Amazing Parenting Books

Ideas for Your 2025 Holiday List 

Last week, I bought myself a small artwork entitled, "It's five o'clock somewhere." The catch? The art features not a wine glass, but a bookshelf constructed from driftwood, seaglass, and shells. I love books and I love reading, and I really love sharing the best of the books I have read… and this year, I am on track to complete over 60 books, plus another few dozen that didn't feel like the right book, the right time, or both, and stopped partway in. I read so much so you don't have to.

As we near the holidays and you're looking for holiday gifts for the parents in your life--or for yourself--I wanted to share the absolute top parenting books in my collection. These books overlap some and even reference each other, but also contain unique perspectives and tools.

The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read by Philippa Perry

In a nutshell: The delightful Dr. Perry offers a guide to better relationships, focusing on how childhood experiences shape adult behavior and how to recognize and break destructive cycles with your own children. It aims to help you build strong, trusting connections with your children by validating your child's feelings, communicating honestly, and understanding that behavior is a form of communication. Based on the premise that a secure attachment is the foundation for a child's future independence, it teaches parents how to be authentic and responsive.

Best parts: The book maintains a wonderful balance for the parent to understand their own behaviors, while also providing a playbook and concrete skills for showing up differently with their children in the present.

This book is perfect for: Everyone, literally.

How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish

In a nutshell: The legendary duo of Dr. Mazlish and Dr. Faber provide a playbook for how to listen to and understand your children. It teaches communication techniques for resolving conflict by acknowledging children's feelings, engaging cooperation, using alternatives to punishment, and encouraging autonomy. It is more skills focused than The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read, providing step-by-step skills to build better relationships with children and manage challenging situations like tantrums and anger in a way that promotes mutual respect.

Best parts: I absolutely love the cartoon diagrams with easy to follow steps for practicing new skills. Some of the skills--heck, all of the skills--are just as useful with adults!

This book is perfect for: Everyone. There are also variations of the book customized for different age groups and behavior patterns, so you can find a version of the book really directed to the challenges you are facing (e.g. the toddler years).

(Special Mention) Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans by Michaeleen Doucleff

In a nutshell: I am not including this book in my top books partly because I haven't finished it yet, and also because it's a little less pragmatic and immediately helpful as the other two. I am also loving it and the very different perspective it offers. This is not a how-to book, although you may come away with many different ideas about how you might want to incorporate concepts she explores with your own children. What it offers that is unique is that it zooms out to a wider lens and looks at parenting--and the ways we live today--from a sociological, systems perspective. The book offers that much that is hard about parenting isn't how you are parenting… it's how WE are parenting. The author visits families in three different cultures to learn about different ways they help children grow into healthy adults.

Best parts: Learning about different approaches to child rearing in three distinct cultures, Mayan, Inuit, and Hadzabe.

This book is perfect for: Anyone who is a systems thinker and wants to understand where things fit in a bigger picture