7 Essential Parenting Books To Help Your Kid Thrive In School

Dejan Marjanovic/E+/Getty Images Parents often lament that kids don’t come with instruction manuals. This isn’t to say there’s a lack of guidance available for those wanting to refine their parenting skills. As far back as 1946, when American pediatrician Benjamin Spock’s The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care sold 500,000 copies in its first six months of publication, the parenting book industrial complex has been humming right along. As the school year gets ready to kick off, many parents will be looking for a helpful read as they start a post-summer reset. With so many options to sort through, we’ve hand-picked nine essential parenting books that provide cutting-edge insights across an array of topics — without talking down to parents. A Place to Belong: Celebrating Diversity and Kinship in the Home and Beyond by Amber O'Neal Johnston At the beginning of A Place to Belong , Amber O’Neal Johnston challenges parents to embrace self-interrogation in the pursuit of inclusivity. She fully acknowledges the intentionality and hard work that are required to cultivate a truly inclusive home, but she also captures the real urgency of this particular moment in history, if we want to start undoing the toxic effects of divisiveness and injustice. Johnston lays out a compelling blueprint in A Place to Belong for how to help kids grow in self-acceptance and radical inclusivity. She includes examining family culture, acknowledging the challenges and injustices other cultures face, a…