time and attention necessary to satisfy our own inner longings. Parenthood is difficult, demanding, and draining. And yet, argues Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, if we can approach it from a different mindset, perhaps the work of parenting itself can offer the solace we seek. Rooted in Judaism but incorporating a wide-range of religious and literary traditions, Nurture the Wow asks, Can ancient ideas about relationships, drudgery, pain, devotion, and purpose help make the hard parts of a parent’s job easier and the magical stuff even more so? Ruttenberg shows how parenting can be considered a spiritual practice—and how seeing it that way can lead to transformation. This is a parenthood book, not a parenting book; it shows how the experiences we have as parents can change us for the better. Enlightening, uplifting, and laugh-out-loud funny, Nurture the Wow reveals how parenthood—in all its crazy-making, rage-inducing, awe and joy-filled moments—can actually be the path to living fully, authentically, and soulfully.

In this completely revised, second edition of the “thoughtful and pioneering guide” (Library Journal), Lee Gruzen tackles the problems and challenges of blending both Jewish and Christian faiths into the lives of children of interfaith marriages. Based on hundreds of interviews, as well as the author’s extensive research and personal experience, this acclaimed book discusses many issues important to interfaith families: talking with children about God, planning ceremonies, celebrating holidays, establishing healthy relationships with grandparents, developing a sense of self and belonging, and more. Written with honesty and warmth, it offers a wealth of insight into the complicated feelings and loyalties that parents, children, grandparents, and clergy bring to the subject of raising Jewish/Christian children.

In The Spiritual Child, psychologist Lisa Miller presents the next big idea in psychology: the science and the power of spirituality. She explains the clear, scientific link between spirituality and health and shows that children who have a positive, active relationship to spirituality: * are 40% less likely to use and abuse substances * are 60% less likely to be depressed as teenagers * are 80% less likely to have dangerous or unprotected sex * have significantly more positive markers for thriving including an increased sense of meaning and purpose, and high levels of academic success. Combining cutting-edge research with broad anecdotal evidence from her work as a clinical psychologist to illustrate just how invaluable spirituality is to a child's mental and physical health, Miller translates these findings into practical advice for parents, giving them concrete ways to develop and encourage their children's—as well as their own—well-being. In this provocative, conversation-starting book, Dr. Miller presents us with a pioneering new way to think about parenting our modern youth.

Raising a teenager is difficult; your Jewish values can help make it easier. Relationships with teenage children can be maddening and frustrating. They undergo the most peculiar transition from children you think you know into mysterious adolescent strangers you often wish you didn’t. Drawing upon the teachings, insights, and wisdom that have sustained the Jewish people throughout the generations, this groundbreaking and invaluable guidebook will help you navigate the tumultuous journey of parenting a Jewish child into adulthood while asking—and answering—important questions, including: How is my Jewish teen’s life different from my life when I was a teen? How do I cope with the pain of separation as my child enters the teenage years? What are the causes of the conflict between me and my teen, and how can I help our family move through our most difficult moments? How must my own behavior change as my teen grows older? Is it possible to live with differences in Jewish belief and observance within the same family during my child’s teenage years? What are the unique challenges of parenting Jewish teens in special situations, such as an interfaith home; a special-needs teen; an adopted teen; or a teen who is engaged in risky or self-destructive behaviors?