Leading child researcher Grolnick and educational and parenting journalist Seal offer this illuminating and accessible guide to channeling competitive anxiety into positive parenting.

Leading child researcher Wendy Grolnick and educational and parenting journalist Kathy Seal offer this illuminating and accessible guide to channeling competitive anxiety into positive parenting.

Do you find yourself asking "Whose life is it anyway?" Parenting today has come to resemble a relentless to-do list. Even parents with the best intentions strive to micro-manage every detail of their kids' lives and live in constant fear that their child will under-perform in any area--academic, social, athletic. Lists and schedules, meetings and appointments invade our every moment and the need to be the best dominates--and undermines--our own sense of self as well as our children's. In their groundbreaking new book The Over-Scheduled Child, renowed child psychiatrist Alvin Rosenfeld, M.D., and longtime family-issues journalist Nicole Wise combine personal and professional experience to take action against what they see as our overeager pursuit of perfection. The clear, comforting steps they prescribe to attack this rampant phenomenon will promote healthier and happier children and revitalize the parenting experience.

The Right Kind of Parental Pressure Puts Kids on a Path to Success. The Wrong Kind Can Be Disastrous. Level up your parenting with this positive approach to pushing your child to be their best self. Parents instinctively push their kids to succeed. Yet well-meaning parents can put soul-crushing pressure on kids, leading to under-performance and serious mental health problems instead of social, emotional, and academic success. So where are they going astray? According to Drs. Chris Thurber and Hendrie Weisinger, it all comes down to asking the right question. Instead of “How much pressure?”, you should be thinking “How do I apply pressure?” The Unlikely Art of Parental Pressure addresses the biggest parenting dilemma of all time: how to push kids to succeed and find happiness in a challenging world without pushing them too far. The solution lies in Thurber and Weisinger’s eight methods for transforming harmful pressure to healthy pressure. Each transformation is enlivened by case studies, grounded in research, and fueled by practical strategies that you can start using right away. By upending conventional wisdom, Thurber and Weisinger provide you with the revolutionary guide you need to nurture motivation, improve your interactions with your child, build deep connections, sidestep cultural pitfalls, and, ultimately, help your kids become their best selves.

How parents can guide their kids on a path to success -- while avoiding burnout. It's a tough world out there and, in order to succeed, kids need to learn how to perform under pressure. But how can parents foster that resilience at a time when kids are already more stressed out and anxious than ever before? The Unlikely Art of Parental Pressure addresses one of the biggest dilemmas for today's parents: Parental Pressure. While other resources exist for parents to recognize the symptoms of stress and meltdowns in their young kids and teens, Chris Thurber and Hendrie Weisinger show how prevention is an even better tool. They uncover what falls under negative, dysfunctional parental pressure so that parents can stop themselves from falling into that "Parental Pressure Paradox" trap. Thurber and Weisinger reveal case studies and concrete parent-child communication strategies, along with analysis on how to improve that communication that is positive in key ways: improvement oriented, interactive, unconditional love and protection of self-esteem.

A humorous yet poignant look into how much freedom American parents might be taking away from their children in the name of their safety.