Relationships and families: advice, topics and issues Books

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Book SynopsisHappiNest is the first book to present a detailed road map for navigating the spiritual and practical challenges that arise after your kids leave home. We are entering uncharted territory that is more complex and vastly different from the landscape our parents faced. We have more opportunities but also more obligations. Our young adults are taking longer to finish school, settle on careers, and become independent, requiring more support in their twenties and thirties. At the same time, our parents are living longer and needing us more. Trying to meet the demands of these surrounding generations is prompting many of us to dip into savings and postpone retirement. This book culls wisdom from interviews with more than 300 people, including psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, young adults, and empty nesters. It also unearths new research on today’s empty nesters that has been buried in studies on aging, relationships, and young adulthood. Creating a HappiNest takes hard work, and it is different for everyone. This book will show you how to relate better to your young adults, help them cope with obstacles they may face, and manage the household if your kids are among the one in three who “boomerang” back home. It will help you discover a renaissance in your marriage or, perhaps, handle empty nest divorce. It will show you how to cultivate friend networks and avoid suffocating your spouse. It will guide you to find new purpose and meaning after the kids leave. HappiNest will help you see the path ahead and find the hidden treasures along the way.Trade ReviewLife has many seasons, each rich in opportunities to learn, grow and, ultimately, to thrive amid its challenges. HappiNest will help you navigate this next season - to forge richer relationships, cultivate new passions, and to embrace its many possibilities with a newfound sense of courage, clarity and adventure. -- Margie Warrell, Bestselling author of "Train The Brave" and "Make Your Mark"HappiNest: Finding Fulfillment After Your Kids Leave Home is a valuable resource for empty nesters. Judy Holland has expertly curated interviews, quotes, research studies and statistics to comfort, inspire and encourage those of us who are heading into or who are in the empty nest. -- Christine Maziarz, Your Empty Nest CoachRegardless of how times change or how fast paced our lives become, there are few things that shake up our world quite as much as the arrival of a new member of the household. However, for some parents, the departure of their youngest, or only, child and the resultant “empty nest” can be as challenging an experience as the child’s arrival had been. This book provides the type of comfort, content, and stabilizing support that many parents seek when they are trying to figure out who they have become (and who their partners have become) in the years since children first arrived on the scene. The book provides a multitude of different answers to the questions that we all want to ask of those who have been through an experience we are just now facing, “What was it like for you? What did you do to cope?” With the variety of stories included in the book, Judy Holland provides a wealth of support and suggestions to help readers effectively manage this transition. Just like the title promises, the book absolutely delivers engaging and inspiring ideas that will set the reader on a path to a new type of personal fulfilment. -- Suzanne Degges-White, Professor and Chair, Department of Counseling and Higher Education, Northern Illinois University, author of "Sisters and Brothers for Life: Making Sense of Sibling Relationships in Adulthood"Becoming an empty nester poses an existential challenge to many parents: when kids leave, so does a major source of purpose for parents. Fortunately, they can now turn to HappiNest to help them navigate this transition. Judy Holland’s book draws on fascinating psychology research and tells the stories many empty nesters to show how people can redefine their purpose and identity after the kids leave home. This book will bring hope and comfort to those parents searching for meaning in the second half of life. -- Emily Esfahani Smith, author of "The Power of Meaning"

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Book SynopsisSubsequent siblings, who are sometimes referred to as replacement children, were born after the death of a brother or sister. Their experiences are often unspoken; little has been written about them or from their perspective. This self-help, psychology non-fiction book breaks new ground by assembling rich and heartfelt life stories from a diverse group of subsequent siblings while also weaving in clinical literature and discussion. It is based upon over a hundred subsequent sibling interviews, which, to the authors' knowledge, comprise the largest and most diverse sample to date of subsequent siblings. Through the subjects' engaging narratives the reader can understand and empathize with some of the common obstacles and repercussions of the subsequent sibling role. Additional testimonies from parents and surviving siblings give the reader a clear vantage point of the complex and multilayered impacts of loss upon a family system.Those who are born after the death of a sibling enter a familial landscape that has been forever altered by loss. The book provides an overview of the parental experience of the loss of a child, explores the complexity of pregnancy after loss, and examines the intrauterine and attachment experiences of children born after loss. Some subsequent siblings are expected, consciously or unconsciously, to serve as a replacement for their lost sibling and to fill the void of loss. A variety of replacement dynamics may occur, and the subsequent child may be viewed as an inadequate replacement for a deceased and idealized sibling. The death of a child causes immense parental pain and impacts parenting approaches, perhaps resulting in impaired bonding or overprotectiveness of the subsequent child. The book will review common issues which subsequent siblings face, including survivor guilt, phobias, difficulties with identity formation, taking on caretaker roles, disturbances in bonding with parents, and a sense of pressure to heal their grieving families. As subsequent siblings were not born at the time of their sibling''s death, their loss is often unrecognized and misunderstood. It is frequently complex for them to grieve for a sibling they did not meet, and to integrate their sibling''s death into their life narrative. Like most mourners, many subsequent siblings have a need to make meaning of their loss. Some subsequent siblings can recognize strengths that they have gained because of their role. This book additionally includes chapters about surviving siblings, and children who were born after a sibling with special needs.

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Book SynopsisThe newest generation of children is exposed to ubiquitous technology, more than any generation that preceded them. They are photographed with smartphones from the moment they're born, and begin interacting with screens at around four months old. Is this good news or bad news? A wonderful opportunity to connect around the world? Or the first step in creating a generation of addled screen zombies? The truth is, there's no road map for navigating this territory.But while many have been quick to declare this the dawn of a neurological and emotional crisis, solid science on the subject is surprisingly hard to come by. In this book, Anya Kamenetz--an expert on both education and technology, as well as a mother of two young children--takes a refreshingly practical look at the subject. Surveying hundreds of fellow parents on their practices and ideas, and cutting through a thicket of inconclusive studies and overblown claims, she hones a simple message, a riff on Michael Pollan's well-known "food rules": Enjoy Screens. Not too much. Mostly with others.This brief but powerful dictum forms the backbone of a philosophy that will help parents survive the ubiquity of technology in their children's lives, curb their panic, and create room for a happy, healthy family life. Kamenetz's sophisticated yet practical thinking is a necessary cure for an age of anxiety.

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